STUDY: More Government=Less God

A new paper from psychology researchers showcases how big government leads to the decline in religious thinking.

Miami Herald: 

Researchers call it an exchange model of religion: If people can get what they need from the government (be it health care, education or welfare) they’re less likely to turn to a divine power for help, according to the theory.

But are people actually more likely to drop religion in places where governments provide more services and stability? In a new paper, psychology researchers crunched the numbers — and found that better government services were in fact linked to lower levels of strong religious beliefs.

Those findings held true in states across the U.S. and in countries around the world, researchers said.

The article, “Religion as an Exchange System: The Interchangeability of God and Government in a Provider Role,” was published April 12 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

The article goes on

The researchers also found something of a staggered link between the government services on offer and levels of religiosity in a given state. Between 2008 and 2013 in the U.S., for example, “better government services in a specific year predicted lower religiosity 1 to 2 years later,” researchers wrote.

“If a secular entity provides what people need, they will be less likely to seek help from God or other supernatural entities. Government is the most likely secular provider,” the researchers concluded. “We showed in two cross-sectional analyses, one using world countries and one using states in the United States, that better government services were related to lower levels of religiosity.”

How exactly did the researchers measure government service levels and how religious people are? The research relied on a mix of World Bank, World Fact Book, U.S. Census and Gallup data, researchers said.

Researchers measured government services by looking at how much each state or country spent on health and education as a percentage of gross domestic product. Then researchers compared those numbers with data about religion that Gallup collected from 455,104 people across 155 countries, according to the paper. That’s nearly 3,000 respondents from each country, researcher said.

“If the benefits acquired in the religious exchange can be acquired elsewhere, religion becomes less useful,” researchers wrote. They added that, when it comes to the role religion plays in establishing predictability and control in society, “the power and order emanating from God can be outsourced to the government.”

Researchers adjusted their results to account for differences in quality of life and income inequality across countries and states. That way, they could attempt to isolate the relationship between two variables: government services and how religious a population is.

This study does everything but come out and say the truth. The bottom line is that Government becomes God. If government is your provider it is no longer serving you it is your higher being.

WATCH:

New study shows bigger government=less God https://t.co/b9JbJEr7su

— Jacob Palmieri (@jakepalmieri) April 19, 2018