Ten days ago, the Intelligent Design promoter V. J. Torley wrote an essay at the ID site Uncommon Descent claiming that all was not well in Denmark. His piece, “Is something rotten in the state of Denmark?,” was written to refute my own claim that, despite being a largely atheistic and almost totally secular country, Denmark (Torley forgot that I always add Sweden here), is a highly moral, well-functioning society, proving that you don’t need God to be good.

My conclusions were based largely the work of sociologist Phil Zuckerman (see here, here, and here, for example), who surveyed Sweden and Denmark for their religiosity, and other work by people like Greg Paul showing that Sweden and Denmark are, using a basket of sociological indices, highly successful societies.  This is a general conclusion of other workers as well; in fact, among first-world countries (and I suspect across the world as well), the degree of religiosity of a nation is negatively associated with its well being: the more religious the country, the less “successful” it is as a society.  My own explanation is that religiosity arises from poor social conditions, as when the state won’t give you medical care or take care of you when you’re old.

But let’s leave my speculations aside. One response of the religious when faced with these facts is to claim that countries like Denmark and Sweden are showing residual religiosity—a societal well being derived from their historically Christian past, which gave rise to present-day morality, even among atheists.. That’s all well and good, but fails to explain the correlation mentioned above—for, if anything, residual religiosity should erod with time, and so one would not expect the least religious countries to still be the ones that are better off.

The other response, that of  V. J. Torley, is to assert that countries like Denmark and Sweden aren’t that well off after all.  His entire post can be summed up by his quote:

Perhaps Coyne might be interested to read an eye-opening article by Carol Brown over at American Thinkeron what is happening in Denmark. Ms. Brown paints a terrifying portrait of a society which is falling apart under the influence of religiously motivated violence. Crime in Denmark has exploded, and street gangs “have taken over large parts of Danish towns and cities”. There are numerous “no go” zones where even the police are afraid to venture. Is this Coyne’s idea of a successful secular society?

Some morals to be drawn from Brown’s article:

1. Not all forms of religion are good; some are toxic.

2. Nature abhors a vacuum. Secularism is powerless to drive out toxic forms of religion.

3. The only proven way to drive out toxic forms of religion, and keep them out, is with wholesome forms of religion.

You can guess what’s going on here. Brown’s piece describes a rise in crime in Denmark due to an incursion of Muslim immigrants, causing violence, the rise of thuggish Muslim street gangs and, Brown claims, a complete dissolution of Danish society.  If ever a piece was Islamophobic, and I hate using that term, it’s Brown’s (and by default, Torley’s). Just read Brown’s piece to see the kind of scare-mongering it paints, and the general bias against Muslims. The implication is that Muslims can never be peacefully integrated into Western society, and so must either be expelled or prohibited from immigrating.

And really, are Christianity and Catholicism the things we need to stave off Islam? Are they more “wholesome” than secular societies? And how does it work, exactly? How does “wholesome” religion stave off “toxic” religion? Does the pervasiveness of, say, Catholicism, make Muslims less violent? And why is atheism impotent to do this?

All that Torley’s article proves is that Islam appears to create more problems in a single European country than do other faiths. It does not demonstrate that countries with no faith are “less wholesome” than religious ones. In fact, the higher well0-being of countries like Denmark and Sweden (and most of northern Europe, which is also largely atheistic) before Muslim immigration refutes Torley’s implication that “wholesome” religion is good for a country.

In the present state of the world, Islam is, I agree, a more toxic faith than many others, perhaps the most toxic faith. But that doesn’t mean that its excesses can be defanged by some kind of bigoted prohibition of Muslim immigration or, God forbid, the forcible conversion of Muslims into Christians (would Torley like some kind of reverse ISIS?). The solution is simply to enforce civil law and Enlightenment values, and to insist that Muslims cannot practice dysfunctional social behaviors in a Western society. It’s worked in the U.S., after all. Sadly, rather than trying to integrate Muslims into their culture, Denmark may be capitulating to their religious demands, scared that what happened with the publication of the anti-Muslim Danish cartoons will happen again. This, I suspect—and not atheism—is what’s behind the rise in violent crime in Denmark.

But the notion that atheistic states are falling apart is bogus. Statistics show that while violent crimes have indeed risen in the last 7 years in Denmark, the total crime rate has stayed about the same there. (Violent crimes, by the way have also risen in one other place: Luxembourg, a state far more religious than Denmark!) And in Sweden, another place where atheism should be unable to stave off Islamic violence, both violent and nonviolent crimes have stayed pretty level. In fact, throughout Europe, crime rates are either staying level or falling.

Biochemist Larry Moran mentioned Torley’s claims four days ago on his website Sandwalk, and a number of commenters (and Moran himself) testified to the moral health of Denmark.  Now these are impressions, but the only evidence for the moral disintegration of Denmark is the unique rise in violent crime in that nation compared to other European states.  Yet if atheism simply fails to stave off Islamic violence, violent crime should be rising all over the nonbelieving states of northern Europe: in places like Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and France (which has a higher proportion of atheists than Denmark). All of these places have experienced an increase in their Muslim population, but crime isn’t rising.

Torley is wrong. If the increase in violent crime in Denmark reflects Muslim immigration, I doubt that means that only wholesome religion can prevent that crime. I ssupect instead that the Danes are simply less insistent on the integration of Muslims into their society. Unfortunately, I can’t speak to (or support) that hypothesis. All I know is that Torley is basing his promotion of “wholesome” religions (presumably Christianity) on a single statistic, a statistic that fails to support his thesis when you look to other atheistic countries beyond Denmark.

So here’s my prediction: if Greg Paul redid his 2008 survey showing that the less religious countries in Europe were better off (using his 25 indices of societal health), he would get the same results today.