In 1880, the religious moralist Dostoyevsky wrote: ?If God does not exist then everything is permissible.? Since then, this theory has become conventional wisdom. It has, in recent years however, been severely put to test; all wars have been fought in the name of religion. If anything, Dosteyevsky?s theory should now be rephrased.

To support this, an opinion poll published in Britain recently shows that 82 percent of the people said they thought religion does more harm than good. This reaction probably has a lot to do with the Iraq war. It would be hard to tell what results a similar poll would produce here. Having said this, facts speak for themselves. Used as weapons, religions can hardly be said to have primarily been a force for good here.

Mauritius, a country where most people would describe themselves as being religious, should have been a country where crime rates are ridiculously low. And yet, this is clearly not the case.

In Mauritius, despite the prominence of religion - or maybe because of it - it is surprisingly taboo to question anything that has even remotely to do with religion and God. Most people we have interviewed have declined to comment. Many agreed, however - off record obviously - that religions do not necessarily inspire grand feelings in people.

Columnist Dyer commented on this matter last week, relating the poll published in Britain to an article that was published a couple of years ago in the Journal of Religion and Society, entitled ?Cross-National correlations of quantifiable societal health with popular religiosity and secularism in the prosperous democracies? by Gregory Paul. Paul sought to test the assertion that religion makes people behave better.

If that was true, as Dyer points out, the United States, where over 85 percent of the population describe themselves as religious believers, would be ?heaven on earth? whereas Britain would be rife with crime, sexual misbehaviour and the like. Likewise, Mauritius, a country where most people would describe themselves as being religious, should have been a country where crime rates are ridiculously low bordering on the inexistent. And yet, this is clearly not the case. Gregory Paul found in his research that ?in general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, teen pregnancy and abortion while none of the strongly secularised, pre-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction.?

So, despite preconceived ideas that religion makes people behave better, available data says just the opposite. What is fascinating about this is that, while most people never actually believed that religion made people behave better, the idea that it actually made people behave worse seems quite far-fetched. Yet there is a method to this madness. According to Dyer, the more religious a country is, the smaller the resources that it puts into social spending, ?perhaps on the assumption that God will provide?. Still according to the columnist, there is a strong linkage between how secular a country is and how much it spends on social welfare and income redistribution. There is an equally strong correlation between high levels of social spending and a good score on Gregory Paul?s survey.

This makes sense because ? however politically incorrect this may sound ? homicide and high infant mortality are far more likely to affect the poor than the rich. In Mauritius, social spending is not in the customs. Things are looking more positive but, as a general rule, the rich tend to get richer and the poor have to contend with status quo, if not with a worsening of their conditions.

Religions, as a general rule, do not engage in charity. Religions depend on the funding of their wealthier members.

Theoretically, in Gregory Paul?s survey, Mauritius, being a secular country, would have fared very well. The recent loudspeaker judgment tends to suggest the contrary, however. Mauritius is a secular country in the sense that there is no one religion that rules. But it isn?t a secular country in the sense that there are too many religions that rule everyone. One is allowed not to follow or believe but one has to abide by the rules and constraints of all other religions.

Going by this reasoning, we would probably have fared very badly in Paul?s survey. Some taboo food for thought then; are many of our social problems due to the fact that we are too religious?