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RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.

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It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality.

Many liberal Christians and believers of other faiths hold that religious belief is socially beneficial, believing that it helps to lower rates of violent crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity and abortion. The benefits of religious belief to a society have been described as its “spiritual capital”. But the study claims that the devotion of many in the US may actually contribute to its ills.

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The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.

“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.”

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He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.

The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from “ uniquely high” adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested.

Mr Paul said: “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.”

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He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates, early mortality, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, he added.

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“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.”

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The Times of London reports that societies are much worse off when they have "God on their side." This is because they don't really have God on their side (which assumes that God takes sides}), it's because of the kind of POLITICIANS that claim to have God on their side, like the recently embarrassed Tom DeLay. Every cruel dictator who has ever lived has claimed to be doing the will of God and some of them probably even truly believed that they were.

Ruth Gledhill reports that fundamentalist belief is behind high murder rates, sexual promiscuity and suicide. A new study on the belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to its social problems and challenges the idea that religion is necessary for morality.

It compares secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where most people profess to believe in a creator, rather than evolution, although this may just be an example of the "squeaky wheel syndrome" of people saying what they feel is expected of them, rather than what they actually believe. Certainly fundamentalist Muslim countries, with their suicide bombers who kill thousands of innocent civilians, do not fit the ideas that most of us have about morality.

A few years ago, philosophers talked about the need for secular humanism, which would be Christ-like compassion for other people irrespective of religion, but they were shouted down by the fundamentalists in our society.

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