Religion Needs Dysfunctional Societies

So, I crawled out from under my comfy rock the other day and found out about a study that was published last year that I thought I'd share with you in case you missed it too. Gregory S. Paul published a study back in 2005 called Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look. I remember it from awhile ago and thought it was very interesting. Basically he looked at the health of prosperous societies and then looked at their absolute belief in god. If I recall, he found that the more religious a country was, the less societally healthy it was. He looked at things like crime, abortion, sexual dysfunctions, and other factors.

It was an interesting study but it was criticized in the scientific community. Well, he did another study in 2009 and this time was more rigorous. The follow up study is called The Chronic Dependence of Popular Religiosity upon Dysfunctional Psychosociological Conditions. Now I haven't read the whole thing, but Tom Rees of Epiphenom has. He was attracted to the charts, as I was, which I've added below.

What societal ills bring a country down from being successful and healthy? Paul used indicators like murder, suicide rates, size of prison populations, mortality, alcohol consumption, poverty, unemployment, sexually transmitted diseases, abortions and deaths. I think he had some positive indicators like marriages too.

Results? Unhealthy societies are more religious. Religion needs a dysfunctional society to flourish, which explains why a first world country like the U.S. can still be so religious, as you can see in all the charts. (click for larger versions)

5 Evil and Crazy christian Movements

Here are 5 christian movements that are crazy and evil. As if any christian-based movement isn't evil, I know! LOL... anyway, I just wanted to bring these issues to your attention, if you didn't already know about them.