A graph showing religiosity vs crime in the US

[karadan]

I found this rather interesting chart which shows, on average, how religious US states are compared to crime rate, divorce rate, generosity, IQ and a host of other factors. The data seems to have been taken from a fair few sources.

http://i.imgur.com/kpb5A.png

There does seem to be a few definite corellations shown.

Anyone here from Mississippi?

[pinkocommie]

oooh pretty heat map...

[BadPoison]

Is there an alternate link to this? My office's nazi-web-filter says: "The Websense category "Personal Network Storage and Backup" is filtered."

Lame.

[karadan]

Is there an alternate link to this? My office's nazi-web-filter says: "The Websense category "Personal Network Storage and Backup" is filtered."

Lame.

Wow. A websense filter more stringent that the one at my work?? Good gosh! I hadn't thought that possible!

Try this one:

http://www.mixx.com/photos/10844376/sta ... ness_graph

if that doesn't work, just google 'states ranked by religiousness'. I got quite a few hits.

Hmm, i just realised i might be using an incorrect term. Is religiosity a word? I've always used that instead of religiousness.

[G-Roll]

Is there an alternate link to this? My office's nazi-web-filter says: "The Websense category "Personal Network Storage and Backup" is filtered."

Lame.

Wow. A websense filter more stringent that the one at my work?? Good gosh! I hadn't thought that possible!

Try this one:

http://www.mixx.com/photos/10844376/sta ... ness_graph

if that doesn't work, just google 'states ranked by religiousness'. I got quite a few hits.

Hmm, i just realised i might be using an incorrect term. Is religiosity a word? I've always used that instead of religiousness.

i have one of those to. ill try and google it because it sounds insteresting.

[BadPoison]

Is there an alternate link to this? My office's nazi-web-filter says: "The Websense category "Personal Network Storage and Backup" is filtered."

Lame.

Wow. A websense filter more stringent that the one at my work?? Good gosh! I hadn't thought that possible! :|

[elliebean]

I used to live in Mississippi - for quite a while, actually - and I went to college there. So I can attest to its being obscenely religious as well it's high rates of crime, teen pregnancy, STDs, poverty, and mental illness - including its having the highest number of cases of insanity brought on by untreated syphyllis and the highest rate of HIV infection in the country....according to the latest statistics while I was there several years ago. Also they seemed to be in a kind of competition with Arkansas for having the worst education in the country and the lowest teacher's salaries.

Though there is definitely a correlation between religiosity (great word, :hmm:

[Tanker]

I hate playing the devils advocate but corellation does not equal causation. Otherwise the reason for global warming really is because of the decrese in pirates. Interesting link though. It does point to some interesting areas for further research.

[Whitney]

Another way to look at it is that individuals who live in areas that have social and economic problems are more likely to turn to religion for comfort.

[elliebean]

Given that so many families in that region bring their kids up in church, I think it's far more likely that people who never learned to think for themselves have more of a tendency toward social and economic problems.

Or conversely, people in better situations are more comfortable and have more free time for questioning, and are more successful escaping religion's deadly clutches.  

[bfat]

Pretty much all of these can be attributed to socioeconomic factors, but I have seen other studies linking religiosity with lower IQ.  Since religion is a variable based on choice and IQ is thought to be innate, there may be some causality there, but it would be pretty hard to prove.  Makes sense to me.

Also--Nevada has a crazy high divorce rate.  Viva Las Vegas!  

(P.S. I took a class when I did study abroad called "Religiosity in Film" or something and I thought it was the silliest word in the galaxy.  Apparently it's real though.)

[elliebean]

I meant to add: No offense to anyone from Mississippi. I met a lot of fascinating and wonderful people there and had a lot of great times.

[SSY]

Though there is definitely a correlation between religiosity (great word, ) and crime in the US, I wouldn't be too quick to use that to establish causality, given the number of other factors influencing each other, ie. poverty, education, IQ, race relations, cultural differences, life expectancy, extreme conservatism, etc.

Exactly what I was thinking, though it certainly does inform one about the oft made claim of religion improving the lives of the flock.

[Ivan Tudor C McHock]

So 9 of the top 10 most religious states have populations with double-digit average IQs.

Who'da thunk it?  

[Ellainix]

Did you know there is no record any crimes recorded in the US before Christianity arrived?