Secularization and Societal Well-being: Correlation vs. Causation in Democratic Societies

Secular democracies, surprisingly, often exhibit greater societal well-being than highly religious ones.

### Secularization and Societal Well-being: A Sociological Perspective
* 🌍  Professor Phil Zuckerman examines the correlation between religious belief and societal well-being, challenging the notion that a lack of faith leads to societal decay.
* 🤔  He counters the frequent claim by politicians that societal problems, such as mass shootings, stem from a lack of faith, arguing that this is a misattribution of causality.
* 📊  Zuckerman's research analyzes secularization—the decline in religious belief—in two ways: forced (e.g., under totalitarian regimes) and organic (in free societies).
* ⚠️ Forced secularization, as seen in the former Soviet Union or Khmer Rouge, resulted in horrific human rights violations, highlighting the dangers of state-imposed atheism.
* 💡 In contrast, organic secularization in democracies like Scandinavia, the UK, and parts of Asia shows a positive correlation between lower religiosity and higher societal well-being.
* 📈  Countries with the lowest levels of belief in God often have the most prosperous economies, egalitarian societies, and lowest crime rates, exemplified by Japan.
* 📉 Conversely, highly religious democratic countries sometimes struggle with higher rates of violence, poverty, and social problems.
* ⚖️ Zuckerman concludes that the relationship is not causal; societal well-being depends on earthly factors like economic policies, social structures, and institutional frameworks, not solely on religious belief.

What is the relationship, the societal relationship between levels of religious belief and faith in God and societal well-being or societal decay?

And chaos? And you might be surprised by the answers. My name is Phil Zuckerman. I'm a professor of sociology

and secular studies in Claremont, California, and I'm the author of a book called *Society Without God*, and it's the

latest edition of that book that I'm going to be talking to you about right now. One of my main motivations is that here

in the United States, we have a lot of politicians who are constantly blaming society's problems on a lack of faith. So

we have a lot of shootings here in this country, constantly having mass shootings on a daily basis, school shootings, and

whenever these happen, rather than talk about our gun policies, our poverty rates, or some kind of structural or

institutional issues, um, we'll have politicians say it's because we've abandoned God, it's because we're not

people of faith. And this is something that you'll see over and over again in the news: governors, senators, presidents,

mayors. It's like there's this notion that if people in a society stop believing in God, stop worshipping God, and

stop being religious, the results for society will be bad; you know, immorality will run rampant, there will be crime,

depredation, degradation. So I'm curious about that. I'm interested in that, and that's what a lot of my research has

been focusing on: what is that relationship? So when you look at this question at a national or societal level—because I'm not talking about an

individual's faith; that's another topic—and how their belief in God works in

their lives, how it helps them or comforts them, helps them with addiction or whatever; that's another issue. That's

An issue for psychologists to talk about. I'm a sociologist, I'm a social scientist, so I'm interested in that societal big

picture level. So when we talk about society's um, not being very religious or losing their religion, we're talking

about secularization, which is the process over time whereby people in a society stop being religious; they stop

attending church or synagogue or mosque; they stop, they don't pray; they don't have faith in God or Allah or Vishnu or

whatever it is. Um, and they stop identifying as religious. Now, there's two ways that can happen: there's a kind of forced, coercive

version of secularization, and then there's a kind of organic, free version of secularization. The first one's a nightmare.

Think of the atheistic rulers of the former Soviet Union; think about the atheism of the Khmer Rouge; think about certain regimes,

the Communist regime in China right now; think about Enver Hoxha, the dictator of the first declared atheist nation of Albania.

In those situations, you have a dictatorship that seeks to dominate all aspects of society; wants no competition,

no institutional competition, no ideological competition, so they go after religion viciously and with bloody might, and the results are horrible, terrible

human rights; no freedoms; religious people are persecuted, tortured, imprisoned. So if you look at the history

of certain atheist societies um, that were forced into secularization, and you think, 'What a nightmare,' you're right, and

those experiments in secularization ought to be condemned as gross violations of all human decency. But there's another kind of

secularization. This happens in democratic, relatively free societies where there is no government that is persecuting people for being religious

or actively promoting atheism or secularism; it's just that people are living their lives relatively free.

