"Being godless might be good for your health - study shows

[mentalgymnast]

I think that it is more likely that a person who has no belief in God tends to look inward rather than outward, to a deity, as they live in the world. Not that they aren’t social beings...we’re all human and have social needs and desires...but I would think that, generally speaking, atheists would be more introverted than extroverted as they look within to their inner light rather an external light to guide their way.

Granted, these are my thoughts and I don’t have any studies or research to refer to. Rather than say isolated I might have said introverted to be more precise.

And for all I know, I could be dead wrong. That’s just my gut instinct/feeling as I think about those that live together in religious/spiritual communities relying on each other and a higher power compared to those that don’t.

It would be interesting to know if there are any studies that would support my intuition, but I’m not aware of any offhand. So evidence? Not really.

Regards,
MG

MG, you're right about one thing: There's absolutely no credible research or psychological framework on introversion-extroversion that would back up your so-called feeling/intuition/gut instinct/extraction-from-your-bum.

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Cute. Very thoughtful reply.

Regards,
MG

[IHAQ]

That’s not to say, at all, that as individuals can’t be happy here and there. But they tend more towards social isolation, more so than religionists.

I'm looking for your supporting evidence on this claim.

Still waiting...

I think that it is more likely that a person who has no belief in God tends to look inward rather than outward, to a deity, as they live in the world. Not that they aren’t social beings...we’re all human and have social needs and desires...but I would think that, generally speaking, atheists would be more introverted than extroverted as they look within to their inner light rather an external light to guide their way.

Granted, these are my thoughts and I don’t have any studies or research to refer to. Rather than say isolated I might have said introverted to be more precise.

And for all I know, I could be dead wrong. That’s just my gut instinct/feeling as I think about those that live together in religious/spiritual communities relying on each other and a higher power compared to those that don’t.

It would be interesting to know if there are any studies that would support my intuition, but I’m not aware of any offhand. So evidence? Not really.

Regards,
MG

You just spout unsupported nonsense. I think it's worth everyone being aware of that, if they weren't already.

[Morley]

Cute. Very thoughtful reply.

Thank you.

I think IHAQ said it best.

You just spout unsupported nonsense. I think it's worth everyone being aware of that, if they weren't already.

[mentalgymnast]

Cute. Very thoughtful reply.

Thank you.

I think IHAQ said it best.

You just spout unsupported nonsense. I think it's worth everyone being aware of that, if they weren't already.

Whatever floats your boat. The echo chamber always prevails.

One man’s unsupported nonsense is another man’s honest response/thoughts.

I’m well aware of the fact that I can’t win for losing around here. Take what you will.

Regards,
MG

[Morley]

Thank you.

I think IHAQ said it best.

Whatever floats your boat. The echo chamber always prevails.

One man’s unsupported nonsense is another man’s honest response/thoughts.

I’m well aware of the fact that I can’t win for losing around here. Take what you will.

Regards,
MG

The problem, my friend, is that you don't present these meanders as your own thoughts that have little to back them up. You pretend as if they're established fact.

That ideas are someone's honest thoughts doesn't mean that they aren't also unsupported nonsense.

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[Res Ipsa]

For any phenomena as complex and widespread as religion, I think it would be naïve to claim that the effects are all good or all bad in terms of social or medical effects on individuals. And I'm skeptical that the existence of religion over a long period of time can be explained through some type of utilitarian calculus. It could even be that religion itself has had no survival value, but is an artifact of brain processes that do. Both patternicity and intentionality are known biases in the brain, and could easily have been significant advantages when dealing with predators on the plains of Africa. Religion could simply be an effect of these biases with no net value or even a slight negative value. At some point, trying to explain why X exists today is an exercise in creating just so stories.

Yeah, this is a good point. I still tend to think the idea that religions confer some kind of benefits is a good, simple default assumption, given that they have persisted so robustly in human societies. It’s not a really strong prior, though, for the reason you give: they could be what Stephen Jay Gould’s architectural metaphor calls “spandrels”, accidental consequences of a structure that is preferred for other reasons. I think it’s generally worth giving some weight to Darwinian arguments like this, but you have to keep a salt shaker handy with all these post-hoc Just So hypotheses.

To me, the effects of religion today are so situational that it makes little sense to try and treat it as a monolith. My major concern with religion today is its effect on tribalism. In group cooperation/out of group conflict may well have been an effective survival strategy for individual groups over long periods of history. Today, however, I think the tribal approach is a huge net negative for humanity. We have common problems that can be solved only by cooperation that crosses the lines of existing tribes.

