So I was reading "Non-believer Nation" and the writer brought up a number of very good points about the correlation in national population percentages between secularity and religiosity in regards to crime. I knew about the studies in the US, but apparently it's not just in the US; the higher the ratios of secular individuals to religious individuals, the lower the rate of violent crimes, particularly murder and sexual assault.
This is a topic trail that we've walked many times before, or at least most of us have, but I'm interested in hearing what our resident theists have to say on the matter. I find myself wishing there were more around here for these kinds of conversations, believe it or not, largely because I'm interested in hearing the explanations of religious people as to how they feel about this. I'm not asking for refutations of the statistics; they exist, and the closest thing I can call absolute truth is that of numbers, and given how the statistical trends are always in favor of this outcome, my mind is all but concluded in the regards of whether or not this is a fact. I just wanna know what theists think about this.
If one says that "good wholesome Christian values" are a good strong moral backing, how does one explain how the less a national population adheres to those values, the lower the crime rates are?
If it went the other way around, that the more secularization of a population, the more violent the society, I personally would find myself hard-pressed to explain it other than to say "religion must provide peace of mind and culture," but such is not the case.
This is a topic trail that we've walked many times before, or at least most of us have, but I'm interested in hearing what our resident theists have to say on the matter. I find myself wishing there were more around here for these kinds of conversations, believe it or not, largely because I'm interested in hearing the explanations of religious people as to how they feel about this. I'm not asking for refutations of the statistics; they exist, and the closest thing I can call absolute truth is that of numbers, and given how the statistical trends are always in favor of this outcome, my mind is all but concluded in the regards of whether or not this is a fact. I just wanna know what theists think about this.
If one says that "good wholesome Christian values" are a good strong moral backing, how does one explain how the less a national population adheres to those values, the lower the crime rates are?
If it went the other way around, that the more secularization of a population, the more violent the society, I personally would find myself hard-pressed to explain it other than to say "religion must provide peace of mind and culture," but such is not the case.