There's freedom of thought, there's freedom of speech, there's freedom of assembly, there's freedom of the press,

etc., etc. And what we find is, decade after decade after decade, they start being less religious on all measures. Think of

places like Scandinavia, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Uruguay, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc., etc. What

happens when people freely abandon their faith? When religion evaporates naturally, not through force at the barrel of a

gun? That's more interesting to me because, to me, dictatorships, whether they're atheistic or religious, are

always a nightmare. Society always suffers; people always suffer. Religious regimes that are dictatorships, atheistic regimes that are dictatorships, are

always a nightmare for human rights, for human well-being, you name it. But when we look at democracies, that's another P—

that's that's more of an interesting story. And what do we find? What we find is contrary to the

pontifications of a lot of American politicians, but I should say it's not just American politicians. You can find

mullahs throughout the Middle East; you can find uh, Catholic priests throughout Latin America. In fact, anywhere that religion has a strong presence, you will find

people saying, 'If we're not religious, whatever religion that is—Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc., etc.—then

society will fall apart; we won't have any morals; everything will go into disarray.' But I'm I'm more sensitive to

it here in the United States because this is where I live and this is what I am subject to on a daily basis when I

read the news and watch the news. So what do we find in my research? I've said, 'Well, this is this is interesting because you

you it's basically social science: you have an independent variable and a dependent variable. If the independent variable is faith in God or levels of

faith in God in a given society. Great. We can ascertain that, we can measure that, we can find that out. And then if the

dependent variable is societal health or depravity, or societal well-being, we have variables that indicate that too.

Things like murder rates, poverty rates, aggravated assault rates, um, domestic abuse rates, etc., etc., etc. You know, levels

of health care, child care, elder care, uh, how good is the society for women, etc., etc. Educational attainment. So what do we

find? Again, excluding those dictatorships, whether they're atheistic or religious, when we just look at democracies, here's

what we find. First of all, you can take the countries that are the least believing in God right now. In fact,

there's seven countries today that have a majority of people who don't believe in God: the UK, Sweden, Norway, Czech

Republic, Estonia, South Korea, and the Netherlands. And there's many other countries where it's about half the

population doesn't believe in God anymore. They're either atheists or agnostics or indifferent, but they say no

when asked if they believe in God. What do we find? Most societies, most democratic societies that have significant levels of a lack of belief in God are actually doing extremely well.

They have the most prosperous economies; they're very

egalitarian and equal; they have the lowest violent crime rates, the lowest murder rates. Japan's an excellent

example, uh, where God belief is extremely low. Japan doesn't even have a history of Christianity in its culture, and yet they

have among the lowest murder rates in the world. And then when you look at the countries today, the democratic countries

that are the most faithful, that have the most active believers, they're actually not doing so great compared to the

secularized societies; they have worse murder rates, worse poverty rates. Think of places like El Salvador, um, think of

places like Moldova. What you see is, um, more and more, um, social problems, unethical behavior, immorality, etc.

etc. So that's just comparing countries, but you can also do it other ways. I'll give you two more ways you can do it. You

can take a single country like the United States, but you could do this in the UK if you want, or Canada, or

whatever. But let's just take the United States. We can divide the United States up into states; we also divide our

country up into counties. We have very accurate data, national survey data, on how many people in a given state or a

given county believe in God; not just if they believe in God, but how strong their belief in God is, because you can ask

people, you know, 'Are you a strong believer? Are you somewhat of a believer? Do you kind of believe?' etc., etc. So we

have lots of data on levels of belief in God at the state level in the United States and also at the county level.

Guess what we find? The same correlation: those states and counties that have the lowest rates of belief in

God actually tend to be doing better; they have more educated populations, fewer murder rates, lower poverty rates, better health care—um, you

name it. Finally, another thing you can do is you can take a single country over time. Take the Netherlands; you can look

at data about the Netherlands going back 100, 150 years, sometimes 200, 300 years, depending on the available evidence and

data. And you can see that in certain societies, when daily, when, when regular belief was very strong, um, when

individual belief was very high, societal belief was very high, what was daily life like? Actually, there was more violence.

