Posted by:
steve benson
(
)
Date: August 15, 2017 03:33AM
. . . especially when those believers aren't fully committed to their faith to begin with.
INTRODUCTION
The claim is incessantly made by the God pom-pom squad that religion makes its believers happier than non-believers who lack a religious crutch.
To be sure, religion gives many folks reason to shout “Whoo-Hoo!”--as long as their faith is regularly feeding them feel-good doses of Woo-Woo.
**WARNING: THE FOLLOWING FINDINGS MAY MAKE RELIGIOUS BELIEVERS VERY UNHAPPY
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EXHIBIT A: Unhappy Believers Tend to Show Up in Societies Lacking Decent Social Support Systems
That's a point not commonly acknowledged by the trumpeters of cure-all supernatural snake oil.
From a worldwide survey of citizens in various cultures:
“An analysis of the Gallop World Poll finds that there is an association with religion and increased happiness, but only in societies that lack adequate social support. . ..
“Researchers analyzed data from the Gallup World Poll covering 2005 to 2009. They looked at religious affiliation, life satisfaction, social support and positive versus negative states of mind in 150 countries around the world.
“In societies that lack proper food, jobs, or health care, religious people are indeed happier than those who are not religious. Believers in those countries also said they felt more publicly supported than did their non-religious peers.
“But things get more complicated in countries with adequate social support. For one thing, both the religious and the non-religious in wealthier countries are happier than people in places without proper support. But, here's the interesting thing: In richer nations, those who are religious are actually less happy than their non-religious neighbors. The study is in the ‘Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.’
“The researchers found the same discrepancies within the U.S. In poorer states, more people are religious. And the believers in those states tend to be happier than the non-religious residents.
“So, the answer to the question, does religion bring happiness, would appear to be: it depends.”
{Source: “Global Survey Links Religion and Happiness” by Christie Nicholson, “Scientific American,” 1 September 2011)
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Exhibit B: Believers Who Aren’t’ Completely Committed to Their Faith Tend to be Less Happy Than Those with No Faith
Believers who aren't "all-in" when it comes to their religion of choice are less happy than non-believers who aren't in at all.
From this book, "Loving on the Edge: Challenges to Faith," Jonathan Burke admits:
“. . . [L]ower levels of religious belief, involvement and commitment produce negative outcomes which can be worse than having no belief at all.
"‘While fervent believers benefit from their involvement, those with weaker beliefs are actually less happy than those who do not ascribe to any religion---atheists and agnostics . . . . Indeed, weakly affiliated adherents may actually be less happy than their non-affiliated counterparts--atheists, agnostics and those who report no religion at all—and therefore would appear to benefit from abandoning their faith.’
"This is of significant consequence for those forms of Christianity which are more liberal and less concerned with truth and consistency of doctrine and practice."
(Source: “Living on the Edge: Challenges to Faith,” “Reference Work Series,” Volume One, by Jonathan Burke [Livelystone Publishers, 2013], p. 53; fn 176-77)
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Exhibit C: Recent Studies Indicate that Many Non-Religious People Find Positive Purpose in Life through Science, Not Religion
Science and evolution do well in competing with religious myth and magic.
Writing in the "Boston Review," Tania Lombrozo notes:
“Finding Meaning in Science
“The writer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan famously offered science as a ‘candle in the dark’ to help illuminate a ‘demon-haunted world.’ Scientists and others, before and after Sagan, have turned to science not only as a useful tool for predicting and controlling the natural world, but also as a source of beauty, comfort, and inspiration. . . .
“[There is a growing] body of research in experimental psychology . . .. [including] four recent papers confirm[ing] that science offers many of the same existential benefits as religion. The implications are powerful.
“First, consider a forthcoming paper in the 'Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,’ which examines whether belief in science can mitigate stress and anxiety about death. In an initial study, rowers were asked to fill out a questionnaire either immediately before a competition (a high-stress situation) or before a routine practice (a low-stress situation). The questionnaire assessed the rowers’ belief in science by asking them to indicate how much they agreed with statements such as 'science provides us with a better understanding of the universe than religion does' and 'science is the most valuable part of human culture.'
"Sure enough, participants in the high-stress condition were significantly more likely than those in the low-stress condition to endorse these claims, suggesting that affirming the value of science was a strategy for mitigating high levels of stress.
“’The idea of a non-random, deterministic evolutionary process helped relieve the discomfort of feeling powerless.’
“In a second study, the researchers had participants write their thoughts about their own death, increasing the salience of their own mortality. In a control condition, participants wrote about experiencing dental pain. Those in the former condition expressed greater faith in science, mirroring documented effects of mortality salience on religious belief. Again, the finding suggests that science—like religion—can offer comfort in the face of existential anxiety.
