A New "Finding"!!
by MikeGeneI continue down the path first explored by researcher and ID critic Gregory Paul. This time, I decided to look only at England, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Not only do these countries all speak the same language, but they do so because the latter three are all recently derived from the former. Thus, one might reasonably expect these four countries to be the most similar, helping to filter out many of the extraneous factors that could influence our interpretations. Furthermore, these four similar nations provide a nice spread for Mr. Paul's criterion of strong belief in God (22%, 30%, 40%, and 62%). A remarkable new correlation has been discovered.
Mr. Paul cites copiously from his fellow ID critics. Yet it is this very population of scholars who argue that ID will ultimately lead to a theocracy that will in turn destroy the United State's scientific standing in the world. Yet correlations, drawn from data in the UN's Human Development Report 2005, tell us something different.
Figure 1
Figure 1 shows a strong positive correlation between the %GDP that is spent on research and development (red line) and strong belief in God. Another strong relationship is shown between the number of researchers in R&D (per million people) and strong belief in God (blue line).
Figure 2
Figure 2 shows a remarkable increase in the number of patents granted as a function of belief in God. However, one does not begin to see the creativity until strong God belief exists in more than 40% of the population. This suggests that federal funding of televangelists may be one way to enhance our scientific standing in the world.
Conclusion: These new findings show us that not only do chronically high unemployment (including long-term unemployment), high rates of crime (including sexual assault), high suicide rates, and a lower standard of living correlate with rejection of theism, but also a drop in scientific productivity and creativity. The widely held fear that a God-fearing citizenry must experience scientific disaster is therefore refuted.
October 1st, 2005 at 8:10 am
"Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind." Albert Einstein.
Comment by Joe G — October 1, 2005 @ 8:10 am
October 7th, 2005 at 5:00 am
Mike, but why do you bother showing this? If you only glance at various countrie's stats and compare it with their prevalent religious affiliation, you could come to the same conclusion. For instance, comparing Scandinavian states, Switzerland and US as mainly protestant to Eastern European states as until recently mainly atheistic. This man, Gregory Paul, is clearly in a propaganda business.
Comment by inunison — October 7, 2005 @ 5:00 am
February 1st, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Regarding inunison's discussion about countries' religious affiliations, I believe that many of the Eastern European states' populace had strong core values based on Christian belief – Roman Catholic as well as Protestant – even through the Soviet era, and these were the ones who have been strong for individual political and economic rights subsequent to that time.
It is worth noting that their experience with atheistic government did serve to dampen some of the economic factors that we in US have enjoyed with our more continuous freedom.
Nonetheless the fundamental faith of people in Poland and The Czech Republic (and I'm not as familiar with others in that region) were essential to fueling their drive to independence from the Warsaw Bloc. I expect that research would show a strong correlation to their success post-Bloc.
Comment by bufordr1 — February 1, 2007 @ 7:49 pm