Is Religion a Sufficient Cause for Social Ills?

(The Center for Faith in Politics posted a link to this story, which discusses a study that reports that the pervasiveness of religion in a particular country can be correlated with higher rates of "anti-social" activities, including abortion, murder, et al. My response is below.)

"In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies." (from the article)

Therein lies the rub. There is a correlation demonstrated by this data, but not a causal relationship between religion and crime, necessarily. That is, there is a correlation if these data are correct. They don't seem to be.

According to NationMaster.com, the countries with the highest percentage of their populations falling victim to crime are, in order: Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Sweden, Itally, Canada, Denmark, Poland, and Belgium.

The site notes that "Data refer to people victimized by one or more of 11 crimes recorded in the survey: robbery, burglary, attempted burglary, car theft, car vandalism, bicycle theft, sexual assault, theft from car, theft of personal property, assault and threats."

It also offers the proviso that,

"Crime statistics are often better indicators of prevalence of law enforcement and willingness to report crime, than actual prevalence."

I would guess that the study in question likely found itself beleaguered by similar problems, namely, that some victims are less likely to report to crimes than others. Either way, the study is either critically disabled by data collection problems, or, if you want to be the conspiracy theorist type, willfully misrepresenting the available data.

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My apologies, I plugged the wrong choices into the NationMaster.com engine. The list that I gave above should read: Austrailia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Canada, St. Kitts & Nevis, Malta, Denmark.

Another interesting statistic:

Total crimes per capita, by country (top ten worst)

Dominica, New Zealand, Finland, Denmark, Chile, United Kingdom, Montserrat, United States, Netherlands, South Africa.