“Next, consider a 2010 study that examined the psychological role of belief in scientific and technological progress. Participants were primed to feel powerful or powerless by writing about an unpleasant episode in which they did or did not have control, along with three reasons to believe the future is or is not controllable. Those in the latter condition were more likely to value funding for scientific research and to anticipate long-term technological progress, suggesting that belief in science and scientific progress helped to mitigate the negative effects of feeling powerless in an unpredictable world. Again, these findings mirror those with respect to religion, where belief in a controlling God appears to help people cope with feelings of low personal control.
“Of course, not all religious ideas are equally comforting, and there is no reason to expect scientific ideas to be any more homogeneous in this respect.
"Another study investigated whether some kinds of scientific theories are regarded as more orderly and predictable and, if so, whether a threat to personal control would result in a preference for more orderly and predictable theories over alternatives. To test this hypothesis, the researchers contrasted ‘stage’ theories—which posit that processes of change and development occur in fixed and discrete stages, such as Kohlberg’s stage theory of moral development—with ‘continuum’ theories, according to which change is more variable and occurs along one or more continua. Although study participants judged stage theories less credible, they also judged such theories more orderly and predictable. And experiments confirmed that when subjects were primed to feel powerless or to consider randomness and uncertainty, their relative preference for the stage theories increased, suggesting that the more orderly and predictable the scientific theory, the better it compensated for a lack of personal control.
“Finding Meaning in Evolution
“Having seen that belief in science and scientific progress can have existential benefits that parallel those of religion, we can . . . consider what this means for belief in evolution. . . .
"[A] study [involving] . . . secular university students [first had them] primed to feel powerful or powerless and subsequently [they were] asked to choose between two accounts of life on earth. When the two options were the theory of evolution and intelligent design, the majority of students opted for the former. However, they were less likely to do so when they had been primed to feel powerless as opposed to powerful. This suggests that intelligent design—the idea of a supervised, goal-directed process of change—was comforting in a way that compensated for the unease induced by the prime to feel powerless.
“However, the researchers also considered a third option: a version of evolution inspired by the paleontologist Simon Conway Morris, which downplays the role of’ 'random processes’ and instead describes evolution as highly deterministic. When researchers asked participants to choose between the theory of evolution and this modified variant, the results were similar to those involving intelligent design: participants preferred the theory of evolution overall, but they were more likely to choose the variant when they were primed to feel powerless than when they were primed to feel powerful. This suggests that, like intelligent design, the idea of a non-random, deterministic evolutionary process helped relieve the discomfort of feeling powerless. In fact, the prime to feel powerless had no effect on the proportion of participants choosing intelligent design over the deterministic variant of evolution—the two appeared to be equivalent in their ability to compensate for low personal control.
“So, perhaps belief in a designer—be it the well-known Judeo-Christian version or the unspecified mover of intelligent design—isn’t unique in its ability to compensate for feelings of low personal control. When it comes to evolution, that leaves room for naturalistic accounts of human origins that offer at least some of the psychological benefits of religious belief.
“Research on the existential and emotional aspects of particular scientific beliefs or of a scientific worldview is in its infancy, but the findings so far suggest we’ve been asking the wrong questions when it comes to understanding the widespread rejection of human evolution in favor of divine creation. The relevant contrast might not be between science and religion but between beliefs that promise an orderly universe—one in which individual humans or some external forces, be they natural or divine, impose structure and corral uncertainty—and those that do not.
“Perhaps it is no surprise that religious beliefs have tended to fit the more psychologically attractive profile. Religion isn’t tethered to empirical facts the way scientific theories are; it is free to shift, to fit the contours of the human mind. When it comes to science, however, the empirical world offers hard constraints. We can hope for scientific theories that offer an orderly and predictable view of the natural world, but we can’t enforce them.
“What we can do is rethink the way evolutionary ideas are presented, and work to improve people’s understanding of the ways in which natural selection is—and is not—a random and unpredictable process. While humanity may be an evolutionary accident in some sense, our place in the tree of life can be characterized in highly systematic ways that highlight the exquisite dynamics of evolutionary change. There are patterns in the natural world, and grasping them can be revelatory.
“These new strands of research can’t promise a scientifically grounded account of human origins that rivals creationism in its psychological appeal, but they can help to explain how some people find beauty and fulfillment in a naturalistic worldview. There is something deeply satisfying in broadening the scope of what we understand. And that is part of the seductive grandeur of science.”
(“Can Science Deliver the Benefits of Religion?,” by Tania Lombrozo, “Boston Review: A Political and Literary Forum, under “Literature & Culture,” 7 August 2013)
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CONCLUSION: For Many Non-Believers, Healthy-Happy Doesn’t Require Superstitious-Sappy
The above findings give increasing reason to the non-religious to crack a smile.
Indeed, many atheists and agnostics are getting along just fine in life with no god in the mix to conjure up tricks--proving, once again, that religion isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 08/15/2017 04:05AM by steve benson.