More uh, murder, more assault, more sexual assault 200 years ago in the Netherlands, when the Netherlands was highly

religious compared to today, where most Dutch people don't even believe in God, and you have much lower rates of day-to-day

violence than you did in the same society that has become highly secularized. Now I know what you're

thinking, because I get this all the time. Phil, Phil, Phil, you're... this is just correlation; correlation is not causation.

And what they'll say is, the reason some societies like Japan, South Korea, Uruguay, Canada, or France are doing so well,

and the reason other societies that might be highly religious, like El Salvador, or Colombia, or Poland, etc., are not

doing so well, that is a matter of economics, politics, history, maybe colonialism, maybe demographics,

maybe racial issues, maybe uh, it has to do with, you know, a host of things other than whether they believe in God or not.

You're, you're, you're totally doing the fallacy of correlation equaling causation. Yeah, all those other things,

politics, economics, demographics, culture—you name it—those are earthly issues; they don't have anything to do with a

God. So it actually proves my point. Whatever the reason certain democratic societies today are doing quite well, it

probably has nothing to do, or very little to do, with their religious belief or faith. But that disproves the

assertion, which is one of my life's goals, that argues if we abandon faith in God, society will collapse. We

can clearly prove that as falsifiable; we can clearly show that that is actually the wrong correlation equaling causation.

Anybody who says school shootings are the result of a lack of belief in God is committing the fallacy of correlation

equating causation, and anybody who makes the claim that if we aren't religious, everything will go to...

that's actually disprovable. We can show the opposite; that in fact, those societies today, democratic, free societies where religion has evaporated organically and

freely, are doing quite well, which suggests that there are other factors that make for a healthy society,

that there are other reasons. But all those reasons are this-worldly; they don't have anything to do with faith,

they don't have anything to do with faith and belief and worship of a deity. They have to do with how we

organize our societies, what principles guide us here and now on this Earth, what institutions we create, what

policies we enact, what laws we are willing to follow and create. That is where we need to focus our attention if

we want to make the world a better place. So my point: what is the relationship between belief in God and societal

well-being? Not what most American politicians make it out to be. Thank you so much for watching. Cheers! Did I nail it? Yeah, awesome! If

you're interested in learning more about what happens when societies stop worshipping God, you can purchase Phil

What Happens when Countries Lose Religion? | Phil Zuckerman

A Dose of Reason

Correlation between religious belief and societal well-being

Initial question explores the relationship between religious belief and societal well-being or decay.

Introduction of Phil Zuckerman, professor of sociology and secular studies, and his book *Society Without God*.

Politicians often blame societal problems on a lack of faith, particularly in relation to issues like mass shootings.

Focus on societal level analysis, not individual faith.

Secularization defined as the process of societies becoming less religious.

Distinction between forced (e.g., Soviet Union, Khmer Rouge) and organic secularization (e.g., Scandinavia).

Forced secularization, often under dictatorships, results in human rights violations.

Organic secularization occurs in free societies with freedom of thought, speech, and assembly.

Examples of countries undergoing organic secularization include Scandinavia, the Czech Republic, and others.

Research uses social science methodology with faith as the independent variable and societal health as the dependent variable.

Dependent variables include murder rates, poverty rates, healthcare, and educational attainment.

Seven countries with a majority of people not believing in God are listed, and many more with significant non-believing populations.

Many less religious democratic societies show prosperous economies, egalitarianism, and low crime rates.

Analysis extended to comparing US states and counties, revealing similar correlations.

Longitudinal study of the Netherlands shows higher violence rates during periods of high religiosity.

Addressing the Correlation vs. Causation Argument

Counter-argument addresses the correlation vs. causation debate.

Other factors like economics, politics, and history are acknowledged.

These other factors are deemed 'earthly issues' unrelated to the existence of God.

The research disproves the assertion that abandoning faith leads to societal collapse.

The claim that school shootings result from a lack of faith is refuted as a fallacy.

Other factors, such as societal organization and policies, are highlighted as crucial for societal well-being.

Focus should be on earthly solutions and institutional improvements.

The relationship between belief in God and societal well-being is not what many politicians claim.

Recommendation to learn more by purchasing Phil Zuckerman's book.