[...]
[18] 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 (Figures 1-9). The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S.,
is exceptional, but not in the manner Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the
most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost
always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a "shining city on the hill" to the rest of the world
is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health. Youth suicide is an exception to
the general trend because there is not a significant relationship between it and religious or secular
factors. No democracy is known to have combined strong religiosity and popular denial of
evolution with high rates of societal health. 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. None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is
experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction. In some cases the highly religious U.S. is an
outlier in terms of societal dysfunction from less theistic but otherwise socially comparable
secular developed democracies. In other cases, the correlations are strongly graded, sometimes
outstandingly so.
[19] 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. Although they are by no means utopias, the
populations of secular democracies are clearly able to govern themselves and maintain societal
cohesion. 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. 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. 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.
Conclusion
[...]
Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health
with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous
Democracies