Religion and Prosperity - Here's

Religion and Prosperity - Here's the argument I have with my few atheist, agnostic and non-Judeo-Christian friends. It starts out like this: "Name a non-Judeo-Christian society that has ever been a net gain for the peasant on the street, during their lifetimes."

The argument quickly devolves into a digression on geography, natural resources and will to power - which inevitably dodges the point. "Leave aside the fact," I answer, "that China and India and pre-Columbian Mexico and even Mesopotamia were hardly bereft of resources, historically - it's a matter of fact that in each of those societies, and every other similar example, the resources went exclusively - not "in an unbalanced way", but "without exception" - to the ruling class. It's only been through the rise of Judeo-Christian philosophy that the lot of the peasant has ever improved".

"Yes", the response goes, "but that's only because the West had the Industrial revolution".

But how could the Industrial Revolution - or, for that matter, the Renaissance or the Information Age for that matter - have occurred in, say, a Moslem or Buddhist or Taoist society? The fundamental driving forces of those societies, with the possible exception of Islam - are inimical to the formation of governments that respect the rule of law and have fundamentally liberal values. Christianity does - and many of Western society's great advances have happened, if not in the name of Christianity, at least in societies broadly formed according along the lines of Judeo-Christian philosophy.

I say possibly Islam - there is argument there. Drezner has an interesting debate going on over the economic future of Islam.

Tyler Volokh Cowen is, if not bearish, at least not convinced that Islam is a direct cause of a poor economy - it's merely hard to disentangle it from the lousy governments that strangle people and economies:

These correlations miss the point. To the extent that Islam has negative effects, it operates through indirect mechanisms. Islamic countries have a difficult time establishing democracy and rule of law and good economic policy. True, if you include enough proxy variables in the regression -- such as good policy -- the influence of Islam will wash out. Islam is an indirect cause of some problems, not the direct cause, and the direct causes may well have more statistical significance. But the point remains that Islam can influence the variables that matter.

The study uses intra-national comparisons as well. Muslims in the United States have done quite well. Muslims in India and Ghana are not poorer that non-Muslims in those countries, adjusting for the relevant variables (Malaysia of course is an exception, I might add that in the case of India Hinduism might be bad for growth too, not to mention the animism that is common in Ghana, so this is a comparative result against some not so impressive contenders.) But again this is missing the point. The fact that Islamic individuals can do well, when embedded in some other economic and legal order, does not mean that Islamic countries can sustain such institutions. In fact I think that Islamic philosophy and theology make it harder to have a liberal legal order.

Kieran Kealy disagrees - sort of.

The whole thing is worth a read...