[Buddha-l] Too Much Religion May Be A Dangerous Thing

[jkirk]

Too Much Religion May Be A Dangerous Thing

(http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?ID=M711527555754211719779965&af=y)
"This is the implication of a study reported in the current issue of the 
Journal of Religion and Society, a publication of Creighton University's 
Center for the Study of Religion. The study, by evolutionary scientist 
Gregory S. Paul, looks at the correlation between levels of "popular 
religiosity" and various "quantifiable societal health" indicators in 18 
prosperous democracies, including the United States.... He found that the 
most religious democracies exhibited substantially higher degrees of social 
dysfunction than societies with larger percentages of atheists and 
agnostics. Of the nations studied, the U.S. which has by far the largest 
percentage of people who take the Bible literally and express absolute 
belief in God (and the lowest percentage of atheists and agnostics) also has 
by far the highest levels of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy and sexually 
transmitted diseases. (Los Angeles Times, "The dark side of faith," 
10-01-05)

Joanna