On 10/3/05, William T Goodall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > The LA Times has picked up on the story... > > http://tinyurl.com/7fxny > > "The dark side of faith > By ROSA BROOKS > IT'S OFFICIAL: Too much religion may be a dangerous thing.
[snip} 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. This story is not about religion, it's about fundamentalism. Please note the last sentence quoted above. The researcher is defining religious people as those "who take the Bible literally." This is an inaccurate definition. A scientifically more accurate subtitle for this story would be, "It's official: Too much fundamentalism may be a dangerous thing." If you are saying fundamentalism is bad, this story would support that thesis. And probably, most or all of us on the list would also agree with you. But saying that all religious people are like fundamentalists is like saying all British people are like Nick Griffin. Mauro
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