God: No magic required

[lweisenthal]

Hi Rasetsu,

There's no reason to go calling me names. I didn't make any sort of ad hominem attack or say anything at all disrespectful of either atheism in general or any atheist in particular.

I don't have a problem in the world with secular, non-religious people. People like this include a number of my closest relatives and best friends, and I was, myself, a member of this group for the more than 40 years before I started the "clinical trial" of intentionally trying to develop belief in theism, which I described above.

Of course, association doesn't prove causation. In the absence of proof beyond reasonable doubt (the situation for a great many things in life), an individual still must make some sort of decision. One criterion which may be applied intelligently is preponderance of evidence.

There are still smokers who swear that there is no extra risk from cigarette smoking, because it's mostly association statistics. I got into a real knock down, drag out argument about that a few months ago. People get downright passionate about their smoking status, diet (types of food eaten), exercise (or lack thereof) program, and, of course, politics and religion.

I've spent quite of a bit of time, for example, trying to get "pro-life" people (whom I call "pro-criminalization" people, as they really seek to make criminals of women who get abortions and doctors who perform them) to understand the point of view of the "anti-criminalization" side. Yes, I, too, have been on the receiving end of that "I'll pray for you" stuff.

Additionally, I've brought to the attention of many religious people the peer review data which show that you don't do most seriously ill people a favor when you tell them that "I am praying for you." There was an interesting study in which patients with heart problems were randomized into three groups: the first group got no prayers and weren't told that they were or weren't getting prayers, the second group got prayers, but weren't told about it. The third group got prayers and were told that people were praying for them.

Which group did the worst? The last group. The authors speculated that when you have someone who's seriously ill and you tell them that "I am praying for you" that you are really sending the message that they are so far beyond the ability of conventional medicine to cure that the only thing left is prayer. This creates "performance anxiety" and leads to worse outcomes.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16569567

Here's a pretty comprehensive review of most of the studies on intercessory prayer:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19370557

Now, the above doesn't prove the absence of health healing miracles for intercessory prayer beyond reasonable doubt, from the point of view of a committed believer, but, for me, the preponderance of evidence indicates that it's a bad idea to tell sick people that you are praying for them. I tell this to religious people and most of them agree with me that, if one is going to pray for a sick person, it's best just to keep it between the person doing the praying and God, and not to inform the afflicted patient that such prayers are being offered.

As I stated earlier, I think it's pretty obvious that prayers for peace, rain, and healing don't get answered, or, if they do, it's like winning the lottery, and it makes no sense at all to me that God would run lotteries. So I don't waste my time or God's time praying for divine intervention with regard to world peace, natural disasters, healing, and the like.

On the other hand, prayers for personal courage, solace, liberation from substance abuse, endurance, discipline, personal commitment, and personal morality are dependably answered. I look at it as somewhat akin to tapping into "The Force," made famous by Star Wars movies.

And unlike medical studies of intercessory prayer, the medical studies of the physical and mental health effects of religiosity (referenced in an earlier post) are, on the whole, quite positive. Yes, these statistical associations doesn't prove causation beyond reasonable doubt, but, for me, the preponderance of evidence was sufficiently persuasive that I thought it was worthwhile to see whether or not it would be possible to turn myself from a secular agnostic into a theist. I didn't see a downside, and the potential upside seemed obvious. As I wrote earlier, this seems to be working out well for me, to date.

When you talk about "minority stress" from "oppressed atheists," however, I personally think that this is a bit of a reach. I lived for more than 40 years as a secular agnostic (and liberal Democrat, which I continue to be). My reasons for being an agnostic, as opposed to an atheist, are pretty cogently argued in Vincent Bugliosi's Divinity of Doubt.

Basically, I think it's somewhat presumptuous to rule out all possibility of a higher order sentient being, in a universe made up mostly of dark matter and dark energy, possibly of 11 dimensions, and possibly only a one of an infinite number of other universes in an infinite multiverse. So agnosticism just made more sense. But I understand that it's quite possible to believe in atheism, just as it's possible to believe in Catholicism, for example.

Getting back to "minority stress"...although I was a secular agnostic, as opposed to a secular atheist, I'm sure that most people couldn't distinguish me from an atheist. I personally never felt the slightest "stress" because of this. If atheists in the USA (I can't speak for the UK or elsewhere) are "persecuted," then I have to say that I truly can't think of another class of "persecuted" people less "persecuted" than atheists.

Perhaps the Christmas holiday season imposes stress. Well, it imposes stress on everyone, religious Christians included. Jews handle it by going to Chinese restaurants. But, as "stress" goes, the "stress" associated with religious holidays would seem to be among the most trivial. Try losing your job or losing your wife or dealing with sickness and death.

Anyway, the only point I intended to make with all of this is that it's not at all irrational for a secular agnostic to make an intentional effort to develop some sort of religion. Whether or not God really does exist, there are objective advantages to believing in God, which have been experienced by billions of people -- since the dawn of humanity and continuing on to this very day. These advantages have nothing at all to do with avoiding Hell or going to Heaven. They are advantages for this life in this world. Anything that may or may not happen in the Great Perhaps would be just so much frosting on the cake.

- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

For starters, people want citations for the peer reviewed research indicating greater happiness and longer life expectancies for spiritual/religious people, as opposed to pure secularists.

http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/sp...ive-longer

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1305900/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19949046

Citing these studies in support of being religious is an example of the fallacy known as cum hoc, ergo propter hoc, that because one thing occurs in the presence of another, the one is a cause of the other. As any properly educated individual knows, correlation does not imply causation. This is because both of the correlated phenomena may be the result of a third confounding factor, and in this case, there is a readily identifiable one, namely, the absence of minority stress.

Wikipedia has this to say about minority stress:

Minority stress describes chronically high levels of stress faced by members of stigmatized minority groups. It may be caused by a number of factors, including poor social support and low socioeconomic status, but the most well understood causes of minority stress are interpersonal prejudice and discrimination. Indeed, numerous scientific studies have shown that minority individuals experience a high degree of prejudice, which causes stress responses (e.g., high blood pressure, anxiety) that accrue over time, eventually leading to poor mental and physical health. Minority stress theory summarizes these scientific studies to explain how difficult social situations lead to chronic stress and poor health among minority individuals. It is an important concept for psychologists and public health officials who seek to understand and reduce minority health disparities.

(emphasis mine)

Since being a minority, and according to studies one of the most hated minorities, can itself account for the differential health outcome, your attempt to attribute it to being an effect of being religious is premature and fallacious.

Now, someone else suggested that (1) not every single US study has shown this to be the case and (2) some studies of third world countries have shown the opposite. With regard to #2, it's an apples to oranges comparison. I don't think that divine intervention is responsible for the longevity and mental health advantages to spirituality and religion. I don't know the literature for third world countries, where a large majority of the population is very poor. Perhaps the secularists in these countries belong to higher socioeconomic classes. Perhaps there are requirements unique to, for example, Islam which are potentially harmful to health (Ramadan fasting, followed by gorging, for example). What's relevant to this particular thought experiment is the population of people living in the USA, because that's the population in the studies I cited. I can safely assert that the preponderance of peer-review medical literature supports the advantages of spirituality/religion with respect to both longevity and happiness.

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Rasetsu Wrote:

Choosing which studies to consider significant after the fact due to specifics which have nothing to do with whether or not the result is representative of the general class is an inappropriate procedure. Informally this is referred to as cherry picking, but it's an example of what is known as an inappropriate selection bias, and any results tainted by that bias must simply be dismissed.

You claim to be good at analyzing scientific data, yet so far, all I can see is that you're a biased and incompetent douche bag.