AndrewK: Does Correlation Imply Causation? You Decide.

States with higher “religiousness” ranking also have lower average intelligence and happiness, higher poverty, and higher murder rates. Correlation or causation?

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This Info-Graphic compares all 50 states to each other in various areas. As you can see, the degree of ‘religiousness’ is on the left, while the various other indicators are beside it. The sources used to compile the graphic are listed at the bottom.

Just musing here, but I find it interesting that average intelligence and happiness are inversely correlated with religion — that is, more religiousness <--> less intelligence, and more religiousness <--> less happiness — but crime rate and divorce rate are direct correlations. Probably a coincidence is the fact that intelligence is also inversely correlated with conservatism . . .

Now, correlation does not always imply causation, but if your population is generally more likely to accept things on faith (that is to say, in the absence of empirical evidence), I could have probably predicted most of that. However, the fact that the entire nation was generally equally generous (excepting Utah and Mississippi), but the most religious states had more impoverished people was surprising.

I’d hate to draw the conclusion that a strongly religious society will be worse off, but when I look in the world, I have a hard time refuting that conclusion. The Scandinavian countries consistently rank on the top of the Human Development Index, and they have some pretty low religiosity, especially when compared to, I don’t know, Saudi Arabia.

What about mental health? Everybody knows that religious people are happier, right? A 2008 study suggests that high religiosity may be a coping mechanism for those experiencing depression or other mental illness, and serve as an indicator of risk for depression:

Lead researcher Joanna Maselko, Sc.D., characterized the religiosity of 918 study participants in terms of three domains of religiosity: religious service attendance, which refers to being involved with a church; religious well-being, which refers to the quality of a person’s relationship with a higher power; and existential well-being, which refers to a person’s sense of meaning and their purpose in life.

Maselko and fellow researchers compared each domain of religiosity to their risk of depression, and were surprised to find that the group with higher levels of religious well-being were 1.5 times more likely to have had depression than those with lower levels of religious well-being.

Maselko theorizes this is because people with depression tend to use religion as a coping mechanism. As a result, they’re more closely relating to God and praying more.

…

Maselko admits that researchers have yet to determine which comes first: depression or being religious, but is currently investigating the time sequence of this over people’s lives to figure out the answer.

A 1994 study, this in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, indicates that high religiosity is correlated with higher scores on various measures of mental instability, and a 1998 study indicated that a high degree of religiosity is correlated with higher degrees of obsessiveness.

However, with Prop 8 being pushed through with money from those super-charitable folks from Utah to hate on the gays, or people literally willing to kill for a cartoon, or those kooky Scientologists wasting time, space and effort down in Haiti, we find many examples of ‘faith-based initiatives’. I’m not saying that religions doesn’t have a prominent place in the world, but just keep it out of our f*cking government! Jesus said it himself (Mark 12:17), and I thought that would be enough for everybody.

But, of course, Sarah Palin makes it clear that I’m wrong:

Allowing America’s spirit to rise again, by not being afraid . . . not being afraid to kinda go back to some of our roots as a God-fearing nation, where we’re not afraid to say . . .especially in times of potential trouble in the future here, we’re not afraid to say, you know, we don’t have all the answers as fallible men and women, so it would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country, so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again. To have people involved in government who aren’t afraid to go that route, not so afraid of the political correctness that, you know, they have to be afraid of what the media would say about them if they were to proclaim their reliance on our Creator.

Andrew contributes regularly to the expansion of the Internet universe through his blog, Prose Encounters of the Nerd Kind.

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Andrew Komar

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