On 30 Jul 2007, at 00:23, Ronn! Blankenship wrote: > At 03:08 PM Sunday 7/29/2007, William T Goodall wrote: > > >> The USA is the most religious advanced country and the least healthy. >> >> [...] >> >> Very religious countries like Nigeria seem to have very poor health. > > > > Is there any other common factor between those two statistics? >
The USA is anomalous because in every other advanced nation rising prosperity and rising status of women is accompanied by falling birth rates rising life expectancy and declining religious belief. Other than in the USA high levels of religious belief are mostly found in poor countries with high birth rates lower life expectancies and low status for women. It might be possible to use factor analysis or other statistical techniques to examine hypotheses about the detrimental effects of religion on national populations. There isn't a contradiction between religious belief being relatively beneficial to individuals in a population but detrimental to the population as a whole. Not my field Maru -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, President, Chairman and Founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977 _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
