The Journal of Religion and Society has an especially interesting
study on the relationship between the degree of religiosity in a society and a number of social ills, including STD rates, murder rates, and much, much more, and the dramatic inverse correlation with strong belief in a divine creator.
(read on...)
First, the belief that religion is socially beneficial. The background:
In the United States many conservative theists consider evolutionary science a leading contributor to social dysfunction because it is amoral or worse, and because it inspires disbelief in a moral creator (Colson and Pearcey; Eve and Harrold; Johnson; Numbers; Pearcey; Schroeder).
...and:
Politically and socially powerful conservatives have deliberately worked to elevate popular concerns over a field of scientific and industrial research to such a level that it qualifies as a major societal fear factor.
Any disagreements so far? Good. Let's broaden things a bit:
Agreement with the hypothesis that popular religiosity is societally advantageous is not limited to those opposed to evolutionary science, or to conservatives. The basic thesis can be held by anyone who believes in a benign creator regardless of the proposed mode of creation, or the believer's social-political worldview. 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.
So we here in the US, with our high rates of religiosity and belief in a divine creator, ought to be out and out paragons of societal well-being. Low murder rates, low STD rates, low teen pregnancy rates, the rest of the world really needs to be scrambling to build more churches and ordain more ministers in order to catch up, right?
Think again. First, everybody's favorite local bugbear, violent crime:
Despite a significant decline from a recent peak in the 1980s (Rosenfeld), the U.S. is the only prosperous democracy that retains high homicide rates, making it a strong outlier in this regard (Beeghley; Doyle, 2000). Similarly, theistic Portugal also has rates of homicides well above the secular developing democracy norm. Mass student murders in schools are rare, and have subsided somewhat since the 1990s, but the U.S. has experienced many more (National School Safety Center) than all the secular developing democracies combined. Other prosperous democracies do not significantly exceed the U.S. in rates of nonviolent and in non-lethal violent crime (Beeghley; Farrington and Langan; Neapoletan), and are often lower in this regard.
But surely, you might ask, our societal sexual health must be far, far better than those godless furriners?
Oh yeah? Read on:
...rates of adolescent gonorrhea infection remain
six to three hundred times higher (emphasis mine) in the U.S. than in less theistic, pro-evolution secular developing democracies (Figure 6). At all ages levels are higher in the U.S., albeit by less dramatic amounts. The U.S. also suffers from uniquely high adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, which are starting to rise again as the microbe's resistance increases (Figure 7).
(...)
Increasing adolescent abortion rates show positive correlation with increasing belief and worship of a creator, and negative correlation with increasing non-theism and acceptance of evolution; again rates are uniquely high in the U.S.
Hmmm...only a couple of topics and yet...methinks a pattern begins to emerge. The author of the study seems to agree:
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 (Figures 1-9). The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing 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.
I would encourage you, the readers, if you've stuck with this so far, to go and read the original study. Despite its length, it's quite a read. Exhaustively debunking the theists' arguments, pointing out the inconsistencies and outright contradictions in their professed beliefs, and illustrating all this with a great measure of statistical and epidemiological data. And all this from a Jesuit university no less.