Study Refutes Romney

Mitt Romney recently claimed that "Freedom needs religion," which I previously noted is logically dubious, at best. But a 2005 study in the Journal of Religion & Society makes a better refutation. Author Gregory S. Paul did a cross-national comparison, using measures of religiosity and social measures. To quote from his abstract:

Data correlations show that in almost all regards the highly secular democracies consistently enjoy low rates of societal dysfunction, while pro-religious and anti-evolution America performs poorly.

I'm a semi-regular church-goer, neither devoutly religious nor devoutly anti-religious. I am fervently pro-analytical studies, however, and the data are pretty clear.

The full cite is:

Paul, Gregory S. 2005. "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies." Journal of Religion and Society, volume 7.