Religion makes your richer and more free

'Protestant Ethic' 2.0: The New Ways Religion Is Driving Economic Outperformance - Forbes

Snippets:

Organized religion provides a counterweight to the European notion that we must rely on government for everything.

Which accounts for the administration's hostility to the Catholic Church, for example.

Some might be surprised to learn that religious affiliation grows with education levels.

This is well documented in sociological studies. So much for the New Atheist movement's claim that religion is the product of ignorance.

In countries with a substantial historical Protestant influence such as Germany, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands continue to outperform economic the heavily Catholic nations like Italy, Ireland and Spain, according to a recent European study. The difference, they speculate, may be in Protestant traditions of self-help, frugality and emphasis on education.

Let it be noted that none of these countries is very religious compared to the United States; in Europe as a whole barely 50 percent of adults have attended a church service even once. But the socio-economic character of the Protestant northern European countries remains deeply embedded.

Religious people also tend to live longer and suffer less disabilities with old age, as author Murray notes. Researchers at Harvard, looking at dozens of countries over the past 40 years, demonstrated that religion reinforces the patterns of personal virtue, social trust and willingness to defer gratification long associated with business success.

So is there a flaw in this argument?

1. The administration and the Congress thinks that taxing the (relatively) wealthy and issuing mandates will help keep health costs down.

2. Religious people are healthier than non-religious people.

3. Religious people are more financially successful than non-religious people.

Therefore, the government should mandate that everyone become religious.

In virtually every part of the world, religious people tend to have more children than those who are unaffiliated.

Which, presumably, means that over time the overall number of religious adults will rise, but this is not happening, even in the United States. Read the whole thing.