God... god eez zee beegest beetch of zem all.

ROTFLMFAO.

Whew.

Okay, sorry--schadenfreude is so unbecoming, I know. I'm really not that petty, but when a London Times article bears the headline "Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'," I can't help but feel a soupçon of pleasure; but please don't let my juvenile sense of irony dissauade you from reading the article. It's actually quite interesting and suggests some provocative conclusions:

Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.

He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.

The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional

The original study, published in Creighton University's Journal of Religion and Society can be found here (will launch a new browser window). Scroll down about halfway to see the graphs Mr. Paul used to display his data; fascinating stuff.