I agree about the monolith fallacy. Nobody wants to have to sort through all the world’s zillion religious varieties to check for grains of wheat in the chaff or tiny babies hiding in a lot of bath water, so it’s really tempting to toss them all out once and for all by reifying “religion”. Given the shortness of life I can quite understand deciding not to keep checking for babies at some point, but ranting against “religion” in order to justify the wholesale rejection of a zillion things just seems like the same fear of uncertainty that keeps many people in some religion or other. Plus it often means grotesquely misunderstanding a lot of religions by assuming they must all be like the particular religion one happens to know.

Tribalism is a big deal, all right. I hope that a thousand years from now there will be histories of it, with the longest chapters being about how it finally decayed.

As I said, rejection of tribalism is a big theme—though not an unopposed one—within many religions. Early Christianity consciously attempted to be a religion of “the nations”, writing its scriptures in the lingua franca of the day (sometimes writing in it really badly). Muslims from all over the world meet as equals in Mecca each year.

As Meadowchik noted, the breaking of tribal barriers within the religion can easily come at the cost of raising higher barriers around the religion. Obviously that’s a problem. I think we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that many religions have also been about breaking barriers, though. We take the things we like for granted and focus on the things we don’t like; that’s natural but it can skew how we think.

Thanks for the thoughtful response, PG, and especially the term spandrel. I knew there was a term, but couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was or who coined it.

My views are pretty much the same. I’ve met some evangelicals who seemed surprisingly universalist. Or just listen to Jersey Girl talk about her religion — it doesn’t sound tribal. And I would say the same thing about you, when you talk about religion. That gives me some hope that the tribal influence that exists in some flavors of religion can be diminished.

More and more, I find it less sensible to talk about religion as a single thing. I want to know the specifics, especially how whatever the beliefs are shape the actions of the adherents.

[Res Ipsa]

Another problematic example that is pretty specific and commonly demonstrated in exmormon experience, is mourning. And it is not uncommon to hear from people of many religious types, including believers, who fear disbelief because they have lost someone and they do not know how they could manage that sorrow without their belief. Sometimes when an exmormon leaves the church and becomes agnostic or atheist, they feel like they experience the grief process anew, because the tools they used before no longer work. They cannot hold onto a belief that their loved one is with God and they'll see them again.

One thing many learn is that they actually did not properly grieve the loss the first time, because the belief that they will see them again is a forestallment of grief. It is made worse, too by the common social pressure to rejoice and prove essentially their faithfulness by being positive and happy. Furthermore, because this forestallment is the prevailing grief management tool, they have not spent their formative years and beyond developing tools to manage grief. Remember those questions kids ask, "Dad, do dogs go to Heaven?" If the parent answers affirmatively, the child will be holding onto that tool instead of building their own.

The way to manage grief is to let it happen, not paint over it with a belief that there is no real death. And there are ways to minimize grief, too, by acting in the moment in life to improve relationships and take care of each other. We cannot always avoid untimely or extremely tragic death, or being on bad terms with a loved one, but that hope for Heaven can and frequently does interfere with the effort to improve relationships now, and improve health outcomes now.

I think that’s a very good point, Meadowchick. I have a nephew who is going through a re-grieving process right now. He talked to me about it recently, and it was something I never had thought about. He lost his dad when he was young and his mom during his last year of high school. My sister and her family had always been believing Mormons. During the last few years, he transitioned out of the LDS church.

He feels that he never truly grieved his mother’s death because of the church’s promise that he could be with her again. Only now is he able to adequately grieve.

Over time, I’ve grown more and more to think of death as a natural part of what it means to be alive. Birth is the start and death is the end. I look around me at the living things that surround me, and it works the same for all. Life begins. Life exists. Life ends. It gets easier over time to stop setting myself as some kind of special exception.

[Res Ipsa]

It still seems to me that that short prayer was something that cost me nothing, yet raised my chances of not crashing the car and being fast enough by some percentage, by calming me down and helping me focus. And it was a card that I would not have been able to play if I had no faith in God.

It may be so for you, but it is not universal at all. You defined it as "an additional psychological asset," as though it were absolutely unique. I disagree. It does not exclusively require faith in god for everyone to engage in something that calms one down and helps one focus. It may work for some, but so do a lot of other things. This is not a rant against religion, simply a statement of fact. I am surprised that there is such an insistence that religion is so unique that there is literally nothing else in existence that can provide all of the things an individual may draw from a belief in it. We may have to revive DrW's thread on sources of human spirituality.

