{"id":1169,"date":"2013-07-09T11:10:01","date_gmt":"2013-07-09T16:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/?p=1169"},"modified":"2013-07-09T11:08:17","modified_gmt":"2013-07-09T16:08:17","slug":"correlations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/2013\/07\/09\/correlations\/","title":{"rendered":"Correlations Between Religion and Societal Issues"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw an interesting graphic about the comparisons between Republican States and things like poverty, pregnancy and the like.\u00a0 While Republicans do have direct control over these issues, who or what controls the Grand Old Party?\u00a0 I think that it must be religion.\u00a0 That seems to be their base.<\/p>\n

Directly related to the ability of people to live, poverty is a major social indicator<\/a>.\u00a0 Those living in poverty tend to have all kinds of major issues with surviving, learning, and growing into stable society.\u00a0 (click on all images for source)<\/p>\n

\"US<\/a><\/p>\n

Let’s look at another social value, divorce.\u00a0 I find it amusing when a politician who promotes ‘traditional values’ and rejects homosexual marriage because “it will destroy the sanctity of marriage” is caught soliciting prostitutes or gets a divorce.\u00a0 I find it amusing because it’s hypocritical, not that I care what the politician actually does.<\/p>\n

\"DIVORCE-RATES-2009-MAP-US-Census-Bureau-08-25-2011\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I like the above map for one reason.\u00a0 That red dot that indicates a statistically significant result.<\/p>\n

Moving on, one measure of the health of a society is education.\u00a0 How many students graduate with a high school education?<\/p>\n

\"US<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the things that impacts graduation rates is teen pregnancy.\u00a0 In spite of modern education, many states require abstinence only education (when that is allowed).\u00a0 See if you can figure out which states promote abstinence only.<\/p>\n

\"teenbirthratemap2011\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This next diagram shows which states are NOT getting federal funding for abstinence only programs.\u00a0 These states not getting funding are doing something other than abstinence only.\u00a0 As an aside, it somewhat boggles the mind how one gets money for not teaching something…<\/p>\n

\"US<\/a><\/p>\n

One more.\u00a0 Let’s look at the science education in the US, specifically evolution.<\/p>\n

\"evolution<\/a><\/p>\n

This is older data, but it’s still roughly the same today.<\/p>\n

Finally, let’s compare to the religiosity of the US States.<\/p>\n

\"gallop<\/a><\/p>\n

Can we blame religion on the trends that we see in the data?<\/p>\n

In the spirit of being skeptical, I want to say no.\u00a0 But the trend is supported with the highly religious GOP being the ones who are supporting abstinence only, which tends to increase the problems with poverty and graduation rates.\u00a0 The GOP uses religion as a basis for not teaching evolution.\u00a0 I don’t know what to make of the divorce data, but I know the GOP is all about the sanctity of traditional marriage (as long as they can get divorced).<\/p>\n

The trend is obvious.\u00a0 Higher religion.\u00a0 Higher poverty.\u00a0 Higher teen pregnancy.\u00a0 Worse education.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw an interesting graphic about the comparisons between Republican States and things like poverty, pregnancy and the like.\u00a0 While…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,46,18,35,89,11,45],"tags":[492,938,493,491,494],"class_list":["post-1169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-education","category-government","category-religion","category-research-2","category-skepticism","category-society","tag-divorce-rate","tag-evolution","tag-poverty","tag-teen-pregnancy","tag-us-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}