everyone (else) seems to be hating on atheists

[Epimethean]

Aiza, your research shows one thing. You are trying to make it show another. It is apparent that you have an agenda, but don't expect me to buy into it. You want to confuse cause and effect here and expect rational minds to agree. The evidence you supply only paints a picture of the sedative effect of religion. Allow me to explain for you in simple terms.

Your claim: Religious people are more stable, less aggressive and hostile, and less suicidal.

A similar claim could be made about people on lithium.

My contention that religion serves as a drug stands.


Now,

Your claim: Religious people are more self-controlled, careful, thoughtful and high-minded.

You provide no evidence of this.

My contention that you are full of shit stands.

[Aiza]

Aiza, your research shows one thing. You are trying to make it show another.

No I'm not. I literally just end up stating the exact conclusions of the paper, whereas you seem to try to frantically deny it and make up something like "oh this just shows that religion soothes fear" when fear doesn't play any part in the research at all, and the whole paper was centered on and even outright says that religion promotes self-control.



Given the fact that you've outright resorted to posting straight up opinion pieces from atheists and saying Catholic universities are unreliable, I think you have by far the clearer "agenda" of sorts.

Your claim: Religious people are more self-controlled, careful, thoughtful and high-minded.

You provide no evidence of this.

Yes, yes I did, many many times. Here let me post them AGAIN for you.

>An impression based on a vote-counting method of reviewing studies on religion and personality is that religiosity is associated only with low Psychoticism (or high Agreeableness and Conscientiousness)

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...6900002336

First, there is strong evidence for our proposition that religion is positively related to self-control as well as to traits such as Agreeableness and Conscientiousness that are considered by many theorists to be the basic personality substrates of self-control (e.g., Aziz & Rehman, 1996; e.g., Bergin et al., 1987; Desmond et al., 2008; French et al., 2008). There is also substantial evidence that religious parents tend to have children with high self-control (Bartkowski et al., 2008)

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/135/1/69/

"Self-control" is not my words. Its the words of the scientific conclusions drawn from a whole variety of peer-reviewed studies. Conscientiousness is synonymous with being careful.

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.

Some might, sure. Catholicism, the largest religion, does not though, and its worth noting that depression symptoms in general are higher among irreligious, so its not like religious people are just as depressed but they are less likely to kill themselves:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10480747

Its also noteworthy that religious folk have better social adjustment (more likely to be married, have happier marriages, more supportive friends, more involved with family) and I think a strong social net definitely goes a long way in preventing depression and suicide.

[Epimethean]

Round and round we go. You make sweeping claims based on an abstract that suggests "maybe." Could you send the data sampling, please? As regards the abstract on ScienceDirect, do you care to discuss how you would like to address this?

"The meta-analysis also indicated that extrinsic religiosity is followed by high Neuroticism, whereas open-mature religiosity and spirituality reflect Emotional Stability."

You do love to post abstracts, don't you? How about you give us the entire articles, since I assume you have paid to read them.

You have yet to disprove that religion's controlling effect stems from anything intrinsic, and if it is an extrinsic pressure, it cannot be said to be a quality innate in the religious person due to religiosity.

[Aiza]

Round and round we go. You make sweeping claims based on an abstract that suggests "maybe." Could you send the data sampling, please? As regards the abstract on ScienceDirect, do you care to discuss how you would like to address this?

Not an abstract. I already linked DIRECTLY to the full pdf just 2 posts ago. Here it is again:

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

Science is filled with "maybe" but you make your sweeping claims based off of nothing

Here is a direct link to the pdf study on personality:
http://ns6.ucl.ac.be/cps/ucl/doc/psyreli...iBFive.pdf

IF you don't have access to a given article you can always find it by actually googling the name of the article to see if its hosted free anywhere else.

I love how you complain that you don't have access to the articles but then you have yet to post any relevant data of your own whatsoever. Oh geez....

[Faith No More]

Some might, sure. Catholicism, the largest religion, does not though, and its worth noting that depression symptoms in general are higher among irreligious, so its not like religious people are just as depressed but they are less likely to kill themselves:

From the little research I've just done, it seems that the Catholic church has only recently changed its views on this. Anyways, someone should have told the priest at the eulogy of my friend who committed suicide. He basically gave a sermon about suicide sending you to hell.

Its also noteworthy that religious folk have better social adjustment (more likely to be married, have happier marriages, more supportive friends, more involved with family) and I think a strong social net definitely goes a long way in preventing depression and suicide.

Did you ever stop to think that this has more to do with the social aspects of religion and less to do with any sort of mindset? It's much easier for people to adjust to society when the whole of society tends to agree with their beliefs. There are no social aspects to being an atheist.

[Aiza]

From the little research I've just done, it seems that the Catholic church has only recently changed its views on this. Anyways, someone should have told the priest at the eulogy of my friend who committed suicide. He basically gave a sermon about suicide sending you to hell.

Yes, it changed after suicide was expressly linked to mental illness/depression.

And thats awful! I am sorry to hear about your friend. I remember when my aunt had a stillbirth the priest gave a sermon about how "she can always have another kid". Ugh...

Did you ever stop to think that this has more to do with the social aspects of religion and less to do with any sort of mindset? It's much easier for people to adjust to society when the whole of society tends to agree with their beliefs. There are no social aspects to being an atheist.

Of course I have. In fact, I am pretty sure that is the reason: increased social aspects and opportunities means healthier social life. This also leads to a healthier mental state overall (though if you read the first link I posted in the last post, only 35-50% of the health benefits of religion are explainable via the social aspects--still a lot though, just not all of it)

There are atheist social groups (theres a local atheist societies/forums), though they spend a lot of time bashing religion as opposed to building up their own communities, probably because there's not a ton which binds atheists together to base a community on. That being said, there's no point in creating a dichotomy between atheist and religious. There are religious atheists (and irreligious secularized theists) as well. You can be a church-going atheist.

