Correlation: Secularization and Honesty
One implication of this is that religion improves honesty, though not necessarily in a good way because the effect seems to be entirely based on fear. Would this, however, mean that society as a whole would be better off with more religion? This is certainly what a lot of religious apologists believe and argue, but the empirical evidence tells us a different story. Around the world secularity correlates highly with honesty whereas religion correlates highly with public corruption.
In the graph, frequency of prayer (an average of how often people report praying, taken from the World Values Survey and International Social Survey) is plotted against the 2001 Corruption Perceptions Index. As you can see, there is in fact a weak (although very statistically significant) relationship between the two. The perhaps unexpected result is that the relationship is the opposite of what religious advocates would have us believe. As religious fervour in a country goes down, so does corruption. More religion equates to more corruption, not less. ...
This does not mean that religion causes corruption. A more likely explanation is that a common, third factor explains both. And the obvious explanation is wealth. Rich countries tend to be both irreligious and honest. Poor countries have endemic corruption and religion. Indeed, after controlling for GDP, the statistical relationship between corruption and religion disappears.
Source: BHA Science
So while religion may not cause corruption, it certainly doesn't look as though it reduces corruption either — but if religion is unable to reduce corruption, an important argument offered by religious apologists is revealed to be false. What's more, even if the relationship between secularism and honesty is merely correlative, that's another nail in the coffin of religion if that correlation is necessary — i.e., if both increase secularity and increased honesty are necessary consequences of some third social development.
“Conscience. That little voice inside your head that tells you somebody may be watching.”
I don’t know who said this originally.
H. L. Mencken said that, or something similar to it I believe.
We’ve had a very recent spate of politicians recently here in the US getting involved in a number of scandals, surprisingly most of them related to infidelity to their wives. Take then that most of our elected officials profess a strong religiousness and the study above doesnt surprise me much.
Of course our politicians may be largely lying about their religious beliefs since they well know that to claim otherwise is for the most part death to their political lives. The few politicians who are admitted athiests must be really competant to get elected.