(June 3, 2012 at 11:31 pm)Epimethean Wrote: Since you did not include the full texts of either article, and since the latter seemed a bit more comprehensive, I will have to humor you as it were. However, here is some food for thought. It is a very unbiased article, and, as much as it supports a modicum of what you want to be true, its conclusions also point out some things you may want to consider before you wax smarmy about religion.

I'm not "waxing smarmy". I'm stating what has been shown by the current research available. You were the one who refused to accept peer-reviewed and published scientific papers because they came from eeevil Catholic universities, and comparing religion to "the Easter Bunny", so you have little room to complain when I point out that religious people are better socially adjusted, mentally/physically healthier, more empathetic/charitable, etc.

Your first link says absolutely nothing about "mind-numbing effect of rituals" or what have you so I guess by "almost" you really meant "almost". Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Some involve ritual and others do not. Also its weird that you talk about people "trapped" in the "web" of religion when religious people cope better with illness, are more likely to see their doctors and are much less likely to commit suicide even when they are depressed.

Quote:Not surprisingly, OCD sufferers tend to suffer more when religious, with Catholics comprising the worst affected group

No, not surprising. In Catholic community its known as the "scruples", or scrupulosity.

OCD is characterized by very high conscientiousness (self-control, carefulness, thoughtfulness), which as we already noted, is much more prevalent in religious. Irreligious would more commonly suffer from the exact opposite--a higher degree of carelessness (which, when combined with their lower agreeableness scores results in the same psychoticism personality results we see--which in turns creates a proclivity toward aggression and impulsiveness which we also see in this study.

But as I said, not all atheists are irreligious.

Seriously, Aiza? Cite sources or shut the fuck up.

This:

Quote:OCD is characterized by very high conscientiousness (self-control, carefulness, thoughtfulness), which as we already noted, is much more prevalent in religious. Irreligious would more commonly suffer from the exact opposite--a higher degree of carelessness (which, when combined with their lower agreeableness scores results in the same psychoticism personality results we see--which in turns creates a proclivity toward aggression and impulsiveness which we also see in this study.

Is utterly ignorant bullshit from start to finish. Fuck, you're impossible. As a person who aspires to be a nun, you blatantly lie an awful lot.

(June 4, 2012 at 12:15 am)Creed of Heresy Wrote: Pretty sure we ALL live in the world. Unless you mean they live in open society. ...If I need to spell it out any further I'm going to ragequit. ;D

Yep, that is what they mean. Those in religious orders take vows of poverty which is meant to detach them from the world. The average priest off the street, or any bishop, is diocesan which means they can own property and "priest" is just another job to them.

Quote: Not a good example; I laud the efforts of the individual and I abhor the credit given to the religious institution to which one belongs for the individual's work, since the religious aspect is unnecessary.

They are the one who financed him though. And you don't see too many secular monasteries.

Quote:No they won't. Any scientist worth his salt will tell you that having a bias towards their own work is counter-productive and detrimental to the process of discovery, as history has taught us repeatedly. It's a little thing called confirmation bias and it's highly frowned upon in the scientific community.

Um...I am currently also working in a scientific lab getting a PhD (though I won't finish it). Bias is always present 9especially wrt religion, race, gender etc) and you control for it in experimental design. And when you want to critique the study and find room for bias to affect the findings, you critique the design of the experiment, or the way they interpreted the results. Not that "oh you are a woman, therefore your study on breastfeeding is biased" or what have you. There's no reason why a Catholic (not that all researchers at a Catholic university are Catholic, btw) cannot do a scientific study on religion, or why a woman can't do a study on gender, or why a black person cannot do a study on race.

What you are specifically doing is ad hominem circumstantial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
>Ad hominem circumstantial constitutes an attack on the bias of a source. This is fallacious because a disposition to make a certain argument does not make the argument false; this overlaps with the genetic fallacy (an argument that a claim is incorrect due to its source).

