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Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

Is there much evidence for the specific choice of religion as a casual factor? Methods of blending a traditionalist religion with modern life seem much more important than which religion you start with. For example, Judaism imposes an extremely strict set of rules that govern almost every conceivable aspect of daily life. And indeed you find that strictly observant Orthodox Jews are mostly unable to function in a modern society; a large percentage of those living in Israel are unemployed and supported by state funds. However a large number of Jews have chosen to be somewhat looser in their adherence to Jewish law, which seems to be the key, rather than Judaism itself being more compatible with modernity.

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I lived in Western Turkey for a year, and while nearly everyone was Muslim (some atheists sprinkled here and there), there was plenty of alcohol and bars, <20% of women wore the headscarf, and I honestly can't remember any instance of someone praying, let alone dropping what they were doing to pray. In Canada, I have some Muslim friends who do that, though.

Granted, this was in the less religious parts of Turkey, but it's grossly unfair to the moderates to paint everyone with the fundamentalist brush. There's a billion Muslims out there.

The majority of Christians do not believe that the Earth was created 10000 years ago!

I strongly recommend the comic book Persepolis to anyone who wants a better understanding of life in the Middle East (or at least, Iran).

Turkey is not a good argument for Islam being "tolerant" or Muslims being somehow naturally "less religious."

Ataturk abolished the Caliphate in 1924. He explicitly introduced the constitution to Turkey which declared the state to be secular, that is, independent of any religious influence! He effectively banned headscarves (hijabs, nijabs, whatever) in all public institutions (being religious attire, therefore to be separated from state), including schools and universities.

The West however wasn't so smart recently, forgetting how much fights and sacrifices were needed to achieve the freedoms we have now (but will we keep them depends on our readiness to stand for them, more than up to now).

Erdogan now pulls Turkey back to the pre-20th century state. And unfortunately, there are enough of those who support him and his Islamic "revival."

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The comics Persepolis that you mention, among some personal stories, also covers the moment of "Islamic revolution" in Iran, which, among many other things, destroyed women freedoms. Before:

http://www.parstimes.com/fashion/pre_revolution/

Now:

http://www.aquila-style.com/focus-points/iranian-women-campa...

Watch and weep. Or consider whom you support.

It probably didn't help that the printing press was banned by the Ottoman Empire for centuries and "when they finally allowed it assigned a panel of religious experts to ensure that the books printed met with the moral and religious standards of the political elite."

From the book Why Nations Fail. http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-why-nations-fail/chapanal...

There is clear evidence that Catholic areas have lower levels of economic growth than Prodestent areas even within same country. So, religion really does impact economic growth. But, I don't think there is hard evidence to brake it down to specific causes within each religious group.

PS: While you may disagree with this, there is a lot of research into this topic: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=religion+economic+devel...

Do you have any sources for that claim? I would be genuineley interested in the methodology of this research. Its just anecdotal, but here in Germany it is the other way around. The Catholic south is prosperous, whereas the protestant north (east) is poor. I can think of examples where the opposite is true (Belgium) but I highly doubt that there is a casual connection. In Belgium for example the catholic (and more important industrialized) wallonia was very prosperous during the 19th century, in opposition to the more agrarian flanders. Nowdays its flanders that is more prosperous, and the old industrial regions in the south suffer from the effects of deindustrialisation.

The Protestant northeast suffered from being part of East Germany. A hundred years ago Prussia was much more powerful than Bavaria.

This may be true, but Bremen, Niedersachsen and Schleswig Holstein are not in a very good shape either (at least compared to Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg). But what all of this shows, is that there are a whole bunch of historical and socio-economic factors at play that have no connection with religion.

Prussia was also the last paganic part of Europe.

I have seen several pieces of research on this topic over the years, but here is something from a quick search.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/oct/31/economics-...

I have seen US and England held up as other examples, Germany may be a counter example.

How do you explain Bayern in Germany then?

Simple explanation: communist occupation of East Germany by the Soviets brought there the "excellent" development opportunities also seen in the rest of Eastern Europe and Russia. Before that, Prussia was way ahead of Bavaria.

That still doesn't explain why Bavaria is ahead of other former West German states.

And global worming does not explain any specific daily temperature. The point is there are hundreds of years of history to do comparative analysis and thousands of locations to consider. I would suggest reading the literature instead of trying to point to a counter example.

PS: Bavaria is only nominally 51 Cathlic vs the average of 30 for the entire country. Further, you can break things down to a much lower level. https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2016/07/18/germany-mass-go...

Ok, then: Ireland, Baden-Wurtemberg, Austria, Lombardy.

Max Weber was a smart guy, but he died 100 years ago. I hope we have better things to correlate with prosperity than just one strain of a particular religion.

Over the last several hundred years Ireland has had massive economic issues. This may have little to do with religion but I don't think it supports whatever point your trying to make.

Have you ever heard of Bavaria? Also called Germany's Texas.

That is not really true. It ignores that in many of the states where this is true, there were very many other cultural differences, and also differences in the laws that they were working under.

I don't think this line of research hold up very well, specially not cross country over long timeframes.

Correlation vs causation. Does protestantism improve productivity, or did the cultures where productivity is valued highly more easily convert to protestantism?

I think you're confusing economic differences between the US South (very not-catholic) vs Northeast (very catholic) as being caused by the religion when there are a bunch of much more important differences, economically speaking, you could look at.

Take a look at total GDP per capita, the northeast is way ahead. Different metric, different results, still not caused by religion.

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