You don't have to imagine how religion is correlated with violence

[Major Nikon]

There's statistics for that.

According to Gallup associated WIN, the least religious countries with their associated intentional homicide rate are:

China 0.62
Sweden 1.08
Czech Republic 0.61
UK 1.2

The most religious are:

Thailand 3.24
Nigeria 9.85
Kosovo 1.6
India 3.22
Ghana 1.68
Ivory Coast 11.63
Papua New Guinea 7.85
Fiji 2.26
Armenia 2.98
Philippines 11.02

The most religious, Thailand is effectively under martial law.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Is there a direct and quantifiable correlation between religion and murder?

Are there other possible explanations? For example, Ukraine is considerably less religious than the U.S. (46% vs. 69%),* but its homicide rate is higher (6.34 vs. 5.35 per 100,000) and almost twice as high as Thailand's (3.24). Venezuela's murder rate is a horrific 56.33/100,000 but its percentage of believers is 79%, while much more religious India (90%) has a homicide rate of 3.22 - even less than that of the United States, and only slightly more than Estonia's (3.19/100,000), which is listed as the least religious country (16%). So if a huge country like India with 90% religious believers has a murder rate about the same as a country with 16% believers, does your correlation hold? Or is your paintbrush a bit on the wide side?

*Sources here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_country

[Jim__]

2. I found some more data - I didn't really check for correlations - but religiosity is strongly

correlated with geographical location. There is a map at the Telegraph for religiosity - I couldn't paste it.

The 20 most religious countries according to The Telegraph based on the Win Gallup polls from 2008, 2009, and 2015. The list appeared in the telegraph in January 2018 and says the numbers are the most recent available for each country. They also map the countries - there is also a geographical correlation with religiosity.

Ethiopia - 99% feel religious
Malawi - 99%
Niger - 99%
Sri Lanka - 99%
Yemen - 99%
Burundi - 98%
Djibouti - 98%
Mauritania - 98%
Somalia - 98%
Afghanistan - 97%
Comoros - 97%
Egypt - 97%
Guinea - 97%
Laos - 97%
Myanmar - 97%
Cambodia - 96%
Cameroon - 96%
Jordan - 96%
Senegal - 96%
Chad - 95% (six other countries - Ghana, Mali, Qatar, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Zambia - also returned a result of 95%)

From indexMundi intentional homicide rates by country:

1 El Salvador 108.60 2015
2 Iraq 66.10 2007
3 Honduras 63.80 2015
4 Venezuela 57.10 2015
5 Jamaica 43.20 2015
6 Lesotho 38.00 2010
7 Belize 34.40 2014
8 South Africa 34.30 2015
9 St. Kitts and Nevis 33.60 2012
10 Guatemala 31.20 2014
11 Trinidad and Tobago 30.90 2015
12 The Bahamas 29.80 2012
13 Brazil 26.70 2015
14 Colombia 26.50 2015
15 St. Vincent and the Grenadines 25.60 2012
16 St. Lucia 21.60 2012
17 Tuvalu 20.30 2012
18 Guyana 19.40 2015
19 Dominican Republic 17.40 2014
20 Namibia 16.90 2012

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Most of these are poor Third World countries. Many have unstable and/or despotic governments.

But what are the correlations among religiosity, homicide, poverty and poor governance? The OP seems to imply that some countries are more homicidal because they are more religious, and I'm just suggesting that it's much more complicated than that. Maybe people in some of these countries turn to religion because it's their only source of relief from poverty, crime and bad government.

[Jim__]

4. I agree that it's much more complicated.

It would take serious effort to find any reasonable association.

[qazplm135]

17. the proposed evidence itself doesn't establish one

some of the "most religious listed" like Bosnia are fairly close to some pretty stable countries that are least religious like the UK (1.6 to 1.2).

China is certainly not a regime anyone would say is one we should duplicate, but yes they have low crime because they are effectively a dictatorship with highly conformist society backed by a strong government.

Violence is human. It was here before religion, it will be here, unfortunately, after religion, unless we literally evolve into something "better" than our current state of being.

[Bretton Garcia]

6. The very religious are often very, very poor....

So it may be that religion and poverty are causally related.

An hypothesis : maybe religion, magical thinking, causes, reinforces, poverty.

[trotsky]

7. Religion is clearly a factor in societal behavior.

It's just that some people don't want anyone else to look at it. Apparently to them, religion deserves special protection above all other ideas and institutions.

[qazplm135]

18. no, it deserves the same level of evidence as anything else

and the same level of proof before saying it's directly correlated to violence (or any other positive or negative trait).

I'm pretty sure if someone came along and said, religion is correlated with love and peace, you'd want a lot more vigorous level of proof than what was provided in the OP, yes?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

25. That's the point I've been trying to make, though apparently not very effectively.

[qazplm135]

27. you've been making it fine

some folks just don't want to have an actual discussion, they just want to bomb-throw.

[guillaumeb]

34. No, your point was well made.

[trotsky]

26. Nope, wouldn't care, because it's a post in the Religion group.

Got any basic stats like what was posted to show a correlation between religiosity and love/peace?

[TwistOneUp]

29. Ahn accounta it's gahd! lol nt

[guillaumeb]

33. Perhaps rich people cause poverty.

Perhaps capitalism causes poverty.

Perhaps rich people need poverty to keep the workers in line.

[Bretton Garcia]

39. Maybe the rich need religion, to keep the poor submissive

[guillaumeb]

41. Which says something about the rich,

and their tactic of division.

[Mariana]

42. It says something about the religious, too. nt.

[guillaumeb]

43. What group of humans is not violent?

Stating the obvious.