[Mister Agenda]

For what it's worth, since I can't recall the details of the study, the only one I'm aware of that compared the right apples to the right oranges found that atheists and pious Christians were ethically comparable. That is, both atheists and pious Christians averaged more ethical than nominal Christians. I don't like putting out unsourced claims like that, but it occurs to me that the finding explains pretty much everything that anyone has claimed on this thread: the less religious ARE more obstreperous, but the people at the extremes are less so, like an upside-down moral bellcurve with the most faithful at one end and atheists on the other.

---

There are atheist social groups (theres a local atheist societies/forums), though they spend a lot of time bashing religion as opposed to building up their own communities, probably because there's not a ton which binds atheists together to base a community on. That being said, there's no point in creating a dichotomy between atheist and religious. There are religious atheists (and irreligious secularized theists) as well. You can be a church-going atheist.

Thanks for the opportunity to give a little testimony: In 2004 I read that atheists had shorter lifespans on average than theists. Wondering why this was, I did a little research and found this effect did not exist in Western and Northern European countries where atheists were large minorities. Suspecting social isolation might be the culprit (I was 42 and had only knowingly met two atheists besides myself my whole life), I looked into atheist social groups and found none in Columbia, SC. I did find an atheist 'Meetup in the making' with 13 people signed up but no organizer. After failing to encourage any of those people to become the organizer and naively thinking 13 people was a good start, I became the organizer and gave the group a very dry name and spent three or four months in meetings where I was the only one to show up. Now the Freethought Society of the Midlands (FSM is our third name, but I think this one will stick) has events pretty much every week: Drinking Skeptically, Sandhills Rationalists, Science and Religion, Regular Meeting, and UU Humanists; plus occasionally events like bowling or roller derby (only spectating!). Two of our events are held at the local Unitarian Universalist congregation. Atheism is a weak glue to bind a group, shared committment to reason and humanist values (even our two resident nihilists are humanist nihilists) on the other hand, seems to work fine.

[Epimethean]

"I love how you complain that you don't have access to the articles but then you have yet to post any relevant data of your own whatsoever. Oh geez.... "


Someone hasn't been doing the reading I supplied and has yet to establish anything beyond the fact that highly religious people subscribe to external controls and therefore moderate their behavior. This makes religion no different from a drug. Do you have anything at all to suggest otherwise or beyond this point, which I have been hammering home again and again? Religion is just another form of social constraint. As such, it may offer benefits to those with mental illnesses, and it may exacerbate said illnesses, but your point that those who are religious are less likely to BE mentally ill finds no support, whereas the suggestion that those who are mentally ill may find in religion a source of comfort which masks their illness just might.

[Polaris]

I believe in God,
the Father almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried;
he descended into hell;
on the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty;
from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting. Amen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostles'_Creed


So . . . you have to believe that Jesus Christ is the son of god and your savior? I think I already said that. Apostle's Creed my shiny white ass.

Read the underlined. That is the main missing piece from your definition.

[Aiza]

Someone hasn't been doing the reading I supplied

I did the "reading" you supplied.

and has yet to establish anything beyond the fact that highly religious people subscribe to external controls and therefore moderate their behavior. This makes religion no different from a drug.

And um, what? This sentence is wrong on multiple levels. Nothing in any paper describes "external controls". One paper mentioned extrinsic vs. intrinsic religiosity and more fundamentalist vs. spiritualistic religious practice, and certain benefits associated with religion occasionally associate with one or the other. The last scientific cpaper I gave you (and which I have given you 2-3 times now, explicitly associates religion with self-control and notes that only 35-50% of the benefits associated with religion can be attributed to social factors (in contrast to your blog post claims).

However, even saying it did....."drugs" have nothing to do with "external controls" either. A drug changes your body chemistry. Drugs are as internal as it gets, so...?

As such, it may offer benefits to those with mental illnesses, and it may exacerbate said illnesses, but your point that those who are religious are less likely to BE mentally ill finds no support

Yes it does, at least with some mental illnesses such as depression and depressive disorders. Please re-read the McCullough and Larson paper I posted earlier.

Yes, it is true that religion greatly helps coping skills with illness (both physical and mental), but its also true that religious people are less likely to develop symptoms period, at least of depressive and anxiety-disorders (which, tbf, are the two of the most common mental disorders in the US)

For what it's worth, since I can't recall the details of the study, the only one I'm aware of that compared the right apples to the right oranges found that atheists and pious Christians were ethically comparable. That is, both atheists and pious Christians averaged more ethical than nominal Christians. I don't like putting out unsourced claims like that, but it occurs to me that the finding explains pretty much everything that anyone has claimed on this thread: the less religious ARE more obstreperous, but the people at the extremes are less so, like an upside-down moral bellcurve with the most faithful at one end and atheists on the other.

I am not sure about this (and I think "ethics" studies tend to be extremely subjective), but it is true that people who are "not religious at all" score higher on some measures of health than "somewhat religious" (with "very religious" scoring the highest IIRC).

Now the Freethought Society of the Midlands (FSM is our third name, but I think this one will stick) has events pretty much every week: Drinking Skeptically, Sandhills Rationalists, Science and Religion, Regular Meeting, and UU Humanists; plus occasionally events like bowling or roller derby (only spectating!). Two of our events are held at the local Unitarian Universalist congregation. Atheism is a weak glue to bind a group, shared committment to reason and humanist values (even our two resident nihilists are humanist nihilists) on the other hand, seems to work fine.

Interesting, thank you for sharing.