countries with a higher rate of bible followers, will have a lower crime rate than other countries and a higher society. look it up. Christian rate, not atheist rate.
Nothing could be further from the truth, Rochoh.
I wouldn't step foot in the majority of highly Christian nations for fear of my life. Such gems as Ecuador, Venezuela, Columbia, Boliva... the U.S...
Now I understand that many of those high Christian, high crime countries also have a fair amount of other issues such as poverty to contend with, but looking at only first world countries, your theory also falls flat.
Crime in the overly religious U.S. is rampant; here in secular Japan it is nearly non-existent.
This is a good study in the Journal of Religion and Society (Vol. 7, 2005) that compared top nations and their societal dysfunctions:
http://moses.creighton.edu/jrs/2005/2005-11.pdf
The reason this study was quite interesting is that it looked at several things (not only crime) that indicates a socially dysfunctional society.
Some tid-bits from the study in chronological order:
Theists often assert that popular belief in a creator is instrumental towards providing the moral, ethical and other
foundations necessary for a healthy, cohesive society. Many also contend that widespread acceptance of evolution, and/or denial of a creator, is contrary to these goals.
A quantitative cross-national analysis is feasible because a large body of survey and census data on rates of religiosity, secularization, and societal indicators has become available in the prosperous developed democracies including the United States.
The continuing popularity of creationism in America indicates that it is in reality a theistic social-political movement partly driven by concerns over the societal consequences of disbelief in a creator.
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.
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.
Levels of religious and nonreligious belief and practice, and indicators of societal health and dysfunction, have been most extensively and reliably surveyed in the prosperous developed democracies. Similar data is often lacking for second and third world nations, or is less reliable.
That was the set up to the study... here come the findings:
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.
Correlations between popular acceptance of human evolution and belief in and worship of a creator and Bible literalism are negative. The least religious nation, Japan, exhibits the highest agreement with the scientific theory, the lowest level of acceptance is found in the most religious developed democracy, the U.S.
Despite a significant decline from a recent peak in the 1980s, the U.S. is the only prosperous democracy that retains high homicide rates, making it a strong outlier in this regard. Similarly, theistic Portugal (considered a 2nd world country) also has rates of homicides well above the secular developed democracy norm.
Mass student murders in schools are rare, and have subsided somewhat since the 1990s, but the U.S. has experienced many more than all the secular developed democracies combined.
The positive correlation between protheistic factors and juvenile mortality is remarkable, especially regarding absolute belief, and even prayer. Life spans tend to decrease as rates of religiosity rise, especially as a function of absolute belief.
The absence of exceptions to the negative correlation between absolute belief in a creator and acceptance of evolution, plus the lack of a significant religious revival in any developed democracy where evolution is popular, cast doubt on the thesis that societies can combine high rates of both religiosity and agreement with evolutionary science.
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 developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly.
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.
If the data showed that the U.S. enjoyed higher rates of societal health than the more secular, pro-evolution democracies, then the opinion that popular belief in a creator is strongly beneficial to national cultures would be supported.
Indeed, the data examined in this study demonstrates that only the more secular, proevolution democracies have, for the first time in history, come closest to achieving practical “cultures of life” that feature low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion. The least theistic secular developed democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards.
And conclusion of the study:
The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted. Contradicting these conclusions requires demonstrating a positive link between theism and societal conditions in the first world with a
similarly large body of data – a doubtful possibility in view of the observable trends.
Interestingly enough, the study also looked within the U.S to find similar results:
There is evidence that within the U.S. strong disparities in religious belief versus acceptance of evolution are correlated with similarly varying rates of societal dysfunction, the strongly theistic, anti-evolution south and mid-west having markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the northeast where societal conditions, secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms.
Now that is only one study, and I am not using it as the sole basis for my claim that you are incorrect... but cross referencing with other stats implies something quite similar. A simple look at various crime rates paints a poor picture for your theory. Conversely, compare that to the the crime rates of highly agnostic countries like Japan, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland etc.
You might not like what you find, but you will at least correct your view that "countries with a higher rate of
bible followers, will have a lower crime rate than other countries and a higher society," because it is simply incorrect.
