Q&A – The Societal Benefit of a Belief in God

When faith in God is removed from the equation there’s far more crime and sustainably higher rates of violent crime.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Your questions Brian's answers. It's time for today's Q and
A of the day. This is the Brian Mud Show. Yeah.
Today's Q and A the societal benefit of a belief
in God. This is brought to you by Moan Listen
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(00:26):
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Speaker 2 (00:44):
Hello everybody, This is Chris from Northeast Florida. Democrats. Ultimate
goal was to remove God from our society. This is
what a godless society will turn into, complete chaos when
nobody believes or respects point.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah. Today's talkback was in response to the Minneapolis shooting
of school children that mass prior to the start of
their school day last week, and this message resonated with me.
As I previously shared, Harvard's extensive research are the benefit
of faith to those who are believers. However, as I've
also suggested, even non believers benefit from our society's Judeo

(01:23):
Christian founding. What this message led to me consider was
presenting to you a way to demonstrate the extent of
the benefit of the faithful to society and the view
of the possible if more were to become believers. So
just kind of walk you back on some of what
I've shared with you previously. First, in twenty eighteen, Harvard

(01:45):
produced the most compelling study to date on the factors
that relate to youth depression, violence, substance abuse, and suicide.
The study, entitled Religious Upbringing linked to Better health and
well Being during early childhood early adulthood, was never broadly
covered by news media, or for that matter, even widely

(02:07):
publicized by Harvard, which was unfortunate. I don't think it
led necessarily to the kind of conclusions they were hoping for,
but the information is as relevant as ever. There's a
common thread that runs through well intentioned people across the
ideological spectrum. Today, mental health issues are a top concern

(02:28):
right how often does that come up? Especially after mass shootings,
any kind of really awful tragedy brought into focus through
numerous events in recent years across every age group, gender,
ethnic background, ideological tendency, we're always concerned about identifying, treating,

(02:49):
and restricting what access to weapons. If only we take
care of the weapon, right, if only, if only we
stopped the gun violence? Bad gun? You laugh, angel, I
just guess you're bad.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
Just had a vision of you spanking a gun.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Oh gosh. So clearly the best of all solutions would
be to reduce mental illness. The gun's just going to
sit there. There's still yet been a gun that went
ahead and loaded itself, hopped out of a holster, maybe
a gun safe, and then started just I'm being violent.

(03:32):
People with weapons, they are the ones that are and
the mentally ill big part of this, right, So let's
dive into it a little bit more here forever twenty
years a voice of believe that placed directly into the story.
The further God is removed from our society, the worst
the outcomes are. And regardless of one's religious views, society

(03:54):
does benefit from tenants of faith. Even atheist Harvard study
that was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology demonstrated
powerful results. By the age of twenty, those raised with
religious practices average being eighteen percent happier, thirty percent more
likely to help others, thirty three percent less likely to

(04:16):
engage in substance abuse. And what's more is that those
who fared best were those who prayed daily. In other words,
having faith in one's life in any capacity provided benefit.
The more involved with one's faith they were, the greater
the benefit. Now it's not to say that if all
children were raised in religious upbringings and took their faith seriously,
we'd end all mental health issue issues. But man definitely

(04:38):
would have an enormous benefit. It would be an enormously
positive catalyst. Facts are there, and I walk you back
to something else that Entering nineteen eighty, the first full
year of operations for the Department of Education came about
an eighty one the average education outcome for American second

(05:00):
in the world. Only Australians were ahead of us. He
had religious holidays, references, prayers that were acceptable in the classroom.
Over the next twenty years, entering the two thousands, what
did we see at three hundred percent increase in diagnosed depression.
We have the first school shooting in Columbine. That first generation.
We have seen nothing but education outcomes decline in this

(05:24):
country since. And is it all a coincidence? I mean,
he had the Department of Education. But why the Department
of Education. Well, we removed the single most important thing
for the benefit of society. Now when you take a
look at the other thing that's come about as we

(05:44):
have removed God from society, tried distance in all avenues
of public life, God from society, there has been an
outcome here. You know, you have the Here Research Center
showing that back in nineteen eighty only six percent of
Americans did not identify with any religion or faith, only
six percent. Today that is up to seventeen percent. And

(06:08):
even that increases and tell the whole story because its
biggest youngest. So you have twenty six percent of younger adults,
those born after eighty one, that don't identify with any
gutter faith. And so you see that coming about in
the first generation race completely in the era of the
Department of Education. And then you take a look at

(06:30):
all of the mental health issues. You have young adults
that are twenty five percent more likely to be diagnosed
with depression than any other generation goes to lockstep. That's
a separate study from the Harvard study confirms that. And
then we have a new study, this one from the
National Institutes of Health. It's called Associations between really religious religiosity,

(06:52):
aggression and crime, and it found that those who identified
as regularly religious or seventeen percent less likely to commit
any crime, thirty percent less likely to commit a violent crime.
To the point of today's note is that the listener
is exactly right here. We have three different studies. They
all point in the same direction. The numbers basically overlap

(07:15):
with one another as well. When faith in God is
removed from the equation, you have far more crime, You
have substantially higher rates of violent crime, you have a
lot more mental illness. And this is you know, consistent
right along. Even if atheists believe that there's nothing out there,

(07:36):
they still benefit from it. But if they're from less crime,
although atheist is more likely to commit crime, that's the
other side of this coin. And so the further society
attempts to distance us from faith in God, the worst
those results are going to be. And thankfully you have
encouraging signs gen Z starting to turn back towards God.
There have been higher levels of especially young men, attending

(07:58):
church getting engaged with their faith in the prior generation.
And by the way, it's a trend that actually appears
to be happening globally, so hopefully this is the beginning
of a trend that eventually puts an end to the
forty plus year growth and mental health issues and violence
in society associated with the lack of faith in one's life.