In a truly astounding display of bigotry and arrogance, The Times relates the findings of a study that started with the irrefutable (for some) premises that (a) America is excessively religious and (b) America is a horrible place, and arrived at the conclusion that religious belief causes damage to society.

Religion is held accountable for increasing the rates of murder, abortion, sexual promiscuity, and suicide. I’m not kidding, and apparently neither is The Times. If the lie is outrageous enough, people just might believe it — especially if they want to believe it, which Times readers presumably do for such an appalling piece of garbage to make it into their publication.

The study, which appeared in the American academic journal Journal of Religion and Society, wears hatred of America on its sleeve. “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world,” the author Gregory Paul curls his lip to sneer, before gloatingly declaring that “the United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

Paul’s clever research was able to discover that “the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional.” Due to an alleged high incidence of syphilis, gonorrhea, and abortion in the USA, Paul couldn’t avoid the logical conclusion that these problems are caused by faith. After all, according to Paul, “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.” Paul found the disparity even greater when comparing the “dysfunctional” US with dreamy places like France.

“I suspect that Europeans are increasingly repelled by the poor societal performance of the Christian states,” Paul sniffed. “The Christian states” in this context means the United States.

Personally I suspect that decent people, religious and otherwise, are increasingly repelled by pompous moonbats who try to pass off their bigotry as science.

Hat tip: Drudge Report.

Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

Said Van Helsing @ 4:51 am | Permalink   

1. Wow. What total, complete insanity.

   The subtitle left out from the research drafts clearly was: “I hate Christianity — how can I prove it’s bad?”

   How can such people actually be taken as serious researchers?

   Comment by Ogre — 9/28/2005 @ 5:37 am

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2. Yea, the study jumps to too many conclusions too quickly. What is interesting though is that religious Americans have a higher incarceration rate than non-religious Americans.

   Comment by Adam — 9/28/2005 @ 2:12 pm

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3. Wow, how “scientific” of him. ;~D

   Comment by ParaTed2k — 9/28/2005 @ 3:59 pm

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4. Adam - maybe that’s because we hold people accountable? Without just beheading them, that is. /TJ

   Comment by Cao — 9/28/2005 @ 5:50 pm

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5. Blogicus Interrupticus

   Today’s dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny … Hump Day edition

   Trackback by NIF — 9/28/2005 @ 5:51 pm

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6. Great stuff! Keep it up.

   Comment by J.Wright — 9/28/2005 @ 6:00 pm

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7. If you find the paper, which I’m going to find and read, so abhorent, perhaps you can go through his data, find the mistakes with which you presume it to be riddled and write a rebuttal paper for the same journal.

   Comment by Stephen Coates — 10/5/2005 @ 8:17 pm

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