Dysfunctional fundamentalism

In light of the focus on fundamentalism and "values" over the last couple of U.S. elections, many people have pointed out that most of the states which seem to vote based on "values" tend to be the least effective at actually putting those values into place. Now, that phenomenon has been confirmed on an international level:

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.

Paul ranked societies based on the percentage of their population expressing absolute belief in God, the frequency of prayer reported by their citizens and their frequency of attendance at religious services. He then correlated this with data on rates of homicide, sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, abortion and child mortality.

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.

The article notes that the correlation shouldn't be equated with causation in one direction or the other; it could well be that it's ultimately social dysfunction that creates a greater impetus for religious belief, or other causal factors may best explain the link. But whatever the cause, there's now solid data to refute those who would try to link fundamentalism (of any faith) to societal improvement, or atheism and agnosticism to moral decay.