universalism should be conducive to liberty, the fact that religiosity is positively correlated with benevolence, which in turn is correlated with universalism, can be considered circumstantial evidence supporting the hypothesis that religion might be in tension with oppression. As already there have been few empirical investigations relevant to the relation of actual oppression to religion—that is, the broad relation of oppression at the level of a society to the religiosity of the individuals in that society. Norris and Ingelhart (2011) found indirect evidence, using the World Values Survey, that well-developed post-industrial societies were sites of religious decline. Moreover, the vast majority of post-industrial societies are relatively democratic and higher than the world average in their protection of civil liberties and political rights. Thus, religious diminishment, development, and democratic protection of rights and liberties all tend to though the pattern of causal effects between these three variables is unknown. To gain more confidence whether religion actually oppression, causes oppression causes religion, or some third variable (such as lack of human development) causes both, it is important to employ both multiple regression and experimental methods. For our cross-cultural multiple regression investigations, we sampled countries that suffer varying degrees of oppression and then examined whether residents of these countries expressed more or less intense religiosity and conservatism, respectively. We also conducted multiple regressions controlling for human development and other demographic variables to identify independent relationships less likely to lead to spurious causal inferences. Our first two studies thus investigated the degree to which religiosity
universalism should be conducive to liberty, the fact that religiosity is positively correlated with benevolence, which in turn is correlated with universalism, can be considered circumstantial evidence supporting the hypothesis that religion might be in tension with oppression. As already there have been few empirical investigations relevant to the relation of actual oppression to religion—that is, the broad relation of oppression at the level of a society to the religiosity of the individuals in that society. Norris and Ingelhart (2011) found indirect evidence, using the World Values Survey, that well-developed post-industrial societies were sites of religious decline. Moreover, the vast majority of post-industrial societies are relatively democratic and higher than the world average in their protection of civil liberties and political rights. Thus, religious diminishment, development, and democratic protection of rights and liberties all tend to though the pattern of causal effects between these three variables is unknown. To gain more confidence whether religion actually causes oppression, oppression causes religion, or some third variable (such as lack of human development) causes both, it is important to employ both multiple regression and experimental methods. For our cross-cultural multiple regression investigations, we sampled countries that suffer varying degrees of oppression and then examined whether residents of these countries expressed more or less intense religiosity and conservatism, respectively. We also conducted multiple regressions controlling for human development and other demographic variables to identify independent relationships less likely to lead to spurious causal inferences. Our first two studies thus investigated the degree to which religiosity
religionoppression_rbb_mainmanuscript_revisedagainfinal-1.docx