Lem, you’ve hit on something that bothers me as well. If a short prayer helped PG focus so that he could stay alive, I’m all for that. Whatever helps. But it seems to me there are a near infinite number of thoughts that could (and certainly do) perform the same function for other people.

Today, my reflexive response in that kind of situation is to say “breathe” and take a breath. But I could quickly recite the litany against fear from Dune. (Might be a little too long). Or flash on an image of calmness. Or say quietly “you got this.” Or shout Leroyyyy Jenkkkkins!”

That’s not an argument against religion or prayer. I’m thrilled that PG is alive and am grateful for whatever happened that allowed him to stay that way. But, when we are talking about religion, I often think we confuse sufficient causes with necessary causes.

[IHAQ]

It may be so for you, but it is not universal at all. You defined it as "an additional psychological asset," as though it were absolutely unique. I disagree. It does not exclusively require faith in god for everyone to engage in something that calms one down and helps one focus. It may work for some, but so do a lot of other things. This is not a rant against religion, simply a statement of fact. I am surprised that there is such an insistence that religion is so unique that there is literally nothing else in existence that can provide all of the things an individual may draw from a belief in it. We may have to revive DrW's thread on sources of human spirituality.

Lem, you’ve hit on something that bothers me as well. If a short prayer helped PG focus so that he could stay alive, I’m all for that. Whatever helps. But it seems to me there are a near infinite number of thoughts that could (and certainly do) perform the same function for other people.

Today, my reflexive response in that kind of situation is to say “breathe” and take a breath. But I could quickly recite the litany against fear from Dune. (Might be a little too long). Or flash on an image of calmness. Or say quietly “you got this.” Or shout Leroyyyy Jenkkkkins!”

That’s not an argument against religion or prayer. I’m thrilled that PG is alive and am grateful for whatever happened that allowed him to stay that way. But, when we are talking about religion, I often think we confuse sufficient causes with necessary causes.

Part of the problem is the label "prayer". If you changed 'prayer' to "mindfulness" or "meditation" or "mind centering" etc it can then be seen within the context of what I think it is. A certain golfer would draw a large red dot on the back of his golf glove. He would press that red dot as the start of his pre-shot focussing routine and his brain would remove distractions and place himself "in the moment" to make the shot. I see prayer as a meditative mindfulness moment. Was pressing that Red Dot him tapping in to God's help to make the shot? No. Neither is prayer. Prayer is internal reflection and mindfulness by another name. It demonstrably helps, but equally it's demonstrable that it's as effective at producing miraculous healings as a red dot on a glove. People who believe in praying to trees or to animals get the same level of divine help as those who pray to a particular brand of humanoid deity.

[DrW]

It may be so for you, but it is not universal at all. You defined it as "an additional psychological asset," as though it were absolutely unique. I disagree. It does not exclusively require faith in god for everyone to engage in something that calms one down and helps one focus. It may work for some, but so do a lot of other things. This is not a rant against religion, simply a statement of fact. I am surprised that there is such an insistence that religion is so unique that there is literally nothing else in existence that can provide all of the things an individual may draw from a belief in it.

Well stated, Lem. SGT Alvin York was the most decorated American soldier of WWI. He often credited his bravery and success in battle to his belief in God and to prayer on the battlefield.

In his best known action, then Corporal York's unit was lured into an ambush and ended up effectively surrounded by flanking German machine gun positions. Under fire, York used a bolt action rifle to methodically stalk and kill or incapacitate more than two dozen German soldiers in several different machine gun nests, finally capturing the astounded German unit commanding officer who surrendered after watching every one of his well armed men fall to a single American.

York was an honorable and religious Tennessean whose application for conscious objector status had been denied. His belief in God is reflected in his following quotes:

"The fear of God makes a hero; the fear of man makes a coward."

"When you have God behind you, you can come out on top every time."

While York humbly gave the credit for his accomplishments to God, a neutral observer would note that he was raised in a large family in rural Tennessee where hunting and marksmanship were integral to his life from an early age, and he excelled at it. Pitted against German conscripts who believed that fear of their machine guns would cause a surrounded enemy force to simply surrender, someone with his unique skills had a great psychological advantage. York prayed alright. But then he fell back on his long practiced skill set of stalking and killing animals. His accomplishments may have miraculous, but they were not divine.

Combatants on both sides in WWI included men who were also humble and devout believers in God. They no doubt also prayed in their trenches and foxholes and bravely faced the enemy with all the skill they could muster. These prayers were not answered for nearly 10 million of them who ended up dead, of for more than 10 million who were wounded. Total military and civilian casualties in WWI are estimated at ~40 million. I dare say most were God fearing Christians who no doubt also prayed for God's blessings.