Editor:
Re: Correlation is not cause, Feb. 16 letters.
Yes, there is some credibility to claim that religion cannot guarantee goodness. But to claim the world’s ills are due to religious convictions is a bit of a stretch.
Based on Gregory Scott Paul’s “Societies Scale” – if that is the basis of his criteria – North American does not come out well.
It is true there are many good people, including atheists, who lack any religious conviction. This is true in my own family. During my long life and my interactions, I can attest to this.
Letter-writer Scott Keddy’s thesis, however, begins to unravel when he claims the U.S. ranks No. 1 as a religious nation. Nothing could be further from the truth! Historically, many hideous crimes have been committed in the name of religion, but ruthless attempts to eradicate religion have also existed. Look at the deeds of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao. It’s not religion, but man’s insensitive inhumanity that is to blame.
Statistics are a good tool as a measurement of progress – but at times they are a dangerous tool. They can be used to affirm a point view and to pursue truth, but they can also be used to mislead. Take the tobacco companies of past decades as they tried to counter the claims of smoking causing cancer.
I don’t know if Keddy has dealt with the poverty issue. There is more poverty in the U.S. than in other of the eight industrialized western countries. The region of greatest poverty is in the Pre-Confederate states. I am being factitious, of course, but could this be blamed on emancipation?
Brendan Hopwood, Surrey