murder rates like most violent crime rates are lower in more secular Nations and the more secular states in the U.S such as Vermont and Oregon compared to more religious states Oregon and Vermont also have less minorities and since you're only doing a bivarity analysis we could switch out the variable of religiosity for the variable of minorities in using your own logic we'd have to conclude that having more minorities in a region leads to more crime that would obviously be wrong to conclude so why do you get to say religiosity leads to higher crime rates from
this surface level understanding of the data research actually seems to indicate that people living in poor communities or harsh living conditions tend to become more religious to quote from two researchers the greater social protection longevity and health found in wealthy post-industrial societies and welfare states means that fewer people in these societies regard traditional spiritual values as vital to their lives or to the lives of their community so it's more likely people living in poor conditions just tend to become religious it's not that religiosity leads to these bad conditions
