You know the world has turned upside-down when the Jews are taken to task for Sabbath violations by "CJColucci."  ;)

For Orthodox Jews, a major holiday like Rosh Hashanah is equivalent to Sabbath, and thus they don't drive cars.  Reform Jews (like me), and, so far as I'm aware, Conservative Jews, do not follow such rules, and are perfectly willing to drive cars on the Sabbath.

Piotr says "oil-producing Muslim countries . . . with public religiousity . . . are also a tad disfunctional." Well, if forbidding women to attend school, drive cars, leave the house without every bit of skin covered, and if sanctioning honor killings of women who so much as hold hands with a man in public are any indication, then I agree that such countries are a tad dysfunctional. So the U.S. is not the only example the British study might have cited. BTW, this is a little outside the scope of the study, but when several such oil-producing Muslim countries get into a disagreement with a major oil-consuming Christian country, such as the U.S., the result could be a tad apocalyptic. In that case, religion will be a comfort to the survivors. So let's not be too hard on religion.

To take an example, if you looked at international rates of SUV ownership and international teen pregnancy rates, you'd almost certainly find a correlation between SUVs and teen pregnancy.

Sorry, addled brain working slowly.  Substitute "self-help" movement for "me" cult --  and my comment will be a tad clearer!

You were the guy who recently pointed out to your readers that in 2004 85% of white Mississipians voted for Bush.  Doesn't that tell you something?

Yeah. Most of the blacks voted for Kerry and most of the whites voted for Bush...except 15%.

The only reason that poor voters trend Democratic in the South is because of the large African American population in most Southern states (ranging in many states between 20-35%)--working class whites are NOT voting Democratic

Blacks tend to be the poorest of the poor. The poorer the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Kerry. Which presumably includes most of that 15% of the white vote.

Let's not forget that as recently as the early 90s, Nazi/Klan alum David Duke was elected governor of white Louisiana with 55% of the vote--only the 98% of black voters who voted against him (representing about 30% of the total electorate) prevented him from moving into the governor's mansion.

If I remember correctly, Duke didn't win.

racial anxiety and reactionary religiousity trump just about anything else in the Deep South, and when it comes to white folks, those factors cross class lines.

Maybe that's why the South tends to be more fucked up?

Ah. Ok. You're saying that reactionary religiousity (and racial anxiety) is exactly equivalent to political conservatism. Um, no. Not anymore than pure Marxist-Leninism or Swedish socialism is the whole of liberalism.

ash

['I know that's the more politically palatable view, but never believe your own press releases.']

This post seems like you just discovered the wikipedia entry for fallacy of composition and wanted to use it in a post.  I really don't see how it is the controlling problem here.  You don't really explain yourself, so here are two ways I could interpret you:

1.  While it is true that religion causes dysfunction in certain countries, applying this information to religion in general would be fallacious.

2.  While religion correlates to social dysfunction in some countries, religion itself does not necessarily correlate to dysfunction.

The second is demonstrably false (if spuriously so), and the first, while true, is not the claim of the study.

I think I am missing your intent by bringing up the term; could you (or someone else) please explain? 

Also, the expression "a bit of a giant" is clearly ambiguous.

Social dysfunction and a high level of spirituality go hand in hand.  Not that organized religion leads to dysfunction (admitting some might take up that argument) but the imposition of religious morality is the natural reaction to dysfunction.  But here we get to religiousity leading to higher dysfunction.  The more you tell people the "can't" do something the more they will want to and do it.

I have had a chance to meet many people from all over this country without ever leaving Connecticut.  I've had the pleasure (and I do sincerely mean that) of working with submariners from the New London sub base, each one is a great guy.  They worked part time gigs in stores I've managed.  Some from Nebraska, North Carolina, Texas and Indiana.  In my conversations with them the subject of religion and culture has come up.  I was always of the belief that the midwest and south were more "pious" than we are in the northeast.  And to a man each of them basically said, "Dude, the people where I come from are not more righteous.  They are far more fucked up.  That's why religious morality is pushed so much there."  I was speechless, all my preconcieved notions of "southern righteouness" were shattered.  I heard stories from one of my parttimers from Nebraska, Doug, that Crystal Meth use was the scourge of the plains.  He told me stories of fathers having sex with their underage daughters then trying to justify it by saying that there was no Father-Daughter incest prohibition in Leviticus (which there isn't, I went back and reread it).  I had a customer who used to be in the Army.  He was stationed in Kentucky for a while and told me the police blotters in the local papers were filled with men and women having sex with minors.  So long ago I shed my ill-conceived thoughts about the moral superiority of one region of the US over any other.

