"Where else would you go when you have an ax to grind?"

Saturday, October 08, 2005


A first world democracy with third world religiousity and problems

An interesting radio piece from the Australian Broadcasting Company, courtesy of fellow DY hack Jane O'Dwyer, soon to be departing our office and Nippon's fair shores to head up PR at Australia's National University,
and yes she is going to hate that picture and the link.
Summary
A discussion with researcher Gregory Paul, about his world-first study of data from the developed democratic countries in which he found a clear relationship between high levels of religious belief and practice, and social problems.

He finds the United States - the most religious of the western democracies, indeed the only strongly Christian nation remaining among the advanced democracies - does not emerge well ...

'Exceptionally Christian and anti-evolution America performs unusually poorly
in terms of rates of homicide, juvenile and adult mortality, STD infections,
abortion, and teen pregnancy and birth. America is the only first world nation to retain second and third world rates of religious belief and practice and disbelief in evolution, and is the only first world nation to retain second and third world rates of societal dysfunction.'
Tune in here to listen, just scroll down to Tuesday Oct. 4 and pick your media or download the MP3

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