What makes for a healthy society? In today’s world, critical thinking and understanding of basic science must be at the top of the list. It seems reasonable that people with a higher degree of science literacy would have better prospects regarding jobs and such, but perhaps that isn’t so important. I think that people with a higher degree of science literacy have greater understanding of and greater control of themselves, and of their own sexuality. By that, I mean lower rates of sexually transmitted disease and fewer unintended pregnancies and thus fewer abortions. While these of course aren’t the only indications of a healthy society, I think we can all agree they are pretty important.
I am surprised by how little research has been done attempting to correlate societal health (or even STD rates for a start) with science literacy, although there has been at least one attempt to make a correlation of societal health with religion. In a somewhat contested 2005 paper, Gregory S. Paul (a paleontologist and illustrator) posited that Societies worse off ‘when they have God on their side’. Paul says,
In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.
Even though it wasn’t tested, I have to think that the correlation isn’t between devotion and social ills but between science literacy and social ills. I can’t imagine any causation that might exist between faith and gonorrhea rates. I can, however, imagine that understanding how STDs are transmitted might lead to lower STD infection rates. I can also imagine that there is a negative correlation between science literacy and religious devotion, at least from what I’ve seen in the US .
Paul did consider the relationship between religious devotion and acceptance of evolution, and of religious devotion and STD and abortion rates, but I think he could have gone much further. The presentation of the data in the paper is very strange. It would have been nice to see some trend lines. Some critics of the paper argue that Paul chose only a narrow range of countries. I don’t think this is a problem, since we can’t quite compare a relatively prosperous democracy with a poor dictatorship. Regardless of its inadequacies, it’s certainly worth a read. If nothing else, there are tons of intriguing references.
While this isn’t really relevant to the point I’m making here, Paul also spent a lot of time on homicide rather than sexual health, which I don’t think is as strong an indicator of societal health. The correlation between death and the duality of good and evil was explored further by Gary F. Jensen in response to Paul’s work, although Jensen didn’t even mention the complication of reincarnation.
Gregory S. Paul (2005). Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies Journal of Religion & Society, 7
Gary F. Jensen (2006). Religious Cosmologies and Homicide Rates among Nations Journal of Religion & Society, 8
Note: I am not a social scientist by any means, but enjoy thinking about the relationships between what some people might think are unrelated phenomena.
I have also been frustrated by the weakness of the links between religious belief through society and the trends of societal ills. I am probably predisposed to think that societies with higher participation in religion are subject to such things as higher crime rate, greater incidence of divorce, and prevalence of STD’s.
I remember asking, on talk.origins, how a social scientist would approach such a question to gain a deeper understanding of the issue. I am not sure if the correlational studies help all that much.
Some may disagree, but I don’t think that religion offers as much guidance as science in these issues.
Witness the resistance to gardasil vaccinations as raised by fundamentalists.
I think you make some excellent points. But science literacy really is useless if the public isn’t exposed to science literature. I was raised in a roman catholic household, and constantly exposed to scientific literature in the field of physics and chemistry, and consequently developed a pretty good idea of how science works: but I never would have thought to even question Roman Catholic doctrine until I left home, and finally got access to papers and studies that showed my science-literate brain the correlations and causalities. It was never something that I would have taken on faith, of course, after all, someone telling me that thou shalt use condoms was about as supported as ‘thou shalt not,’ and my STD-free parents had been doing pretty well with thou shalt not.
En bref: literacy = awesome. Literacy + resources = even better.
It seems to me that there’s a problem with correlational studies that is rather deep – they “reinforce” whatever position or hypothesis one brings to the study, rather like the old style “null hypothesis testing” idea in psychology.
It seems to me that religion forms a cohesive community within general society, and as such we might expect, for example, that in social conditions that are parlous and dangerous, religious adherence will rise, a kind of social immunology.
If a particular form of religion, like Christian fundamentalism, is antiscience, then there will be a correlation there, but the underlying cause is that society is in a bad way (as I recall, studies show a higher rate of religious adherence in economically depressed states in the US).
It is important to remember the wealth of information linking religion to better physical and mental health. While these are not necessarily related to homicide rates and other social ills this body of research seems to conflict (at least on the surface) with the argument presented above.
I also think that comparing the health practices of *some* fundamentalist groups is just anecdotal evidence that doesn’t actually reflect true trends. Relatively very few people fall at the extremes of the religious spectrum.
I am more inclined to think that the relationships found in the studies discussed in the post are due to a third variable – perhaps science literacy (especially in the case of STDs). In the case of murder rates I would suspect that the 3rd variable may be status disparities. Greater status disparities is related to greater murder rates and greater religiosity. It seems that both aggression and religion protects against threats to the self-worth of those who are at the bottom of society, so they both appear in societies with large status differences.
The key question is are those who are committing the homicides religious? Are those who are spreading the STDs religious? Or are these separate phenomenon, with similar causes?
