The religiosity of the population does not contribute to the prosperity of society
On the contrary, according to the totality of all available indicators, the most religious societies turned out to be the least prosperous.
There is no consensus among sociologists about what role – positive or negative – religion plays in modern highly developed societies. Some authors claim that mass belief in God or gods who encourage moral behavior and punish sins contributes to public well-being (reduction of crime, corruption, economic prosperity, etc.). Other researchers prove that reasonable policies of secular governments are much more important for the prosperity of society than mass religiosity of the population. Some facts point to the possible negative influence of religiosity. Surprisingly few serious scientific studies have been conducted on this issue, and none of them took into account all significant (and available for analysis) socio-economic indicators at the same time. This is partly due to the fact that the study of such issues often encounters various obstacles of a moral, ethical and political nature.
Gregory Paul, an independent American researcher with a very wide range of interests, stretching from paleontology (Paul is known as a major expert on dinosaurs) to sociology and religious studies, tried to fill this gap. In his new article The Chronic Dependence of Popular Religiosity upon Dysfunctional Psychosociological Conditions, published in the open access journal Evolutionary Psychology, Paul cites the results of a comprehensive cross-national analysis, the purpose of which was to test two alternative hypotheses about the impact of mass religiosity on public well-being. The first of these hypotheses ("the moral-creator socio-economic hypothesis") postulates a strong positive impact of mass belief in God (gods) who are not indifferent to moral issues on the socio-economic well-being of society. The second hypothesis ("the secular-democratic socio-economic hypothesis") suggests that religiosity in modern developed societies is, on the contrary, a negative factor inhibiting the growth of social well-being. Theoretically, a third option is also possible: religiosity does not affect key socio-economic indicators at all, or its influence is completely "blocked" and masked by other, more important factors. The first hypothesis predicts the presence of a positive correlation between the religiosity of society and social well–being, the second predicts a negative correlation, the third - the absence of a significant correlation.
In reality, of course, everything is somewhat more complicated, and the space of logical possibilities is not at all exhausted by the listed hypotheses. For example, the level of religiosity may not be the cause, but the consequence of a particular level of social well-being, which, in turn, depends on some other factors. Then we will observe a significant correlation between religiosity and well-being, but this correlation will not indicate the influence of the former on the latter. The same can be observed if some "third factor" simultaneously affects both religiosity and the well-being of society. How to get around these methodological difficulties? One possible way is to include as many variables as possible in the analysis, ideally taking into account all available socio–economic indicators that may be relevant. In this case, the probability that the key factors that are somehow related to the indicators of interest to us (religiosity and social well-being) will fall out of the researcher's field of view will become minimal.
This is exactly what Paul tried to do (a detailed description of the technique is given in the article under discussion). The analysis included only data on prosperous, prosperous democratic states of the "first world" with a population of about 4 million people or more. In total, 17 countries were taken into account, the data for which in international databases and published summaries are the most complete, reliable and mutually comparable: the USA, Ireland, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands, Norway, England, Germany, France, Denmark, Japan, Sweden. The list is given in descending order of the complex indicator of the religiosity of the population (see below): from the most religious countries to the most secular. Paul did not include the countries of the second and third world in the analysis, because this would lead to intractable methodological problems. For example, among these countries, the lowest level of religiosity is characteristic of a number of post-communist states, but it is quite obvious that the low level of religiosity is associated not so much with one or another level of social well-being, as with the consequences of the long-term imposition of communist ideology. In addition, in the countries included in the analysis, people can more or less freely choose their worldview, whereas in some third world countries they can even cut off their heads for publicly rejecting a generally accepted religion – there is no time for cross-cultural analysis...
To assess the level of religiosity of the population, about a dozen indicators were used, including: the proportion of people who unconditionally believe in God the Creator (or creator gods); "biblical literalists" - people who insist on a literal understanding of the Bible; regular participants in collective worship services; regularly praying; believing in the afterlife, heaven and hell; the proportion of atheists and agnostics; the proportion of people who recognize the origin of man through evolution from lower animals, etc. All kinds of "superstitions" and anti-scientific ideas (for example, belief in ghosts or astrology) in this study were not considered indicators of religiosity. According to the author, such views have much less socio-political significance than adherence to "real" religions. All these indicators were analyzed both separately and together: the author compiled from them a comprehensive "index of religiosity of the population" (popular religiosity versus secularism scale, PRVSS), which, in turn, was compared with individual and complex indicators of public well-being.
To assess the level of well-being of society, Paul selected 25 of the most reliable socio–economic indicators, including: the number of murders and suicides (suicides among young people were considered separately), infant mortality, life expectancy, the incidence of gonorrhea and syphilis (separately among adolescents), the number of abortions among minors, the number of births at the age of 15-17 years, the number of marriages and divorces, alcohol consumption, life satisfaction, per capita income, the level of property inequality (Gini index), poverty, corruption, unemployment, etc. From all these indicators, Paul constructed a comprehensive "successful societies scale" (SSS), which was used in the study along with individual socio-economic indicators. In addition, indicators reflecting the level of heterogeneity (fractionalization) of society, the number of immigrants, and the environmental situation in the country were taken into account.
The article scrupulously examines the relationship between all these indicators in the 17 countries studied. The main result is a strong and statistically reliable positive correlation found by Paul between the well-being of society and the level of its "secularism". This correlation is clearly visible both when comparing complex indicators of PRVSS and SSS, and when analyzing individual indicators of religiosity and socio-economic well-being. In other words, it turned out that the higher the religiosity of the population, the lower the level of social well-being, and vice versa (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. This graph shows that in highly developed prosperous countries of the "first world" the level of social well-being (SSS, on the vertical axis)
positively correlates with the level of "secularism" (non-religious) of society (PRVSS, on the horizontal axis).
