Dave, you've taken the thoughts of Steve Chapman as my own. Maybe I should have used a quote box. I do agree with what he says, but he doesn't say that high rates of church attendance and murder are in a causal relationship. He's just trying to expose the total lack of thinking in the view that liberalism or secularism is the cause of the perceived moral decay. How could it be, when some states with high church attendance come out worse regarding social health than do other states whose people are less religious?

Again that statement

"but he doesn't say that high rates of church attendance and murder are in a causal relationship. He's just trying to expose the total lack of thinking in the view that liberalism or secularism is the cause of the perceived moral decay. How could it be, when some states with high church attendance come out worse regarding social health than do other states whose people are less religious?"

implies a correlation that I think doesn't exist between religious belief and social health. It could just as easily if less comfortably (at least from the politically correctness of our age) be blamed on culture factors. Plus, if you take my example of Detroit and spread it out to the whole state of Michigan it would change the numbers because you would delute the Detroit (and possibly Flint and Lansing) numbers by the rural (and I would contend) much more religious rural parts and smaller cities. Thus, lowering the crime rate (violent or otherwise). I am relitively sure this could be done in these so called more secular states as well. I would like to see the hard numbers and know where this person who wrote the article got his numbers. Statistics are easily manipulated and people sometimes extrapolate things from them that they don't really support, its somewhat how our minds work looking always for a reason even though it may just be the roll of the dice.

DWill wrote:Dave, you've taken the thoughts of Steve Chapman as my own. Maybe I should have used a quote box. I do agree with what he says, but he doesn't say that high rates of church attendance and murder are in a causal relationship. He's just trying to expose the total lack of thinking in the view that liberalism or secularism is the cause of the perceived moral decay. How could it be, when some states with high church attendance come out worse regarding social health than do other states whose people are less religious?

Have you read the book, "How to lie with Statistics"?

Just asking, that's all.

Steve Chapman was exposing a fallacy. To do that, he pointed out situations obviously inconsistent with the belief that secularism is the cause of social pathology. That is not equivalent to him claiming that secularism is responsible for some better social outcomes in some states compared to others. Don't you see, if he used such shoddy reasoning, he would be doing exactly what he led off complaining about--and there would be no point to his piece.