[Major Nikon]

5. I listed facts

If you want to make inferences from those facts, go right ahead.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. The five least religious countries are

Estonia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and the Czech Republic. The average height of a male citizen of these five countries is 5'11". The average height of a male citizen of the most religious countries (98%+) for which those statistics are available is about 5'5". Does religion make you short, or does being short make you religious?

[Major Nikon]

9. So are you trying to say correlation does not imply causation?

What a revolutionary concept!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

10. Just having a little fun with statistics.

[Major Nikon]

12. There's better ways to do that

[Mariana]

11. I imagine there's a step or two in between.

The major correlation is probably between religion and poverty, although it's hard to say which would be more causative of the other - does religion (or living in a highly religious society) tend to make people/societies poorer, or does poverty tend to lead people/societies to embrace religion?

Then, the correlation between poverty and average height is obvious. Malnutrition stunts growth.

[Major Nikon]

13. You can also go many steps beyond

Is there a causal connection between religion and sustained poverty? Marx seemed to think so and he might have been right or wrong, but ignoring such questions because religion is always assumed to be something good for society probably isn't such a great idea.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

16. But it still begs the question of whether religion causes poverty

or poverty causes religion. I'm just trying to make the point that it's a complicated analysis, not arguing that religion is necessarily good for society.

[Major Nikon]

22. Obfuscation rarely adds much to the conversation

The OP refers to the correlation of religion and violence. Poverty and average height may or may not be contributing factors, but introducing them for no good reason doesn't further discussion much.

Here's a more relevant question. China is frequently provided as an example of the intolerance of atheism, as if either or those things is a causal factor of the other. Another way to look at it is China is a country with more than 4 times the population of the US with roughly the same land mass, yet is far less violent than the US. So let's say China suddenly became more tolerant of religion and as a result became more religious. Would violence be positively or negatively affected? So maybe there's arguments for either, or another that says there would be no effect.

Now consider Thailand. Culturally it's very similar to China. Poverty is greater than China, but not by much. On the scale of totalitarianism they aren't that far apart although Thailand is clearly more so. Religion and violence are pretty much diametrically opposed. So is there a causal factor between the two? Perhaps not, but ignoring the possibility doesn't make much sense, and whether you do or not there's still no shortage of people who argue religion must be assumed to be a positive influence on society with pretty much no evidence to support that assumption and at least some correlative evidence which suggests otherwise.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

14. The richest country in the world is Qatar,

which is also 95% religious and the men are only 5'7". Another very rich country is Norway, where the people are not very religious (21%) and the men are 5'11.5". Norway was a rather poor country (and more religious) until the 20th century but Norwegians have always been tall anyhow. So there are obviously a lot of factors contributing to all of these circumstances, which was kind of my point in the first place.

[Major Nikon]

15. Both of those countries are rich because of oil

So some factors just aren't that hard to figure out. Others require more consideration.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

19. Being rich hasn't caused Qatar to give up religion, although

the Norwegians seem to have shrugged off their gloomy Lutheran Pietist theology. The difference might have to do with the nature of the societies and religions involved in each. Qatar is Muslim, and middle-eastern Muslims do not seem to want to stray from their faith, rich or not. It is also an absolute monarchy, with little press freedom, and manual labor is done mostly by foreign workers who are not at all rich. Norway is a constitutional monarchy with a king who has no power at all; the society is egalitarian with a strong social safety net and better press freedom than the U.S.; the people are well-educated and poverty is rare. Why is one rich country religious and the other not? In the case of Qatar it might be because its monarchy requires it. In Norway, although the Lutheran church is the "established" church, neither attendance nor belief is required.

[Major Nikon]

24. Sometimes one thing has very little to do with another

It's pretty hard to make causal inferences on those two things when they typically follow very different cycles.

[Mariana]

23. Furthermore, the existence of outliers doesn't negate the correlation.

Pointing to an exception as if it disproves the rule is rather like the climate change denialists claiming that a record low temperature proves warming isn't happening.

[Mariana]

20. You are familiar with the concept of "Average" right?

You do understand what that means?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

21. Of course. I'm just amusing myself with statistics.

But one also has to take statistical outliers into consideration.

[TwistOneUp]

30. It's 95% religious bc other religions are not allowed

And if you try to convert, the gov't persecutes you and kills you.

Don't believe me? Go to any Islamic middle-east country and setup a church, then keep in touch.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

35. I am wondering whether, if Qatar stopped requiring and enforcing religious observance

and instead allowed its citizens to freely practice any religion or none, it would become a hot, sandy version of Norway?

[qazplm135]

28. Indonesia is pretty religious

so is Qatar. So is Bahrain. I'm going to guess Slovenia is too.

All with lower scores than China.

Palestine, UAE, and several other countries that are fairly religious (e.g. Bulgaria is 82% Orthodox Christian) score lower than UK.

Meanwhile Russia is over 40% when you combine spiritual not religious, atheist, and undeclared and they are at the bottom on intentional murders.

[Mariana]

36. See discussion above about the concept of "Average".

[qazplm135]

38. OP said nothing about average

It did the exact same thing I did.

[guillaumeb]

31. China is also note worthy for its ferocious oppression

of theists and minorities.


So what are we to make of that fact?

[Major Nikon]

32. I couldn't listen for more than a few seconds, so I'll take your word on that

[Mariana]

37. Lots of countries engage in ferocious oppression

of theists and minorities. China isn't particularly noteworthy in that respect. For example, here's a map showing where Christians, in particular, have been experiencing persecution.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2017/january/top-50-countries-christian-persecution-world-watch-list.html

[guillaumeb]

40. What of China?

Or, are we to assume that every human society shows intolerance?