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John Washburn's avatar

https://www.sefaria.org/Bava_Metzia.59b.1?lang=bi&with=Translations

Obviously both Christianity and Islam pale in comparison to the goat: Judaism.

Jokes aside, good article, I’m particularly annoyed by pro-Christian influencers who tout the reformation as the reason why Christianity is so much more advanced, like that wasn’t a period of more senseless sectarian violence than the Islamic World has ever seen.

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Philip's avatar

I’m not sure it’s appropriate to control for GDP when assessing the relationship between religion and particular outcomes.

First, the outcomes in question (press freedom, democratic strength) might themselves influence GDP. Second, and more obviously, religion might influence GDP directly. If you control for GDP because you think it has causal effects on your outcomes of interest, then you need to have an account of why there’s no causal relationship between GDP and religion, which would render the overall correlation spurious.

Btw, I’m a libertarian who has observed that under Islam, there is a separation between the state and the law; libertarians are obviously highly interested in non-state systems of law, so I have an ideological bias in favor of Islam having a *positive* effect on GDP. But I don’t think that matches empirical reality.

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