is what i do

P.Z. Myers, at Pharyngula, points us to a very well-done study by Gregory S. Paul, in Creighton University’s Journal of Religion & Society, that examines the correlation between popular religiosity in a culture, belief in evolution, and a wide range of social dysfunctions, including homicide, teenage abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, and juvenile-adult mortality.

The data are mainly from a cross-national collaborative study conducted in 1998 that interviewed more than 20,000 people in 17 of the world’s developed and developing democracies. Paul also includes data from Portugal, as an example of a second world European democracy. A society’s level of religiosity was measured by its citizens’ belief in a higher power, their acceptance of a literal interpretation of the Bible, frequency of prayer, and church attendance. Acceptance of evolution was also measured and shows a strong negative correlation, as might be expected, with levels of religiosity.

Not surprisingly, the US scores high on the popular religiosity scale. “Japan, Scandinavia, and France are the most secular nations…[;] the United States is the only prosperous first world nation to retain rates of religiosity otherwise limited to the second and third worlds”.

Also not surprisingly, at least to some of us, the US also scores high on every measure of dysfunction, spectacularly high on some of them, such as murder, teenage abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, and violence by schoolchildren. (Abortion rates, by the way, were only taken into account from those countries in which abortion is at least as legal and accessible as it is in the US.)

That high positive correlation is not an anomaly; it carries across the board.

The conclusion is inescapable: religious democracies are more dysfunctional; secular democracies are healthier.

Paul’s paper deals only with correlations, not causes. It’s possible that a highly dysfunctional society drives people to religion. But Paul points out that his analysis of the data demonstrates the need for more research, not only to test his findings, but to start looking into the causal factors underlying the correlation between societal dysfunction and high levels of religious belief.

The New York Times reports on a talk that the Dalai Lama gave to more than 35,000 people in Rutgers Stadium, where he received an honorary degree. Two of the Tibetan monks sitting in the stadium bleachers remembered the first time that he spoke to an audience in the New York region, more than 25 years ago. Just a few hundred heard him then.

More are hearing him today, and the message he delivers is one that we need to hear.

The “zen” explosion of the ’60’s and ’70’s was inspired by D.T. Suzuki’s presentation of zen as a discipline which could whack a seeker over the head with sudden insight—a direct route to experience unmediated by training, culture, intellect. Suzuki himself gets pretty fuzzy-minded, and his followers more so; their proselytizing led to what Chris Locke calls “the sanctimonious narcissism of the New Age”. Whatever the roots of zen might have been, by the time it reached the tennis court and the board room, and came to inform the art of motorcyle maintenance, the Buddha had pretty much disappeared from the scene.

This time around, the Buddhism is more traditional, rooted in the Buddha’s own teaching of the Dharma. That’s not mystical—not even “spiritual”, whatever that over-burdened term might mean. It’s practical stuff, leading us to an understanding of how our actions have consequences, and how we might train our minds so that our actions generate good consequences. It’s not fuzzy minded at all, but simple and real. Attachment on the one hand. Compassion on the the other. We get to choose. We have to choose.

It gives you goose bumps.

(Thanks to David Weinberger for the link to Chris Locke’s blog.)

I’ve added a couple of photos to my Flickr Desktop Set. We went walking in Glenwood Gardens last weekend, and the thistles, illuminated by the afternoon sun, were quite wonderful. Here’s one of the photos. The other has fewer thistles, more green; probably better for a desktop with lots of icons. You can download any photo and use it freely.

In this week’s Shouts & Murmers, Paul Rudnick has the funniest take on Intelligent Design I’ve seen so far, at least from someone who’s outside the ID camp. Check out the full 7 days.

Her sad story brings to mind this lovely poem by W.B. Yeats.

A Prayer for My Daughter

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory’s wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-leggd smith for man.
It’s certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.

In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty’s very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there’s no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plenty’s horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven’s will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all’s accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony’s a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

The story is told of the Buddha that once, while the community of monks were gathered in the meeting hall in Jeta’s Grove, in the town of Savatthi, waiting for the Lord to emerge from his morning meditation, they idled the time away talking about a wide range of topics: “conversation about kings, robbers, & ministers of state; armies, alarms, & battles; food & drink; clothing, furniture, garlands, & scents; relatives; vehicles; villages, towns, cities, the countryside; women & heroes; the gossip of the street & the well; tales of the dead; tales of diversity, the creation of the world & of the sea; talk of whether things exist or not.”

