VJ Torley has a post at UD where he claims that
Atheism destroys many more innocent human lives than religion ever will.
His argument is that atheists commit suicide at a higher rate than theists. While this is true, “disingenous” is a charitable word for his failure to include, at the very least, statistics on murder.
In his 2009 paper in Sociobiology Compass, Atheism, Secularity, and Well-Being: How the Findings of Social Science Counter Negative Stereotypes and Assumptions, Phil Zuckerman makes the cogent point:
But when it comes to more serious or violent crimes, such as murder, there is simply no evidence suggesting that atheist and secular people are more likely to commit such crimes than religious people.
After all, America’s bulging prisons are not full of atheists; according to Golumbaski (1997), only 0.2 percent of prisoners in the USA are atheists – a major under-representation.
Specifically on murder, Zuckerman says
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).
Gregory Paul’s 2005 paper, Cross National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health
with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, by focusing on nations of the type we might like to live in (or maybe not – let me know if you prefer other models of nation states), surely has the most relevant data when it comes to religiosity and violent crime:
[T]he U.S. is the only prosperous democracy that retains high homicide rates, making it a strong outlier in this regard (Beeghley; Doyle, 2000). Similarly, theistic Portugal also has rates of homicides well above the secular developed democracy norm. Mass student murders in schools are rare, and have subsided somewhat since the 1990s, but the U.S. has experienced many more (National School Safety Center) than all the secular developed democracies combined. Other prosperous democracies do not significantly exceed the U.S. in rates of nonviolent and in nonlethal violent crime (Beeghley; Farrington and Langan; Neapoletan), and are often lower in this regard.
Here is a direct counter to Torley’s case re suicide:
The United States exhibits typical rates of youth suicide (WHO), which show little if any correlation with theistic factors in the prosperous democracies.
The paper continues,
The positive correlation between pro-theistic factors and juvenile mortality is remarkable, especially regarding absolute belief, and even prayer. Life spans tend to decrease as rates of religiosity rise, especially as a function of absolute belief. Denmark is the only exception. Unlike questionable small-scale epidemiological studies by Harris et al. and Koenig and Larson, higher rates of religious affiliation, attendance, and prayer do not result in lower juvenile-adult mortality rates on a cross-national basis.
In his conclusion Paul says
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 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.
Divergent Effects of Beliefs in Heaven and Hell on National Crime Rates (2012) by Shariff and Rhemtulla, published in the online journal PLOS One, presents the results of a study of 143,000 people in 67 countries. They find that
the proportion of people who believe in hell negatively predicts national crime rates whereas belief in heaven predicts higher crime rates.
So that while a fear of eternal punishment may be correlated to less crime, in countries where , for example, belief in Christianity is high but hell is not generally considered essential doctrine, crime is higher.
Here is a helpful infographic by ‘Total Criminal Defense’:
Now, these correlations do not establish that religiosity causes violent crime. However, they do pour cold water on Vincent Torley’s extrapolation from the selective statistics that he uses.
Great post & research, Dave.
Indeed.
Could I suggest a page break though?
Just to be provocative: I wonder what proportion of those 38,000 shot themselves?
Done.
I would like to know the portion that is drug or gang related. And this isn’t politically correct, but race.
I’d suggest religiousness and murderousness are closely associated with financial and social standing and education. Unless there’s an analysis out there that controls for these confounding factors, I don’t think we can draw any real conclusions on religion and violence
It does call for proper study. I’m prepared to accept the possibility that atheists are generally more miserable than theists adjusting for all confounding factors. But would I be happier as a theist? Don’t see how that would work, though since I’ve never been one, I can’t imagine that mindset. And I’m as happy as Larry!
It’s the bottom line. Disbelief. I’m not sure I want to promote the spread of disbelief, but I defend the right to it, and that is not possible to do without talking about it. And vjt’s OP is a subtle form of bigotry. Note that we can find no end of anecdotal tales. Sal even talks of a friend who asked Dawkins what meaning his life had! What’s the ‘right’ answer – God cares, even if you feel no-one else does? Thanks. I feel loads better now.
If you know someone whose deconversion caused them emotional anguish, it is not sufficient to talk only of the deconversion process as being a problem. If we’re pointing fingers, some of the blame must reside with the prior establishment of a mindset that the individual found unsustainable.
But really, why point fingers at anyone? The reasons for an individual’s mental anguish are many and varied, and useful fictions (even if they really are facts: someone, somewhere, must want us to maintain the element of doubt) are not a panacea.
Agreed. That’s what I said. I am not as much of a div as VJ Torley.
I don’t think financial and social; standing are useful constructs, unless you are referring to living in an area where dealing drugs is commonplace.
I’d bet low income by itself is not a good predictor, and neither would low educational achievement or religion.
If you remove the crimes committed in inner cities from american statistics, this country would be comparable to any European country.
It would be nice if there were some simple solution, like money, that could be implemented. Unfortunately, what you have is a self-perpetuating lifestyle that is structurally similar to the traffic slowdowns that develop on highways. They persist long after the original cause goes away.
You also would have to remove the crimes committed in inner cities in Europe.
Feel free to do so. I have no commitment to any interpretation. But from what I’ve seen, the rate of gun violence in the U.S. correlates best with concentrations of gangs and drug dealing. Most of the gun crimes are committed with weapons that are already illegal.
I’m not pushing an ideology or political cause. I’m just of the opinion that this is in intractable problem, more related to vice than to anything else. My main political weirdness is that I thing vice laws and prohibitions are counterproductive, regardless of the specifics of the problem. Do I have a magic answer? No.
We gave up alcohol prohibition and have tens of thousands of alcohol related automobile deaths a year, at least half of which are deaths of innocent people.
In terms of children, we have the equivalent of a school massacre every week. I find it odd that we persist in avoiding looking at problems that affect the most people and persist in adopting policies and measures that have no useful effect.
Prohibition didn’t work. Drug laws don’t work, except they create a whole new industry of enforcement, incarceration and sound-bites for politicians. Treat drugs like we treat alcohol and nicotine. Legal supply, guaranteed quality and heavily taxed, with plenty of information and education to discourage drug use. It’ll never happen (though Holland has largely decriminalized cannabis).
We have two states that have decriminalized marijuana, ant the feds show no interest in jumping in, even though the federal law takes precedence. Florida shows every sign of legalizing medical marijuana.
Who knows what the landscape will look like in 50 years.
petrushka,
That probably accounts for DC and Michigan, but there is a striking cluster among the worst 10 states around the South East, which is not explained particularly well by urbanisation/crime per se.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20759139
Obviously, one would want to see the within-state pattern too.
Alabama and Florida seem notable exceptions – but stats were not available. If one wanted to make mischief, a stronger correlation could be noted with ‘religiousness’.