Quote:Yeah, and all the evangelicals and creationists and the KKK and the entire middle east and the whole debacle with the IRA don't exist. I gotcha.

Huh? Wow this sentence. I mean, you lumped a ton of random scare words in a sentence and...you expect me to believe that they are all ignorant ( I'd say that of the KKK and to a much lesser degree, creationists, not the members of the other groups), AAAND that their ignorance was "induced by religion"? Not any specific ideology outside of religion, but "religion" itself? Yeah no, you'll need more evidence than that.

Quote:Might also be that there's a social stigma to being an atheist that leads to them being considered or just simply becoming outcasts considering a vast majority of the people I've ever admitted being an atheist to jumped to wild conclusions about me almost instantly, NONE of them positive, and this entire forum is filled with posts from people who've endured this kind of bullshit in the exact same ways for the exact same reasons, and the very beginning of this thread began with us discussing why the hell christians seem to jump at the chance to mash on the "hate" button whenever it comes to atheists...

Except you are confusing "atheist" with "irreligious". Not all irreligious are atheist and not all atheist are irreligious. There is also plenty of hate dumped on members of individual religions.

I think another factor may be that you are reversing the cause and effect. Those with high psychoticism are probably going to have an aversion to religion. Most of religion places a strong emphasis on community ties and charity, and on working to better yourself. A person with higher psychoticism isn't going to fit well in with a religious community, unless its one of the left-hand paths.

Quote:I haven't given those sites a check yet, but I'll probably do it after I get home from work tomorrow. Gotta [attempt] sleep here in a short bit, last thing I want to be doing is being a mail presorter on less than eight hours of sleep...this job is mind-numbing enough without me being half-awake before I even start. XD

Sleep well!

Posted on AFA:

Quote:Vatican: Bishops don’t have to report child abuse to the police according to new guidelines

Posted on May 28, 2012


The Italian Bishop’s Conference (CIE) has issued guidelines on child protection that inform its bishops that they are ‘not obliged to report illicit facts’ of child abuse to the police.
The new guidelines were released recently after the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith advised every Bishop Conference to create a document covering Child Protection if they did not already have one.

Plus ca change le plus c'est la meme chose.


Full article:


http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/AdKMef/sec...he-police/

And with that they take one more step towards the toilet bowl of history. If there was any real justice in the world, anyway.

(June 4, 2012 at 12:37 am)Shell B Wrote: Seriously, Aiza? Cite sources or shut the fuck up.

Is utterly ignorant bullshit from start to finish. Fuck, you're impossible. As a person who aspires to be a nun, you blatantly lie an awful lot.

I can get you any sources you want. None of it is a lie, I promise.

We already have the study (three studies ITT alone!) which show the link between irreligion and psychoticism, psychoticism being characterized by low agreeableness and low conscientiousness:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...6900002336

You can see the definitions for the 5 factors of personality (or OCEAN) on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_pe...ity_traits

And here is the study showing religiously unaffiliated are more prone to aggression and impulsivity:
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/cont...61/12/2303

About the only thing that I got wrong was that conscientiousness marks OCPD (obsessive-compulsive personality disorder):
http://www.minddisorders.com/Ob-Ps/Obses...order.html
But that's less a lie and more my own confusion of the two often confused disorders. Sorry.

Looking more closely at OCD, which is more anxiety based...eh. The people in that pop science article specifically note that they can't tie in those "worries" into real, clinical OCD per se (and they certainly say nothing like what Epi did), so I don't really have much to talk about here, nor do I know about the exact nature of any given link between OC behavior and religion. Most religious differences tie into the proclivity of religious toward self-control: ( http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/135/1/69/ ) and I'd suspect the same here.

