Lokifreign (a common poster here in tribe but not this tribe) is a researcher. He commented on this paper when it came out in September. He and his professor are studying something similar. I believe he was studying murder rates and religiosity. While he would give specifics he said the paper was going to be shocking to many.

It is very suspicious that there is so little critical per reviewed research into this area. It's amazing in fact.

Thank you, SpiN, for kicking this off. So what is being proposed here, but not said outright, is that if a mind, for emotional reasons, easily accepts unproven assumptions in one area, it will do so in many other areas? Or are we saying, with this study, specifically that religious belief leads to greater criminality? Or are we saying that religious belief and criminality, in some way, go hand in hand?

As an example, there are numerous government type conspiracy theories out there and no end of believers. So what's their relation to crime? Of course there appears to be much more proof for conspiracy theories than for religious theories!

Also, one often hears that there is a higher percentage of believers in American prisons than in the general population. Is this true & based on what study? If it is true, is it a proof of Gregory Paul's research results or, as most Christians claim, that more people in prison see the error of their ways and decide to believe. I've always seen this as meaning that both religiosity and criminality flourish more readily in "less vigorous" intellects!

Here is the actual paper:

Journal of Religion & Society Volume 7 (2005)

Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health
with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous
Democracies

moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2005-11.pdf