Cost v Benefit

Yes, at this point, I'm pretty sure this is considered beating a dead horse, but there's another study that needs to be seen. This one's a lot more legit than USA Today's. Looking at cencus statistics from nations all over the world, the survey has found that religious nations, especially the US, are benefitting much less than secular ones. Ironically we're even less religious than we (eh, the average American) claim to be. You can read a nice recap here or read the full report.

Most painfully ironic statistics ever [figures on either link above]:

In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies (Figures 5 and 6).

Keep in mind, as Skeptic's report says, this only proves correlation, not causation, however with such high correlations, the report seems entirely applicable in the real world. Also, I honestly would not have guessed we had higher abortion rates. I would have thought those would be pretty evenly distributed across international lines.

My favorite rather pertinent clips:

• Bill Maher on abstinence
  
• Penn and Teller on the same
  
• Jon Stewart defends the Party of Death (The guy he's interviewing exactly fits the bill of a twerp.)