Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Are we better off without religion?

"Popular religious belief is caused by dysfunctional social conditions. This is the conclusion of the latest sociological research conducted by Gregory Paul. Far from religion benefiting societies, as the "moral-creator socioeconomic hypothesis" would have it, popular religion is a psychological mechanism for coping with high levels of stress and anxiety – or so he suggests."
My comment:
Swimming or yoga can give you a similar result with the additional benefit of being fitter and less likely to become a kook fighting over who's god's willy is bigger! Yallah!

1 comment:

  1. I found this  most fascinating -

    "The critical step from correlation to cause is not easy. Paul analyses all sorts of possibilities. Immigration and diversity do not explain the relationships, nor do a country's frontier past, nor its violent media, and so he is led to his conclusions: "Because highly secular democracies are significantly and regularly outperforming the more theistic ones, the moral-creator socioeconomic hypothesis is rejected in favour of the secular-democratic socioeconomic hypothesis"; "religious prosociality and charity are less effective at improving societal conditions than are secular government programmes"."

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