Religion and Science

Some effort has been put into trying to determine whether religion has, on net, served as a force for good or evil.  Much of the discussion centers on looking at the mass murders and atrocities that have been committed throughout the ages.  I think that these make up a small part of the question.  When large numbers of people die, particularly at human hands, this attracts a lot of attention.

However, most people die by other means.  Humans die because the society is either too poor or too primitive.  When we look at the twentieth century, for example, it is estimated that one out of every 22 seats was caused by war or mass murder.  If we want to take a serious look at what role religion plays on the ability of people to live long, happy lives we are going to have to look at what caused the other 21 deaths.  What we will be interested in is the impact that religion has on science and capital formation.

Some have asserted that Christianity is responsible for these advances.  The empirical evidence for this is that it is Western society that has achieved more than any other.  Western society was traditionally Christian, hence Christianity caused this greatness.

While it is true that this greatness was only achieved by a largely Christian society, I'm not sure that this empirical evidence ought to be as persuasive as people claim.  After all, it is a complete certainty that one society will achieve more greatness than any other.

Also we have to acknowledge that we are working with a small sample here.  How many societies were there that are comparable in size to the West.  We can note all the advantages of Eurasia noted by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel.  Next we note the decline in agricultural fertility in the Middle East.  That leaves us with perhaps two different societies to compare to the West, China and India.  Even if we were to include the Middle East, that would leave us with a sample size of only four, and even then it is not clear what this would tell us.  These other societies had their own religions.  Since it would be unavoidable that one society would be more advanced than any of the others, it would inevitably be the case that some religion would look like it was the best at promoting that advancement.

The number of people in the world is much larger than the number of societies.  Moreover, since not all people are religious, this can tell us more about the  effects of religion.  The fact that a religious society has been more successful than the others tells us nothing, since all of the traditional societies are religious.  We have very good evidence that atheism and science are quite compatible, since scientists are disproportionately likely to be atheists, and successful scientists even more so.  Atheists are more likely to support or participate in science than religious people.

Some might find my approach to be crass and materialistic.  Perhaps some would consider art to be what we should value.  Even if that were true, this wouldn't change our picture much.  We can argue that the leading art form is the motion picture.  There are more camera operators than fine artists, a category that includes painters and sculptors.  People involved in this industry are less likely to be religious than the general public.

However, perhaps religion has an effect on capital formation.  Some studies indicate that people who attend religious services are better at accumulating wealth, but conservative Christians tend to be worse at it than people with other religious preferences.  Jews seem to outperform Christians, at least in the U.S.  The exact effect on capital formation is uncertain.