In the meantime they blame the "decadent coastal enclaves" for being the cause of their behavior, which they are embarassed about.  Then they go to church on Sundays and rail against all the immorality in America.  Yes I have sinned, but I was tempted and lead astray...therefore we must rid ourselves of the temptation.

Israel, a more religious country than the US with almost as high a standard of living, has a population growth rate significantly higher than the US'.

True, but the growth rate is highest among Israeli Arabs (many of whom are Christian) and next highest among highly observant Jews. (Also, it's worth noting that these two groups have by far the lowest standards of living in Israel.) In other words, it's not all that dissimilar to the U.S.

I wonder, however, how you account for France, an infamously secular country, having the second highest birth rate in the EU?

As for supposed Red State generosity, wasn't that shown to be a function of their high rates of giving to churches? I would hardly call today's churches, with all their hate-mongering, homophobia and misogyny, "charitable" institutions. 

Itail: 

Israel, a more religious country than the US

Israel is a less religious country than the US. On every measure. Far fewer Israelis believe in God, the afterlife, and so on; far more believe in evolution. In fact Israel ranks behind Ireland and Italy on such indexes.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/rel_comp.htm

Israel is a more theocratic country than the US - for the moment. But that's not the same thing. 

Instead, if you look at the figures you'll see that the United States is an outlier among developed democracies both in terms of religiosity and in terms of various metrics of social dysfunction.

The mistake lies in only including Western Europe and Japan as comparison points. On the murder rate, for instance, W. Europe and Japan all cluster under 2 per 100,000, while the US is way up around 6. But add Mexico's rate of 17, Lithuania's of 12 and Russia's of 30 (to capture all of North America and more of Eastern Europe), and things start to come into perspective. For a look at ex-colonial, ex-slaveholding multiracial societies with light-skinned elites, we might try Brazil (19) and South Africa (which dropped last year to a mere 42).

I don't have data, but I can assure you that Brazil and South Africa are a hell of a lot more religious than Western Europe. There as in the South of the US, intense religiosity owes a lot to our African cultural heritage.

It's silly to make Japan the only Asian country for comparison. Taiwan and Singapore already have West European living standards; South Korea and Malaysia are certainly comparable to Portugal, probably richer, and growing faster.

But the (revealing) problem with including East Asian countries in the comparison is that it's difficult to compare "religiosity" between European and East Asian countries. Arguments over whether Confucianism is a "religion" have been going on since Matteo Ricci's Jesuits first encountered it in the 16th century. Daoists and Buddhists would answer the question "Do you believe in God?" in unpredictable ways. The mixture of folk Buddhism and Confucianism dominant through much of Taiwan and Singapore doesn't necessarily involve going to a shrine on a weekly or even monthly basis, but may involve keeping a temple to your ancestors in one room of your house.

If you were a Taiwanese researcher and asked Americans "Do you make regular offerings to commemorate and honor your ancestors?", you'd probably conclude that the US is a very irreligious country.

First and most important, religion is on the rise in the United States, or rather religious sentiment.  By that I mean individual interest and commitment to some sort of religious or spiritual paradigm, be it traditional or non-tradition.

The problem with tracking such a phenomenon is that statistical models are beholden to traditional organized demoninations.  Unscientifically, one has only to note the huge increase in shelf space in your local Barnes and Noble devoted to books on religion and spirituality--there is a fundamental increase in the consumption of religious knowledge.  Interest in 'religious sentiment' appears to be qualified by suspicion of tradition organized religious denominations and deeply individualistic, a trend with antecedants in the 1960s counter-culture movement which challenged traditional authority and promoted self-help psychology--immanence over transcendence.

