Religion makes the World a better place

I do concede one aspect of religion that is almost unambiguously positive: it provides individuals with a support group. This seemingly simple provision has lots of knock-on effects, and I would argue that one mechanism underpinning many of Pro's first statistics (insofar as they are accurate) is the sense of community that a church engenders; we are, after all is said and done, highly social animals. I consider this a challenge to secular communities around the World: we must find a way to reproduce that one powerful and important successful aspect of religion. .. the stability of a support network of mutual trust and love. I see no reason why this effect cannot be achieved in a secular setting, thus robbing religion of a monopoly that it currently exploits. Right now, secular communities are in the large part failing this challenge; this situation provides the basis to make the claim that religion is making the World better. .. in one sense, it is. .. it is via our religions that we have (as a species) discovered the most successful bonding mechanisms for large groups. There are dangers as well as benefits, though; the power that religion weilds is both a cohesive and a divisive force. I will return to this idea in a later round. Pro begins on the edge of a very real (but small) effect: atheism correlates with higher suicide rates. On the face of it, this is a no-brainer win for Pro. I beseech the gentle reader consider why the correlation happens, though. It is a discussion that has been thrashed out over the years; one key player in the understanding of the effect is the philosopher David Émile Durkheim, who has been widely acknowledged as one of the fathers of modern Sociology. Whilst I do not think that everything he says is right, I would encourage any gentle reader interested in the subject from a scholarly perspective to begin with Durkheim. Unfortunately, the study that Pro cited is not particularly useful in studying the effect. Problems include:1. The study is looking at suicide attempts, not completed suicides. It should not need stating but we have much more accurate statistics about actual suicides than about attempts.2. The study has n=371; this is *far* too small a group to draw conclusions from.3. It is unclear how effectively the study selected the 371 participants in an impartial way. But didn't I already concede the point that atheism correlates with higher suicide rates? Yes, yes, I did. .. but the very article to which Pro directs our attention [1] warns away from a simplistic interpretation of this fact by saying "compassionate tolerance for suicide and euthenasia are widely regarded as hallmarks of many secular societies". It may also be noted that more men commit suicide than women, that suicide rates are higher in rural communities AND that suicide rates are higher in industrialized countries. The point that I'm making here is that suicide (or euthanasia) might not be universally bad. I, for one, present my thinking on this point in this way:1. There exists such a reality as can be described by the words "a fate worse than death"2. I can see no moral justification for pressuring any sentient being who self-identifies "a fate worse than death" to endure it. - (unless they have dependents, when the story may be more complex)The idea that suicide is universally unacceptable seems to me an artefact of religion (so strong was this pressure that attempting suicide was a criminal offence in my native England until 1961). What moral reason does the atheist have for objecting to suicide? We don't have to like it, but atheists are generally more accepting of the idea in principle. Of course we would encourage counselling or medical routes before agreeing that this last resort is a good answer to a given situation. In short, I see no reason why we should accept that a very small decrease in suicides in some American religious communities equates to the World being a better place. In extreme cases, it may even mean that because of religious pressure (it's a sin to kill yourself), some individuals manfully endure a fate worse than death. This seems to me to be a bad thing. I hope that I have given the pensive reader pause for thought. So far I've dedicated half of my space this round to Pro's first claim. This seems excessive, perhaps, but I wanted to explore Pro's primary claim first. In case Pro didn't intend for the claims to be in priority order, I invite Pro to pick one or more "favourite" claims in order to reduce the sheer volume of discourse that would be necessary to tackle some of the issues. More briefly, then, I'll examine the rest of the claims that Pro makes; if Pro wishes to focus their claims then I will dedicate more effort (as I have with suicide). Pro's second claim was based on a paper called “Relationships among Spirituality, Religious Practices, Personality Factors, and Health for Five Different Faiths”, which I took the time to look up. This paper [2] refers to a study done on 160 people. I hope that our audience will not be swayed by such small studies, from which we can draw no more than loose conclusions about how such effects may be evident in broader populations. I suggest reference to the rough-guide table of requisite sample sizes provided by the Open University in my reference [3]. According to this table, a study of 371 people may be suitable to describe a population of about 10,000 people. A study of 160 people may be suitable to describe a population of up to 500 people. You would need more than 384 people in a study to justify describing a population of 1,000,000 and more again to describe the population of the UK, the US, Europe, Africa or, as the resolution requires, the World. It is not good science to take a study of 160 people and generalise about the World. Sorry, Pro, but this just won't do. I'm also going to include a link [4] which may not be considered as authoritative as the OU, but explains the issues around sample size in a more accessible way. Pro's third link discusses a study of 179 people; sorry to get boring, but this won't do. Pro's fourth link at least looks more promissing, certainly in numbers. In a study of 3,968 older adults in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. .. I'm going to stop here because I haven't limitless room to debate. I will come back to this and the other links Pro offers in a later round if necessary. For now, I'd like the gentle reader to note that all of Pro's statistics relate to America and that the proposition before us relates to the World. Phil Zuckerman has completed a World-wide meta-study to answer some of the questions [5]. He is very clear about his methodology and sample sizes. I'm going to list some of his findings (all available from [5]).0.2 percent of prisoners in the USA are atheists(10% - 30% of the American population are atheist, depending on specific definition)If religion, prayer, or God-belief hindered criminal behavior, and secularity or atheism fostered lawlessness, we would expect to find the most religious nations having the lowest murder rates and the least religious nations having the highest. But we find just the opposite. Murder rates are actually lower in more secular nations and higher in more religious nations where belief in God is deep and widespread (Jensen 2006; Paul 2005; Fajnzylber et al. 2002; Fox and Levin 2000). And within America, the states with the highest murder rates tend to be highly religious, such as Louisiana and Alabama, but the states with the lowest murder rates tend to be among the least religious in the country, such as Vermont and Oregon (Ellison et al. 2003; Death Penalty Information Center, 2008). Furthermore, although there are some notable exceptions, rates of most violent crimes tend to be lower in the less religious states and higher in the most religious states (United States Census Bureau, 2006). Finally, of the top 50 safest cities in the world, nearly all are in relatively non-religious countries, and of the eight cities within the United States that make the safest-city list, nearly all are located in the least religious regions of the country (Mercer Survey, 2008). So I'm going to wrap this up for now with a map of religiosity around the World [6]. And I'm going to note that if I have to concede a small dip in suicides (which may be a good thing), Pro will have to concede a far higher increase in murder rates. .. even if the effects were matched 1-1, is the World a better place if one less person commits suicide but one more person gets murdered? I'll leave that for the gentle voter to decide! I know this: I'd rather commit suicide than be murdered. Kudos to Pro for keeping this on a dry statistical level so far, but your statistics could do with a bit more weight and a lot more geographical diversity! [1] . http://www.adherents.com...[2] . http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...[3] . http://www.open.edu...[4] . https://www.checkmarket.com...[5] . http://www.pitzer.edu...[6] . http://upload.wikimedia.org...