Religion makes the World a better place

I freely admit that my sources for Round 1 are less than ideal. Given that I have the burden of proof in this scenario, I didn't want to start things off by waxing philosophical. However, I found myself rather hampered in the sources I was able to provide due to much of the information I would have liked to cite being in physical journals or books, which I am obviously unable to provide links to (and I hardly expect Con or the voters to rush out and buy them to determine their information's reliability).Additionally, most of the research on the topic of religion's correlation with better health (which is, in itself, a fairly young area of study) comes from the United States. I recognize that this debate is focused on a global scale, but as there is so far a paucity of resources as far as the world at large is concerned, I hoped that my opponent would at least consider American statistics to be worth considering. If so, I can endeavour to find studies with more representative subject pools should Con request it. If not, I am more than happy to move on to a different argument. I will leave that up to my opponent.I would like to begin by commenting on Con's argument about the crime rates of religious countries. An interesting feature of the globe's most religious countries is that many of them are in the developing world. Nations such as Mali, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Côte d'Ivoire, and Senegal, for instance, all marked in dark reds on Con's map of religiosity, are included in the Nations Online Project's list of countries with the poorest human development [1] (and, while it may be tempting to conclude from this that religion causes poverty, it's actually the other way around [2]).Even in more affluent places like Europe, the statistic doesn't stand across the board. Eurostat reports: “Homicides are most prevalent in the Baltic States: Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. However, they are relatively rare in some southern EU countries (Malta, Italy, Spain) and Austria, Norway, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden [3].” Interestingly, Estonia boasts the lowest number of religious adherents, whereas Malta has the highest [4]. Italy, Austria and Switzerland also have high levels of religiosity and low levels of atheism.I could also mention that Vietnam subscribes to state atheism and has massive numbers of non-believers—as well as significant issues with human rights.So let's take it down a peg further and look at the United States. Zuckerman's article mentions that the most religious states, such as Alabama and Louisiana, have the highest rates of murder. They also tend to have high rates of gun ownership and lax laws [5], which has been shown to correlate with higher rates of overall homicide in addition to gun deaths [6]. This could also serve as an explanation for why the United States has higher homicide rates than less religious countries such as Canada and Britain, where gun ownership is much more heavily restricted.In short, I would like to direct the readers' attention to what is known as the False Cause Fallacy, summed up nicely in the adage of “correlation does not imply causation.” Zuckerman's broad-brushing of the issue smacks much more of bias than science. If Con beseeches the reader to consider additional reasons for the correlation of atheism and suicide, I believe I have the right to request the same considerations for religiosity and murder rates. When considering these kinds of statistics on a global scale, there are too many factors involved. One cannot take the stance of “all things being equal.”As far as the “fewer atheists in prison” argument, there are a couple of problems. According to [7] (which seems to be the only place to list the findings of Golumbaski's original study, cited in Zuckerman's article), the religion of approximately 20% of inmates is unknown. That's a significant margin, and it could conceivably be composed of anything from no atheists to all atheists. Perhaps these “unknowns” refused to answer (which would raise the question of why), but perhaps they are non-believers who simply chose to tick the “other” box as opposed to the “atheist” one. We don't know. Additionally, these statistics do not account for conversions. We don't know how many atheists there were going in vs. coming out. Prison ministries are surprisingly common, and it's conceivable that there is a large percentage of people who come to faith in prison. As far as Con's points on suicide (ignoring my sources for the time being), I consider it to be vastly different from euthanasia as far as the ethics and complexity of the issue. The idea that "suicide may not be universally bad" is a point I would certainly stand to disagree with, but euthanasia is a different story. However, this is not the debate at hand, so I hope that we won't get too caught up in it. I would also note that Con's comment that "the idea that suicide is universally unacceptable seems to me an artefact of religion," while perhaps partially true, is somewhat nearsighted. It bears remembering that even if suicide is in the best interests of the subject in question, it is very rarely in the best interests of their loved ones. The idea of suicide being universally unacceptable seems like a fairly understandable response to the pain and grief suffered by the victim's family and friends. After all, suicide victims do not have the luxury of explaining their reasoning. Even if religion had not played a part in the debate, it's possible that we would have drawn the same conclusions either way.[1] http://www.nationsonline.org...[2] http://www.gallup.com...[3] http://ec.europa.eu...[4] http://www.gnxp.com...[5] http://www.huffingtonpost.com...[6] http://www.hsph.harvard.edu...[7] http://www.holysmoke.org...