Religion declines in well-run, trusting societies

http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2014/04/26/religion-declines-in-well-run-trusting-societies/


Douglas Todd

April 26, 2014. 11:59 am


"It turns out that some of the most cooperative, trusting and well-to-do societies on earth, such as those in Western Europe and Scandinavia, are also the least religious in the world and the most reliant on government," says Ara Norenzayan, author of Big Gods.

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do,

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too.

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace.

– John Lennon

John Lennon was a dreamer. But he was not the only one.

In his famous song, Imagine, Lennon was not alone in being convinced institutional religions – and nations – are the key causes of war and impediments to universal peace.

But was Lennon’s refrain accurate? Evolutionary psychologists, including at the University of B.C., have probed just these questions through innovative experiments with subjects from Canada to Africa, Europe to South Asia.

They are concluding Lennon may have been half right – that humans can build fair and peaceful societies in which there is “no religion,” or at least in which spirituality shifts to a more private realm.

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