Mike, I too am probably biased to expect higher incidence in social ills in religious countries, but this is backed up both by personal experience and simply seeing the effect that religion has had on various countries (Ireland, Serbia, and so on). I do think that correlation studies help (see my response to John below). I agree that gardasil is a good example of religion and science butting heads, but there is irrationality completely separate from religion that prevents people from vaccinating their children as well.
taenia, I completely agree that having access to the literature is necessary for a person to make appropriate conclusions based on research. People need both a basic education in science and the ability to determine which sources are valid and which are not. Not everyone needs to be able to read papers in Anal. Bioanal. Chem., but they should be able to read summaries on sites like ScienceDaily. If the average Joe can Google for the sports scores, he should be able to find info in NIH factsheets.
John, correlation is weak at best, but it can at least give us a place to start considering causation. What is the alternative? We can’t exactly do randomized studies (subjects in group A are assigned to be religious…) and anecdotes are worthless.
Paul showed that higher devotion correlated with higher incidence of various social ills in wealthy democratic nations (this also seems to be the case across regions in the US). If religion is “social immunology” against negative social conditions, why doesn’t it work? Would those people be better off if they instead clung to reason? I don’t know.
I’m not saying that religion in general is anti-science or anti-reason (although I’d be hard pressed to find evidence that shows otherwise across a general population, while I do know people who are exceptional exceptions). I think problems arise when one believes he or she has all the answers already. If I am used to someone telling me what to think from a very early age, then I will be less likely to seek out clarification. Laziness and complacency play a role as well, but I think all of these can be combated by training in critical thinking. If we better understand how the world works, then we might be better equipped to deal with it.
Mark, where is this “wealth of information”? Please provide citations. The studies I’ve seen have been mixed, and generally seem to have more to do with socio-economic status than anything else. The most amusing one was the discovery that high religiosity was correlated with obesity. This study, as well as the two listed in this post, did not consider only fundamentalists. To my knowledge, no one has compared the health of non-theists to theists of various flavors before, but I think it would be interesting to see if any patterns exist.
I agree that the relationship between STD rates and science literacy should be explored, One example: the lack of efficacy of religion-based abstinence-only education in the US. It’s not that religious people are more likely to have STDs per se, but the lack of proper science based education combined with natural mammalian behavior has inevitable consequences.
I’d also like to see studies that determine the relationship between religion and science literacy. It certainly seems that people with a high degree of science literacy are more likely to be non-theists, but we won’t know if the correlation extends the other way without more studies.
As for homicide rates, I disagree that status disparities are the cause, unless you are simply saying in a PC way that poor people are more likely to commit murder. The majority of homicides are within class, not across class. Those committing homicides are more likely to be religious, judging by the percentage of non-theists in prison compared to the percentage in the general population (more statistics are needed, I couldn’t find anything newer than 1997, and I’d like to know what people say their religion is at incarceration). As Jensen’s study showed, countries with high incidence in belief in supernatural dualism correlates with higher homicide rates, while countries non-dualistic religions and secular religions have lower homicide rates. For better or for worse, the US has a high incidence of belief in dualistic religions and high homicide rates.
An interesting side note – suicide rates in India are higher than in countries with similar socio-economic situations. I haven’t seen any studies on it, but I think this may be due to belief in reincarnation. So we might add specific afterlife beliefs to the list of possible religious factors that may have an effect on these indicators of social health.
I haven’t read the Paul paper, although the comments I’ve seen suggest to me that it’s a joke. Mark B. is right that there are plenty of examples of more reputable studies of the relationship between religious participation and various aspects of individual and collective behavior, and Anastasia is right that the effects appear to be mixed. But more importantly, I think that any claim that the differences among a few humongous and diverse populations are due to “religion” or any other crude and vague notion (try “liberalism” or “generosity” or “openness” or “cruelty” or “credulity”) would require a far more significant scholarly effort, presumably one beyond the resources of an amateur like Paul. I’m not saying that I think he’s wrong (to whatever extent he has a coherent thesis) — I’m saying that it’s entirely possible that “studies” like his can be counterproductive by giving the impression that pseudoscholarship can get academic imprimatur by virtue of hostility toward religion or any other presumed enemy of the academic left.
OTOH, I do like your question about the relationship between scientific literacy and societal health. I would love to see careful study of the interactions between scientific literacy and various specific positions or outcomes, such as views on immunization, rates of unintended pregnancy, rates of obesity/smoking/alcohol consumption etc., perhaps participation in lotteries or gambling. It seems very unlikely to me that we would be able to untangle scientific literacy from other factors (religion and other cultural inheritance, poverty, basic literacy and education), but that’s a job for social scientists, not dinosaur illustrators with blunt axes.
Thanks for your comment, Stephen. I agree that paleontologists probably shouldn’t write papers on sociology (as I said in this post, Paul’s paper was controversial) – but what struck me is that he is the only one to try! Any sociologists out there need a thesis? You can have this idea for free as long as you keep Clashing Culture posted
I would like to be able to go back to symbolic interactionism and study it in depth again, because I think it would teach quite a bit about the role of perception in regards to reality. It’s a field of social psychology that may yield some insights, but I am not sure how scientific it is. It seems more philosophical.
