London Times says that faith in God is dangerous ....

[MariaRegina]

Here are some of the more flagrant quotes from the London Times:

* Religious belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide.
* The study compares the social performance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution.
* The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.
* The non-religious, pro-evolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.

go to

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles5/LapinSecularism1.php

 

[I <3 Abraham]

go to

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles5/LapinSecularism1.php

Ouch, way to use statistics to draw overreaching conclusions...They didn't even use regression analysis!

 

[HandmaidenOfGod]

Here is the original article in the London Times.

 

[Matrona]

Yeah, next they'll come up with a study that "proves" that religious devotion causes hurricanes.

Europe will abort itself into irrelevance relatively soon.

 

[Franze]

It´s a tragedy those thoughts, without secularism, we didn´t have killings, drugs, abortions, who killed their son, if it was religious, and other things.

Very sad this article.

 

[Dust and Ashes]

Europe will abort itself into irrelevance relatively soon.

I heard an interesting quote today on the radio. American Family Radio is the only Christian radio station in my area that I can pick up well so I often listen. Today on a call-in talk show a caller threw out some statistics about how the majority of the 18-30 demographic are becoming pro-life and was wondering why that was so in such a liberal society.

The guest's answer? "Well, since Roe v. Wade, the pro-life people have been having babies and raising them to have a pro-life view while the pro-abortion people have been aborting and thus raising fewer children to support their view."

That struck me as being very ironic.

 

[Greg the byzantine]

Wondering what type of drugs they were smoking when they wrote that?

 

[MariaRegina]

Wondering what type of drugs they were smoking when they wrote that?

I wonder what kind of satanic incantations they were singing.

They gotta be weird.

 

[Michael G]

Wondering what type of drugs they were smoking when they wrote that?

Definitely hallucinogenic ones!

 

[Happy Orthodox]

"Well, since Roe v. Wade, the pro-life people have been having babies and raising them to have a pro-life view while the pro-abortion people have been aborting and thus raising fewer children to support their view."

Hahaha! It cracked me up! Hilarious!


I guess if it wasn't for the British to compare U.S. with England, that would have been a wierd observation. But it's totally understandable sinse every nation tends to think of itself as better than another. If they compared Soudi Arabia and U.S. I bet they would also find that there are a lot more wierd things happen in the United States and that is not due to the religiocity of Americans (because Soudi Arabia is very religious) but that U.S. happens to be the magnit for freaks from all over the world. American society is so diverse that you simply cannot generalize in principle! And generalizing in general is not smart (well, I guess I am contradicting myself here, hehe).

 

[Theophorus]

* The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.

DYSFUCTIONAL!!!

I guess they are not taking into account British "football" fans, or Brits on "holiday".

Plus, they drive on the wrong side of the road.

 

[Franze]

Is it truth that americans are more religious than europeans?

 

[ufonium2]

The original article is here in full. It's the last thing before the review articles section.

In case that doesn't work: http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/toc/current.html


Honestly, it's one of the worst pieces of "scholarly" work that I can imagine. I'm not going to waste my time talking about how overly simplistic every single poll question was, or how he didn't cite one actual number in the whole deal. But I will point out that one of his indicators of "dysfunction" is that America has more school shootings. Even if 20 people die in school shootings in a year here--and I'm guessing that's way higher than in an average year--that's a teeny tiny percentage (like maybe .00008% or something) of the population. No researcher in his/her right mind would consider that an indicator of anything.

Also, he never indicates his criteria for what constitutes a "developing democracy." Look at the list way down by the charts. Notice Russia isn't on there, even though it's a huge country that's been "developing democracy" for 15 years now. I'm guessing it's not on there because Russia's history of forced secularization, combined with unbelievable STD and abortion rates, would throw all of his "research" out the window.