I think you WANT psychoses to be linked to lack of religion when the literature suggests otherwise. What you have presented is simply a pastiche of information which suggests that religion, in its brainwashing capacity, calms the masses, which goes perfectly hand in hand with the old saw of Marx:

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

This is all you have "proven" with your choice of articles, nor have you refuted what I offered save by your own opinions. The materials you continue to lay out (when indeed you lay out more than a snapshot of an abstract) show only that religion soothes the fear of the ignorant-not that it elevates the consciousness, so your-yes, smarmy-quip about religion generating greater levels of "self-control, carefulness, thoughtfulness" is, again, utter trash.

This blog by a well known psychologist gets at some of what I have contended, which is that religion is not a sign of higher consciousness, but a symptom of the self's inability to deal with reality and therefore a coping mechanism. Your contention puts the cart before the horse.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-...ust-downer

I'm late to the party and not reading 17 pages, sorry. I just wanted to throw in that discrimination like this is why I proudly wear my atheism on my sleeve. I have no problem mocking god out loud in a public setting. People need to know that there is a large minority, I won't be silenced.

(June 4, 2012 at 6:09 am)Epimethean Wrote: I think you WANT psychoses to be linked to lack of religion when the literature suggests otherwise. What you have presented is simply a pastiche of information which suggests that religion, in its brainwashing capacity, calms the masses, which goes perfectly hand in hand with the old saw of Marx:

No I don't "want" and um, the only one who has been posting much in the way of literature is me You've posted a few pop psychology articles and a single thing noting that delusional people who have religious delusions are often much healthier than those without.

Also if you don't have access to an article I post, try googling it because usually an article is posted on multiple websites.

Quote:This is all you have "proven" with your choice of articles, nor have you refuted what I offered save by your own opinions. The materials you continue to lay out (when indeed you lay out more than a snapshot of an abstract) show only that religion soothes the fear of the ignorant-not that it elevates the consciousness, so your-yes, smarmy-quip about religion generating greater levels of "self-control, carefulness, thoughtfulness" is, again, utter trash.

Wait, what? No it doesn't, this post is so full of lies its painful. Nothing I posted refers to anything about "fear" (in fact your own pop psych article noted that the more devout religious in Italy had more 'worries'), and that last article specifically centers around the role religion plays in encouraging self-control. And again, if you don't have access try googling for another version that you do have access to instead of ignoring all evidence and clinging to unsourced blog posts.

http://epsy.tamu.edu/uploads/files/Ellio...lletin.pdf

Should work as a direct link to the pdf file.

Quote:This blog by a well known psychologist gets at some of what I have contended, which is that religion is not a sign of higher consciousness, but a symptom of the self's inability to deal with reality and therefore a coping mechanism. Your contention puts the cart before the horse.

Your "blog" post basically argues from no data at all. He doesn't even have any sources, and his whole argument hinges on the idea that poorer nations are more devout, therefore religion must help them cope with stress (not "reality" mind you, even he isn't as ridiculous to go that far). You linked me to an opinion piece from an evo psych blogger who seems to dislike religion in general, after I liked you to actual peer-reviewed scientific journal articles (and you tried to say they were "too biased" because one came from a Catholic university! Hahaha Would you let me get away with an unsourced dataless pop science opinion piece from an anti-atheist writer? Come on now)

While we are talking about WANTS, I think you are the one who WANTS religion to be an inferior state, even when all research shows otherwise. Thats why you are resorting to blog posts, trite quotes from other atheists, and pop science articles. There's nothing to "refute" because there's nothing that you offer in the face of real data, let alone anything which refutes or even challenges any of the articles I've posted.

Aiza Wrote:...but religious people (or those with a religious affiliation) percieve more reasons for living and are as a result much less likely to commit suicide.

I'm sure the fact that many relgious people consider suicide an immediate ticket to hell has more to do with it than a perception that there are more reasons for living. Many religious people see suicide as the unforgivable sin, because you are unable to repent for it, being dead and all. That's a huge factor that must be taken in consideration when comparing suicide rates between the religious and non-religious.