As to the study's correlation between social dysfunction and higher rates of religion, I suspect that the survey questions were not sufficiently specific as to what constitutes 'religion'--a problem that continues to dog scholars of religion to this day.  Nonetheless, I doubt one can establish a certain causal link between such dysfunction and religious affiliation or belief.  In fact, to note one instance to the contrary, divorce is far less common among orthodox Jews and Catholics compared to their secular American counterparts.

Lastly, it would be a huge mistake for those on the left to make much of this study. Deriding religion or blaming it for societal dysfunction would play right into the hands of religious conservatives who claim the left is less interested in being good stewards of society and more interested in attacking religion and its followers.

Interesting observation, Libertine. I hate to generalize about any group (because all groups are very diverse), but in my experience I've noticed that certain fundamentalists seem caught in an almost obsessive cycle of sinning (especially sexual sinning) and tearful repentance. I don't completely understand this phenomenon, but it seems like being engaged in a highly emotional struggle between good and evil heightens the sense of meaning in their lives. Of course, the "illicitness" and guilt of the sex only makes it even more attractive. And the emotional release (often in public) of repentance creates a feeling of elation--and tends to lead to more sex as fellow repenters express their sympathy for your struggle against evil.

My primary example of this phenomenon comes from my own youth. During my high-school years, my family attended a local Protestant non-denominational "community" church. The church had originally been a typical liberal New England Congregationalist/United Church of Christ type. But after the town's American Baptist church burned down, it opened its doors to all Protestants. The American Baptists were (at the time) very similar to the liberal UCC congregations (and very different from the fundamentalist and much more numerous Southern Baptists). But once the doors were open to all, the church was "swamped" by Nazareenes and other fundamentalists with no church of their own in town.

Immediately after the fundies took control, a new (fundy) minister was brought in. He and the head deacon began "counseling" the wives of the parishiners. Apparently, this counseling involved various sex acts. A new youth minister was hired who had a particularly intense interest in saving the souls of 13 year old girls and who took the kids on "retreats" that resulted in nearly as many actual births as rebirths. Soon there were divorces, tearful public repentances, confessions and resignations.

My family never went to church again (damn, it was just getting fun, mom!)

I now travel to Texas frequently on business and I always think of my high-school church when I'm there. I think it has something to do with the vast stretches of highway lined with alternating fundamentalist worship centers and XXX video stores.

Ahh the pleasures of the bible belt--quick to be unbuckled whenever the opportunity arises.

PS: I used to live in Groton, right next to your sub base!

<I>Note also that America has a vast population of white people - a group which is almost completely absent in Japan. Perhaps we should mention this in any discussion of relative social dysfunction between those two countries.</i>

So what you are saying is that the reasonthat Japan has lower teenage pregnancy rates, lower crime, etc., than America is because it is full of Japanese people?  Well, yes, you are right.  Statistically, Asians are probably the least dysfunctional ethnic group in the US (lowest teenage pregnancy rates, lowest incarceration rates).  When it comes to individual good behavior, Asians beat whites hands down.  No doubt about it.

wait, a second, I hope I am reading this wrong, but are you saying you have never left the state of Connecticut?  Nothing against Connecticut, but that is just sad. 

wait, a second, I hope I am reading this wrong, but are you saying you have never left the state of Connecticut?  Nothing against Connecticut, but that is just sad.

LMAO!!!  I didn't mean to make it sound like I have never set foot out of Connecticut, flippantangel.  I have been to many other places.  I have just never lived anywhere but Connecticut, so I haven't had the opportunity to get to know people from other areas of the country on a personal level.  Yep, I've lived in Connecticut my whole life...I hope you won't hold that against me. :)

One thing that distinguishes the United States from virtually all of Europe is that we were founded by Calvinists and despite the large number of people of other faiths there are still many aspects of a Calvinist ethos in this country.  Two examples of this is the United States support of the death penalty and the support of corporal punishment of children.  It is, I believe, seen in a lot of Republican arguments which resemble a Calvinist triumphalism.