Is society becoming less moral?

Reading the news, I often see people complaining that society is becoming less moral, especially that young people are less moral than they used to be. Americans certainly have this idea about American society. But are they right? Is society becoming less moral?

In "Our Great Moral Decline", The Economist's R.M. writes that the Republican contenders who want to run for the job of President of the United States this November are telling voters that America needs "a strong political leader to do something to get us out of the moral slump that we’re in" (2012, ¶ 1). However, R.M. suggests that it is hard to make sense of this claim: Americans are committing less crime than before, with murder and theft both constantly decreasing over the past couple of decades. Even things like the abortion rate and teenage pregnancy are decreasing. Finally, R.M. suggests that perhaps the Republican politicians mean that America is in moral decline because less Americans believe in any god or take seriously any religion, which he agrees is true, but as he also asks: "is the decline in religious observance a moral problem?" (¶ 8). The answer, he suggests, is "No", less religion is not a moral problem for American society.

The first thing I like about R.M's short piece, actually a blog post, in The Economist, which is one of the sources included in the Looking for Something to Read? section on the right, is that he provides links to solid statistical support for all of his important ideas. For example, the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division's Uniform Crime Report clearly shows that violent and property crime in the US is decreasing (2010), and the summary of poll results from The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life (2010) shows that the younger Americans are, the less religious both in practice and in belief they are, going to church less and believing in god less. The only graph on which Americans born in 1981 or later were at the top was in opposing Bible reading and prayer in government schools. It's isn't academic writing, so R.M. doesn't give parenthetic citations and he does not include a References list at the end of his writing, but the links are there so that interested readers can check the facts and decide whether they are reliable or not. I rather wish R.M. has used at least his full last name, but it's the policy of The Economist not to give author names, unlike The New York Times, which almost always gives the writer's full name.

I also like R.M's post because it corrects what I think is a common mistake: that religion makes people more moral, or that people need religion to behave morally. The statistics showing that people are in fact behaving more morally, committing less crime, at the same time as religion is dying are good evidence that this belief about religion is false. This is not new. About 2,400 years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato argued in Euthyphro for something even stronger when he said that religious teaching could not make anything moral or immoral. And I think he was right. This also makes sense because we know that religions disagree on many moral questions, and we also know, as the crime statistics show, that people do not need a religion to tell them what is right and wrong. Worse, religion is often silly or wrong on moral issues. A not so important, silly example is that Judaism and Islam teach that eating pork is morally wrong, but it is not. On the issue of eating pork, these religions are just wrong, and it's generally not a big problem, but some religious teachings are seriously immoral. Christianity, for example, is usually believed to say that abortion and homosexuality are morally wrong and that they must be banned and punished, but these things are not normally immoral. In fact, it is these religious teachings which cause harm, suffering and injustice to many that are immoral.

I think it's very encouraging that as societies become less religious, they also become more moral. The most atheistic countries in the world are the northern European countries such as Denmark and Sweden, and they also have some of he lowest crime rates, along with the greatest respect for all citizens. The US also does well, and it is clearly improving.

And Thailand? Although Thailand is still more violent than the United States, the murder statistics for the past ten years suggest that Thai society is also becoming more peaceful today than in the past ("List of Countries", 2012). And that is a good thing. I don't think that there is any moral decline in Thailand: quite the opposite, even if, like the US and my country, there is still plenty of room for society to improve. Reading the daily newspapers might lead people to think otherwise, but society's morals in most countries are getting better, not worse.

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References

Criminal Justice Information Services Division. (2010). Crime in the United States by Volume and Rate per 100,000 Inhabitants, 1991–2010. Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice. Retrieved March 7, 2012 from http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10tbl01.xls

List of countries by intentional homicide rate. (2012, February 29). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 12:42, March 7, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate&oldid=479443842

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. (2010, February). Religion Among the Millennials. Retrieved March 7, 2012 from http://www.pewforum.org/Age/Religion-Among-the-Millennials.aspx

R.M. (2012, March 2). Our great moral decline. The Economist. Retrieved March 7, 2012 from http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/03/morals