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Jan 30, 2008

WARNING! Religion may cause...

By Kelly O'Connor

...hypocrisy; cognitive dissonance; higher rates of STD infection, teen pregnancy,

abortion, and poverty; mass societal dysfunction; early mortality; homicide; and, in
rare cases, delusions and psychosis. Is Living Under the Influence (of religion) less
dangerous than Driving Under the Influence?
In the news this week, we have the case of Eunice Spry, a British woman who
systematically tortured her adopted and foster children because of her religious
convictions. She did pleasant things like forcing the children to eat their own vomit
for being greedy, and making a child with nighttime enuresis (bed-wetting) at the age
of 4 wear a sign reminding everybody that she was an evil attention-seeker. It
doesn't stop there, either. She also prevented a teenaged girl who was injured in a
car accident and temporarily confined to a wheelchair from walking in order to collect
more compensation money, despite the fact that the prognosis was she would regain
ability to walk within 6 months. After moving out, they children submitted to medical
examinations which showed evidence of internal scarring due to Eunice's punishment
of choice-forcing the children to vomit and then eat it.
If you aren't sick by now, you should be. Obviously, this woman's problems extended
beyond her religious beliefs, but her absolutely inhumane treatment of those children
was done under the guise of punishing them for what would seem to be the seven
deadly sins. All she would need to do is chop somebody's pregnant wife's head off
and send it to them and we could make a movie. Oh, wait, somebody already did. In
my opinion, crimes like these should be a more serious offense than murder. Going
Andrea Yates on them would have been merciful. I almost wish that a hell existed so
she could go there.
Don't go away yet, there's more. A Washington, D.C. woman, Banita Jacks, sat in her
home for over two weeks with the decomposing bodies of her 4 daughters who were
apparently "possessed." Now tell me: Where would she get this idea of demon
possession if it hadn't been planted in her mind by religion? I realize that before
mental illnesses were understood, demon possession was a common diagnosis, but
we're living in the 21st century here, people. That concept would not have survived
the Enlightenment if it wasn't for the eternally ubiquitous presence of that festering
boil we refer to as religion.
I know the next argument that you're going to make, too. "Well, she was insane, so
she would have done something horrible anyway." How do you know that? How do
you know that she would have had any concept of a "demon" if it wasn't placed
there? The bible clearly states that this is a war not of flesh and bones, but of spirits
and the forces of good and evil. One is to arm themselves for battle and prepare to
deflect the attacks of satan and his minions. People still believe in this stuff! Does
anybody get this? The Pope is calling for mass exorcisms, and some evangelical
christians believe that sicknesses are caused by satan and that you can "cast them
out in Jesus' name." It is a travesty that the more obsequious among us have bought
the propaganda hook, line, and sinker. Anybody who cannot see the correlation here
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is either blind or indifferent and will allow these things to continue to happen. All
because we can't talk about religion like that-it's just not nice.
Obviously, the vast majority of religious people do not commit these kinds of crimes,
but there is an overwhelming amount of violence perpetrated upon people that is
religiously motivated. I've already pointed out the child abuse that occurs in the
name of religion, and some christian parenting sites teach you how to "switch" your
children with PVC tubing from the age of 9 months. Incidentally, a devotee of theirs
was charged with first-degree murder when she wrapped her 4 year old son tightly in
blankets because he kept getting out of bed and he suffocated to death.All because
god is a god of order, not chaos, and you must maintain order in your home. Talk
about fragile egos on these people who won't be manipulated by the cries of a
hungry newborn baby.
I said this in my first post on this topic, and obviously I need to repeat myself for the
either dense or dishonest critics, but even if religion only exploits existing mental
illnesses, should we not give people one less reason to kill or harm others? Imagine a
scenario in which small groups of racist people are still terrorizing anybody with
darker skin than them, but since the vast majority of white people don't act that way,
we just shouldn't address it.
In all honesty, the reason that most religious people do not act like the Phelps family
is because they are nominal (insert religion here) only. A study done by the Barna
Group, a christian research firm, showed that many young Americans see christians
as hypocritical, and that they really are hypocrites. They surveyed 1003 adults on 20
"lifestyle elements," including things such as altruism, sexual behavior, and
substance abuse. The results: on 15 of the 20 behaviors, evangelical christians were
indistinguishable from us heathens, and the areas in which they do differ (porn
consumption, cursing in public, playing the lottery, and music piracy), the difference
is minor (One-third of heathens vs. one-quarter of christians) except for the music
piracy, in which there is a 7% difference. That is not likely because of the
commandment to not steal, but rather that resisting the urge to download music is
much easier than resisting the urge to have sex. If that's not causing cognitive
dissonance, I don't know what will.
On a larger scale, we have three studies on the impact of religion on society, and
neither of them is going to vindicate religion. The first was published in the Journal of
Religion and Society and authored by Gregory Paul, a social scientist. He concluded
that:
"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.
"The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing
democracies, sometimes spectacularly so."
"The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society
cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral
creator.
"The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is
therefore refuted." (TimesOnline.co.uk)
The next was a Pew global survey that graphed the correlation between religiosity
and wealth. Although the U.S. was an outlier, there was still an inverse statistical
correlation between rates of religious belief and wealth. Attached to that article was
a site you can use to determine rates of religiosity in different areas of the US and
the corresponding population data. (It is slightly dated with 2000 as the year the data
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was collected.) There is a similar correlation in the US among different areas as there
is among countries worldwide. Below are the two graphs plotting the data.

The third and final study is perhaps the most comprehensive. Phil Zuckerman
analyzed levels of organic (not coercive) atheism and how the countries scored on
the "Human Development Index," which rates countries on various indicators of
societal health such as homicide rates, gender equality, poverty, literacy, and infant
mortality. Not surprisingly, higher levels of atheism have a positive correlation to
better levels of societal health as measured by these statistics. The top 25 countries
all have very high levels of non-believers with the exception of Ireland. There was an
increase in suicide rates among some of the atheistic countries, but the author notes
that all of those countries were formerly parts of the USSR and are still suffering from
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the effects of that. (nb: The link to the study itself is gone, but it is available in the
Cambridge Companion to Atheism)
So, due to the insistence of numerous people, I have been working on a more official
thesis on theism as a mind disorder, but getting the actual studies often requires
expensive memberships or trips to the library. Don't worry-it's coming. Even if you
disagree on that point, I think that there's enough data here to support the claim that
religion has deleterious effects on society. One should use caution while using
religion until one is certain of its effects.

Authors Website: www.rationalresponders.com

Authors Bio: Kelly O'Connor of the Rational Response Squad, co-creators of the
infamous Blasphemy Challenge, will be writing to address theist talking heads in the
media. Kelly is a psychology major, co-host of the Rational Response Squad Radio
show, and has been featured on ABC's Nightline twice, along with other media
sources.