When the Buddha emerged and asked them what they had been talking about, they told him. He gently pointed out that such topics of conversation were not skillful, not appropriate to the path they’d chosen when they went forth from home to the homeless life. And he gave them, as was his habit, a list of ten topics that were more appropriate to those on the path to understanding: “Talk on modesty, on contentment, on seclusion, on non-entanglement, on arousing persistence, on virtue, on concentration, on discernment, on release, and on the knowledge & vision of release. These are the ten topics of conversation. If you were to engage repeatedly in these ten topics of conversation, you would outshine even the sun & moon, so mighty, so powerful….”

It’s easy, in the sangha that is the blogosphere, to find ourselves caught up in the kinds of conversations that the monks were having, and to give the sorts of topics they were discussing much more importance and much more substance than they have, and to neglect the topics that are really important: how to be good, how to be content, how to bring an end to suffering.

As I’ve gotten caught up in those conversations, I’ve put aside a lot of what I want to say, what I started this blog to say. And the longer it stays put aside, the more coherence it loses, and the more difficult it becomes to say it well. So I am going to heed the Buddha’s words, at least for the time being (which is the only time we really have), and I am withdrawing from the blogger’s game of spinning the latest revelation about “kings, robbers, & ministers of state; armies, alarms, & battles;… the creation of the world & of the sea; talk of whether things exist or not.” Posts will be less frequent, but they will be longer and less dependent upon what others are blogging about.

So. Visit Kos, Jeanne, Josh Marshall, the Whiskey Bar, PZ Myers, and the mostly smart folks at Arianna’s conversation pit. They’ll keep you informed and your juices flowing, much better than I. I’ll try to get my thoughts together and report back soon.

Over at the Daily Kos, Hunter covers an article from the Washington Post about the probable costs of dealing with Katrina. He point out that BushCo’s advisors, the Cato Institute, have recommended slashing energy research, making further cuts in funding for the Army Corps of Engineers (we know one result of the last round of budget cuts), and eliminating $4.2 billion in homeland security grants.

We’re in a spiral here, and the direction is not up.

The Seventeenth Skeptics Circle, that is, hosted, in a positively brilliant rendition, by decorabilia. The company is exceptional: a lot of smart bloggers with skeptical takes on a wide range of subjects, from gay penguins to Atlantis. Some of it’s funny, some of it’s thought-provoking, some of it’s instructive. It’s all well written and well worth reading. And I’m pleased and honored to report that I’m in the circle this time ’round, with my own take on the nature of belief and the nature of God. Thanks for including me, Jim.

OK, clear yourself an hour, prepare to shed a few tears and have your heart lifted by the pure resilience of the human spirit. Point your browser to This American Life and click on the RA (RealAudio) icon next to last weekend’s story, “After the Flood”. This is what radio, bold and unfettered, can do. And what our print and video media, so far, have not done. Listen, and let me know what you hear.

(Disclaimer: My son is one of the producers of the show.)

If they succeed in driving New Orleans out of our collective memory—you know who “they” are, and we all know how we forget—that will be a great loss and sorrow. We must not forget.

The subject has virtually disappeared from the blogs, all of them: liberal, conservative, and in between. If it does show up, it does so with its political wrapping—what does the failure of the feds mean for Bush & Co? Will NOLA help the Dems or the GOP?

Fortunately, there are a few who have not yet forgotten and who are doing their best to keep the memory alive for all of us. Boing Boing has been spectacular, with post after post keeping us alert to what’s going on in the devastated city. A post today, from a cameraman in the city, is brilliant and chilling; and if it is accusatory, the accusations are based on what the accuser sees, there and now, and on what he does not see:

Eric Berger, the SciGuy, has also kept his focus. Today’s post reprints a long essay from Dr. Leigh Bishop, a psychiatrist at the Michael DeBakey VA Medical Center, detailing the experience he had caring for the evacuees who arrived from Louisiana:

We can’t be distracted, even for something as important as the Roberts confirmation; we have to remember that half of a major city is still under water, that most of the loss was experienced by those who had the least, that there are hundreds of thousands still homeless, tens of thousands still missing, and God knows how many bodies lying out for the kites and rats and alligators to feed upon. And that another set of vultures, in the shape of Halliburton, Blackwater, and the quaintly named Service Corporation International, are already hopping around the outskirts, tearing at the bags of money that Congress is flinging their way and flapping off with talons filled with loot to feed their hungry shareholders.