Does religion have a societal benefit? Oh this should be good.

In broad terms the hypothesis that popular religiosity is socially beneficial holds that high rates of belief in a creator, as well as worship, prayer and other aspects of religious practice, correlate with lowering rates of lethal violence, suicide, non-monogamous sexual activity, and abortion, as well as improved physical health. Such faith-based, virtuous “cultures of life” are supposedly attainable if people believe that God created them for a special purpose, and follow the strict moral dictates imposed by religion.

Many people, especially Americans, believe this to be inarguably accurate. But is it?

Among the developed democracies absolute belief in God, attendance of religious services and Bible literalism vary over a dozenfold, atheists and agnostics five fold, prayer rates fourfold, and acceptance of evolution almost twofold. Japan, Scandinavia, and France are the most secular nations in the west, the United States is the only prosperous first world nation to retain rates of religiosity otherwise limited to the second and third worlds.

The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a “shining city on the hill” to the rest of the world is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health.

No democracy is known to have combined strong religiosity and popular denial of evolution with high rates of societal health. Higher rates of non-theism and acceptance of human evolution usually correlate with lower rates of dysfunction, and the least theistic nations are usually the least dysfunctional. None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction. In some cases the highly religious U.S. is an outlier in terms of societal dysfunction from less theistic but otherwise socially comparable secular developed democracies.

So let's see if we can simplify this shall we? The nations of the world that accept evolution nad reject a thiestic belief system have a healthier society then the countries that reject science and cling to ancient superstitions. Got it?

Actually I know for a fact that if you were a believer you just discounted this out of hand and stopped reading several paragraphs ago.

If you are a non-believer you probably have read this post all the way to this point. Sorry I am all out of gold stars, but good for you anyway! You my friend are a thinker! You will go far in life and be an embarrassment to your holy roller friends and family.