調查顯示美宗教程度越高的州離婚等社會問題越嚴重

http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/02/state_by_state_data_on_religio.php
大致上, 宗教化程度越高的州, 離婚率越高, 未婚生育越多, 青少女懷孕越多。

State by State Data on Religious Importance

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Posted on: February 3, 2009 9:02 AM, by Ed Brayton

A new Gallup poll of 350,000 Americans breaks down the importance of religion on a state by state basis. The question asked was whether religion was an important part of their daily lives. Here are the results:

Top 4 most religious states: Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee. 4 least religious states: Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts. In fact, those were the only four that were below 50% in saying that religion was important in their daily lives.

I thought it would be interesting to compare those lists to various rates of things that the religious right tends to consider moral evils, like divorce and teen pregnancy. Let's start with divorce rates, which can be seen here.

Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the nation, while the other three least religious states all rank in the top half of the states for lowest divorce rates, all below 4.4 per 1000. Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee all rank among the 11 highest states for rates of divorce with rates above 5.7 per 1000; South Carolina is 19th with a rate of 4.2.

How about out of wedlock births? The most recent data I could find easily is here. And it shows for the most religious states:

Mississippi: 45.5%
South Carolina: 38.7%
Tennessee: 34.9%
Alabama: 34.1%

And the least religious states:

New Hampshire: 24.1%
Massachusetts: 26.1%
Vermont: 28%
Maine: 30.6%

And finally, teen pregnancy, where all of the most religious states are in the top 10:

Mississippi: 20.9%
Alabama: 17.1%
South Carolina: 16.0%
Tennessee: 15.9%

And all of the least religious states are in the bottom 10:

Massachusetts 7.2%
New Hampshire 7.7%
Vermont 7.9%
Maine 9.8%

Does this prove that religion causes those bad things? Of course not. But it does make a pretty strong case against the constant claims of the religious right that religion is the answer to these problems.

這是為什麼呢？