Why God, Family and Tradition Do Not Equal Happiness
This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2012 at 4:35 PM and filed under History, Human Interest, Religion. Follow comments here with the RSS 2.0 feed. Skip to the end and leave a response. Trackbacks are closed.
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The writer says, “the states that most idealise the conservative model do have higher birth rates, earlier marriage, higher levels of religiosity and more consistent church attendance…They also have the highest levels of divorce in the country, the highest poverty rates…and the lowest education levels.”
Re poverty rates, the author engages in fallacious logic, in which A plus B does NOT equal C. I.e., “The states with the highest poverty rates are in the deep South, THEREFORE religion causes poverty.” Horsehockey. There are many factors that contribute to poverty. This type of cherry-picking, combined with fallacious logic, is intellectually dishonest. Indeed, I can provide a MORE accurate statistic that belies the writer’s claim; i.e., according to the U.S. census, the three cities with the highest poverty levels are Reading, PA, Flint, MI and Bloomington, IN – not exactly hotbeds of religion.
As for education levels, the writer is dead wrong. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, atheists have a LOWER number of high school graduates (28%) than Christians (30%-40%, inclusive of Catholics, Protestants and Mormons), Muslims (32%), and even “New Agers” (38%). Atheists are also lower in “Some College” (23%) than Christians or Buddhists, and equal with Muslims. And even in College Graduates, atheists (21%) are lower than Jews (24%), Hindus (26%), and Buddhists (22%), and equal with Mainline Protestants.
I could provide similar rebuttals for child health, divorce rates and other claims made by the writer. But these two should be enough to prove that one should not simply take a writer’s word without doing one’s own research.
Peace.
Posted on 15-Dec-12 at 10:42 pm | Permalink