Most individual indicators of social well-being are consistent with the generalized graph in Figure 1 (i.e. they show similar dynamics: the lower the religiosity, the better things are in society according to the indicator under consideration), but there are exceptions.
Thus, the murder rate positively correlates with religiosity only at the expense of the United States, since in this most religious country the number of murders per capita is much higher than in any other "first world" state. If we exclude the USA from consideration, the correlation disappears, since in the remaining 16 countries the murder rate seems to have already approached its potentially achievable minimum.
The suicide rate, according to Gender, practically does not depend on the religiosity of the population (the results on suicides among young people are slightly in favor of secular countries, on suicides among people of all ages - in favor of religious). Rumors about an abnormally high suicide rate in the low–religious Scandinavian countries are nothing more than rumors.
A strong positive correlation was found between the religiosity of the population and child mortality: the more religious the country, the higher the child mortality (Fig. 2). The correlation between religiosity and life expectancy is directed in the same direction, but is less pronounced.
Figure 2. Infant mortality (vertical scale) decreases as society departs from religion (horizontal scale is the same as in Figure 1).
The incidence of gonorrhea and syphilis in religious countries is on average higher than in secular countries (taking into account the USA; if this country is not taken into account, the results for syphilis become less unambiguous). The number of abortions among minors is significantly lower in secular countries than in religious ones (Fig. 3). No reliable correlations between religiosity and alcohol consumption were found. The results on marriages and divorces are ambiguous; in general, there is a slight advantage on the side of religious countries (although the religious USA lags behind only completely non-religious Sweden in the number of divorces). The levels of life satisfaction and unemployment do not correlate with religiosity, the level of corruption is slightly better in less religious countries.
Figure 3. The number of abortions among minors is significantly lower in secular countries than in religious ones.
In terms of GDP production, religious countries are slightly ahead, but in terms of property equality, non-religious countries are sharply ahead of them (the higher the level of religiosity, the higher the Gini index, reflecting the uneven distribution of material goods among the population). In accordance with this, the percentage of poor people in religious countries is significantly higher. Readers who want to get information on all other indicators can refer to the full text of the article. The final balance is definitely in favor of non–religious countries.
From this, the author concludes that the hypothesis of a strong positive influence of mass religiosity on the socio-economic well-being of society can be confidently rejected.
Discussing the nature of the revealed correlations, the author relies not only on his own results, but also on a lot of additional facts and literary data. According to Paul (as well as a number of other authors), everything points to the fact that there is indeed a causal relationship between the level of mass religiosity and public well-being, however, it is mainly directed not from religiosity to well-being, but in the opposite direction. In other words, the more confident and calmer people (primarily representatives of the "middle class") feel in their social environment, the less they worry about their economic well-being, the weaker their need to seek solace and protection in religion. On the other hand, Paul does not exclude the possibility of a negative impact of mass religiosity on public well-being (although he considers this influence less significant than the opposite). We will not dwell on these arguments of the author in detail, because they largely coincide with the arguments set out in R. Dawkins' book "God as an Illusion".
The author conducted his analysis based on data on the current state of affairs in 17 studied countries. If the conclusion about the negative correlation between religiosity and social well-being is correct, then this should be seen from a historical perspective. For example, as living conditions in a particular country improve, the level of religiosity should decrease, and vice versa. To verify this, you need to have reliable and, most importantly, comparable quantitative data for different historical epochs, and this is still a tight situation. The data available to researchers today generally confirm Paul's conclusions. For example, in the United States, since the end of World War II, the number of people who do not believe in God has almost tripled, and the number of believers has decreased accordingly (although today the United States is the most religious of the 17 countries studied). Other data, despite their incompleteness, show that the process of secularization has been more or less steadily going on in recent decades in almost all countries of the "first world". Paul emphasizes that disbelief in God (nontheism) is the only one of the worldviews that is effectively spread by conversion, i.e. conversion (persuasion) of supporters of other views. The dynamics of the number of adherents of religions, on the contrary, depends mainly on the birth rate among believers and migration processes.
The secularization of society in developed countries, apparently, can accelerate due to positive feedback. It is known that belonging to the dominant religion can give people certain material advantages. However, these advantages weaken as the number of non-believers (or adherents of other religions) grows in the social environment of an individual. In other words, the more atheists there are in the country, the less profitable it is to be a believer.
According to Paul, the results he obtained contradict the widely held view that the propensity for religious beliefs and creationism is one of the deep, fundamental properties of the human psyche. By the way, this point of view is shared by leading experts in the field of evolutionary religious studies, including Paul Bloom and Pascal Boyer, familiar to readers of Elements (see: Rejection of scientific knowledge is rooted in child psychology, Elements, 05/23/07; Religion: a useful adaptation, a byproduct of evolution or a "brain virus"?, "Elements", 28.10.08). But if this were the case, Gregory Paul argues, it is unlikely that we would observe such large differences between states in terms of the level of mass religiosity. After all, according to such really fundamental mental and behavioral signs, such as, for example, speech or the desire to possess material goods, variability is extremely small or completely absent. The results obtained, according to the author, rather indicate that religiosity is a relatively "superficial", flexible, changeable psychological mechanism that helps to cope with stress and anxiety in an inefficient society with a low level of socio-economic stability and security. The mass departure from faith in God the Creator, in turn, is a natural reaction of people to the improvement of living conditions.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru02.09.2009