Good article. However, unlike you I can see a possible causal relationship between “faith and gonorrhea rates”. Strong religious believers generally have judgmental attitudes. If something is wrong then then want it banned and they want its practitioners to be punished.
Now most devout Christians believe in monogamy and are hostile to all non-marital sex. These attitudes cause them to be against making condoms readily available and any encouragement of people, especially the young, to use them. They are also against sex education and, sometimes, STD clinics.
If these attitude become public policy – as they are likely to do where the devout have a majority – then there will be more unprotected sex and thus more infection. QED.
Mark B – Concerning the Paul paper you wrote “It is important to remember the wealth of information linking religion to better physical and mental health.”
Indeed it is, but most of these, I think, look at variations between believers and others within a society. Paul looked at variations between societies. These are obviously different and, at minimum, we cannot assume that the results will poi nt the same way. (I find Robert Putnam’s work interesting here.)
It seems to me quite possible for a belief to make the believer happier than his neighbours whilst leading to consequences that make the whole society worse off. For instance, great religious faith may be consoling but serve to block advances in science, public health and sentencing policy that might make everyone healthier and safer.
Examples include the modern Islamic hostility, or at least indifference to, science and the christian preference for ineffective abstinence-only sex education.
Thanks for your comments, David. I agree with your first comment, but didn’t quite want to go so far as to say that Christianity (the extreme kind) directly causes higher STD rates (and even more abortions due to lack of birth control) in my blog post. Regarding your second comment, I am honestly surprised that so many people reject Pauls’s work offhand. It’s as if they don’t even want to consider how much religion affects society, and that the effects might not all be positive. I’m sure there are better ways to study variations across societies, but it’s worthy at least as a preliminary study! I agree that the effects of religion on individuals may be very different from the effects of religion on whole societies (or public policies or other things).
Pardon my intrugen but i whould like to pitch in this coversation, with all the small amound of knowledge ive acumliated in this subject you are all talking about the relgious effects on Society and culture well as i have read the whole convorsation i personaly think that relgion does effect socity in many ways that are benfeical and not so much in the same time most of you forgot somthing relgion is like a cack if you mess up the ingredeants or be un aware of the right ones the cack will fail and most people in socity absorbed relgion in a rong way or just didnt understand the relgion and translated it to his own belives and way of thinking we are all subjected to that kind of thinking because as we all know its imposible to digist and absorb a situation like this by simply reading and righting now that happens to many people in socity and the statistics actuly prove that sucide is less in countrys with a relgion that is ruled by a no sucide policy now relgion was originaly intended as a answer because people who just wonder about everything and didnt know decided to creat theories about god or a several but that is besides the point you cannot say if god exists or not its realy only to know is if god comes to earth or we die thats all there is to it now some of the relgions support good things and qualtiys in a person effecting him in a postive mater and if the whole society can absorb these qualtiy that whould creat a great matter of Justice and considration for others some of them are like feeding the hungry bieng genrous listening to your parents and taking care of them when they grow older be respectable to yourself and the others so sciense as a major word cant be implented as Sciense V.S Relgion that prespective is rong sciense has taught us many things that relgion has asked us as well for example when god told people not to have sex back then people didnt have condoms so god whouldnt just tell wear a condom or somthing so when God or Gods or any told us not to have sex at 100 years past or so he had a good reason wich is there was nothing to protect people and since god or gods or any hasnt updated his book tablet or profit etc people had just Followed the old way that god talked about but some people in high positions of power Diverited some sacred Tableds – Books or any other thing that made that Relgion get confused so the relgion split into 2 parts or more because most of these ones are like a clock if you mess up a springer or add somthing inside of it it will bust up and stop working and no appernt way to fix this unless an original book,tablet or any copy was found or God himself will tell us .
Having said that now most Relgions i know of donot push people to kill each other but people use it as an excues for there murder for example i watched a German Man Kill a egyption girl just because she is a muslim inside the court house atacked her infront of the judge and stabed here to death before anyone could stop him even that same person with no relgions atached to him himself just killed a person and used there relgion as a excuses to his crime that only identfies that a criminal will kill if you are born to kill if you live in a poisend environment with bad parents your going to be a killer or a rober mostly most relgions themselves have nothing to do with peoples choices so relgion is just a mirror that reflects our own acts on us if you are a good person you will go to heaven if you are bad its hell the goal acomplished behind that is pure and simple god is just trying to make people good and peacefull but there is no one god or two none knows each relgion has its own atributes and belifes iam not saying all relgions are pure that is take Saintainsim for example people who belive in god but are just bent on bieng bad and hurting others and causing pain so they chose that as a road and they used to give themselves excuses for example : iam a saintainest so i can do whatever i want kill steal and whatever i want because iam goin to hell anyway might as well enjoy it.
thats said Relgion is only pure in its core God – weather there are maney of him or just half somehow all Relgions are based around god even the ones that dont follow him as i said earlier and i quot is to well Die.
Side note : sorry for my sucky spelling iam 13 o.o hope i did good sorry if i just wasted your time reading this x_x.