everyone (else) seems to be hating on atheists

[Epimethean]

Did you think we would take an article written by a Catholic at a Catholic university as legitimate when it comes to classifications? You are more foolish than even I thought if you do. That article is rubbish. An interesting detail about that university:

You quoted literal unsourced atheist websites which had already been debunked in this thread as your own sources, so what is this hypocrisy? On top of being a textbook ad hominem fallacy, its fantastically ignorant because plenty of research comes from Catholic run universities (especially given the Catholic church runs the largest non-governmental school system worldwide). The journal in which it was formally reviewed and published isn't Catholic either.

If you want to say a study is "rubbish" you are going to have to do a lot better than say "it was done by Catholics". That very Catholic university also is the one whose research produced what we now know as the Big Bang theory.

But I am happy to indulge you here, because the link between high religiosity and lower psychoticism (and vice versa) is pretty well established anyway, as you would know if you took the time again to look into this thing yourself:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.10...9808406493
http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466...3.93.3.819

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.

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S010...xt&tlng=en

The authors are circumspect about the overarching effect of religion. One aspect they almost touch on, and which I can see as having a beneficial effect is the relative mind-numbing effect of rituals and a feeling that there is something supernatural out there. This is one of the biggest reasons religion thrives, so perhaps a study will be done in time on how many mentally ill people the net of religion traps in its web of deceit and lies. After all, parents use Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy to good effect to control behaviors, too, and those are all irrealities as well.

Also of interest, and intersecting your offerings:

http://epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/2011...evers.html



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

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Linked to Piety

June 10, 2002

The notion that a strict, possibly even God-fearing, upbringing may contribute to obsessive-compulsive disorder has been boosted by a survey which discovered that devout Catholics were more likely to show symptoms than less religious people.

Patients with OCD get caught in a vicious mental cycle that can take over and cripple their everyday lives. For instance, a sufferer may become convinced that everything around them is dirty, and in extreme cases spend up to eight hours a day cleaning in a bid to banish the thought.

The causes of the disorder, which affects at least five million Americans and a million Britons, are still obscure. But genes, upbringing, head injuries and emotional trauma have all been implicated.

Now Claudio Sica at the University of Parma in Italy and his team have found that committed Catholics are more likely to show symptoms of OCD.

The researchers compared people, such as nuns and priests who worked in the Church, with committed lay Catholics and others with virtually no religious involvement. Each subject was asked to document mild OCD symptoms, such as intrusive mental images or worries. The more devout Catholics reported more severe symptoms. "It is tricky to tie these findings to clinical OCD," Lynne Drummond, a psychiatrist at St George's Hospital in London told New Scientist. She thinks a patient must have a genetic predisposition to develop such symptoms. However, she adds that many OCD patients do say they had a strict upbringing where actions were either right or wrong.

There is a movement in many churches, including the Anglican Church, to class the forcing of undue strictness in piety and morality as "spiritual abuse." No doubt there will soon be an officially listed psychiatric category for it. BM


From New Scientist, found at http://www.upliftprogram.com/h_personal_03.html