Are Atheists Mentally Ill

I agree with your reasoning there, but "Believers as a group are less wealthy than atheists" - where does this assertion come from? Is this assertion any more credible than anything the pro-religion links say? (the part I bolded) - truer words were never written!! Just the "healthier" part, probably not. All the contents of that link plus the next three you listed? Could be. A paragraph from that link;

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The researchers said their findings supported the idea that the brain had evolved to be sensitive to any form of belief that improved the chances of survival, which could explain why a belief in God and the supernatural became so widespread in human evolutionary history.

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"ANY FORM OF BELIEF" I'm afraid the scientific community is trying to exclude themselves from the same reluctance that religious people have to alter their worldview, and I don't think it's very honest.I've been noticing several threads here where religious posters like GDR or Ossat honestly state that they have a faith in something, and the evolutionist/atheist posters, while they may not directly say it, they strongly imply "okay, you have faith, whereas I have facts and evidence." Everyone has a worldview that's acquired at an earlier age than in-depth scientific studies. Which means that facts and evidence didn't necessarily lead to their atheism, but that atheism led them to try to reinforce their beliefs with science. It's a human trait that atheists do just the same as religious people.But the following snip from the "nicer" link probably sums it all up the best;

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Yet, despite what I'm writing here, I'm not really claiming that people of faith are better people than non-believers.

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Many of my friends have no faith and would outdo me on measures used in these surveys.

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In the church, just like any area of life, it's a mixed bag of the good, the not so good and the, well, nutty.

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But this research is in stark contrast to claims by prominent authors such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. After reading their works, you'd swear that religion makes you immediately abandon rationality to become an inward-looking extremist. What Putnam's book does at the very least is to bring a bit of balance into the conversation.

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Balance is needed, as atheists try to elevate their worldview as automatically more credible and worthy of establishment than religious worldviews.

I was looking for *evidence*. At your request, I googled "atheists make more money", and somewhat expected to see at least one link on the first first few pages, if not more than one, to reputable statistical sources that proved your claim. Not there, mostly just links to atheist sites. It is also well known that "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth", but if that is stated within miles of anything scientific, evidence is demanded. Telling the scientists to google it doesn't seem to work too well.The main reason I'm skeptical of that claim is because so many atheists are also liberals, and it doesn't make sense that people who work hard, take risks, and succeed with money would favor a political party that wants to take away the fruits of their labors and redistribute it to others. And yes, I have evidence that atheists tend to be liberal;

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The religiously unaffiliated are heavily Democratic in their partisanship and liberal in their political ideology. More than six-in-ten describe themselves as Democrats or say they lean toward the Democratic Party (compared with 48% of all registered voters). And there are roughly twice as many self-described liberals (38%) as conservatives (20%) among the religiously unaffiliated. Among voters overall, this balance is reversed.

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Nones on the Rise | Pew Research CenterThere's always the possibility that atheists make more money than religious people in general, but it doesn't always take high IQ, skills and risk-taking to make money. Many in the Hollywood crowd do quite well, but they just do it with their natural good looks, nothing they themselves had a hand in determining. The guy who advertises for Allstate insurance makes a nice living with only his deep, studly voice. It would make more sense that that type of money maker could favor liberalism, they're largely out of touch with the realities of risks, production, and hard work.So if you can't, or won't, provide me with evidence for your claim that atheists are such good capitalists, I guess we'll just have to table that part of this discussion. Without evidence, I have to call that claim subjective as well. There is all sorts of flexibility in how people can be labeled concerning religion, and who is doing the labeling. If atheists are so skilled at avoiding negative categories, it seems that sometime, somewhere, they would have been able to put together a really nice free, wealthy, blissful society. They haven't. "Worldview" is actually a very relevant, useful term, one that the scientific community probably wishes didn't exist. It;

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simply refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs through which an individual, group or culture interprets the world and interacts with it as a coherent description of the world as one objective reality

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Worldview - WikipediaThe word serves to bring the scientific community down off its plateau of superiority, and shows all the scientific theories and faiths to be no more relevant than religious beliefs. Everyone has a worldview, and I think it's obvious that a person develops his/her first, and usually final, worldview at a fairly young age, probably age 12 to 14. All these implications that atheists only deal in facts and evidence isn't honest. They do the same thing religious people do, they start with a conclusion, then search for evidence to back it up.From your earlier message; So you're completely neutral? You have no worldview? If that's your claim, it's really hard to have a discussion with you. You stated above that atheists are under-represented in negative categories - how can any statistics be gathered if we have an unknown, and unknowable amount of "neutrals" like yourself? I think you're a "naturalist", one who sides 99% of the time with anti-religion. Isn't that a fair assessment?I'd like this thread to take a closer look at "the impact of religious practice on social stability", from the Heritage Foundation link found within this threads topic link, but I'll bow out now if this thread was only started to be an atheist love-fest. I'll use the upcoming rage and forum rule breaking from Dr. A and others, with no administrative discipline, as my gauge.

I live in the outskirts of Cincinnati, Ohio. Lots of ghettos on both sides of the river, FILLED with people with no religious background, no education, and very little income. I see the same things on the news from around New York, Chicago, LA, Atlanta, etc. I'm a blue collar worker, and am often surrounded by LOTS of people with no religious background, no education, and very little income. I sometimes tend to let my own actual experiences lead me to conclusions, or at least use them to balance the proclamations I see from special interests, like the scientific community, or the news media. In doing that, I found this NY Times link (descended from another one) on the first page, which contained the following paragraph;

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Pew found that there is a strong relationship between a country’s religiosity and its economic status. The poorer a country, the more religion remains central to the lives of individuals, while secular perspectives are more common in richer nations.

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The United States is the most notable exception. Other exceptions are oil-rich, mostly Muslim nations like Kuwait.

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And another link, from your search suggestion, with a paragraph from it;

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Gallup surveyed people in more than 100 countries in 2009 and found that religiosity was highly correlated to poverty. Richer countries in general are less religious. But that doesn’t hold true for the United States.

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Or Israel, or Italy, or Greece, or Ireland for that matter, according to that chart. It only makes sense that what may be true for the entire world isn’t necessarily true for some countries, including the United States. Don’t you think it would be important to make that distinction between the two, since the link of this thread's topic strongly indicates that it concerns the United States? I think it partly is, because if the claim is made that atheists are more educated and successful than religious people, it's synonymous with a claim that liberalism, or the Democrat party, possesses more worthy, educated influence. Because as I said, it doesn't make sense that those who earn more would generally politically favor the politics that would redistribute (take away from them) more of what they earn. As does the atheist worldview. It has nothing for godless origins of life. It only has desperate wishes that it does, and the various hypothesis and experiments it performs in that regard are not evidence. When they snowball, branch out etc, they can start morphing into claims of being evidence, but they still aren't in reality. I think you’re worse with the word "evidence" than I am with the word "worldview". Here are a couple of paragraphs from the link that is this thread's topic;

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In 2004, scholars at UCLA revealed that college students involved in religious activities are likely to have better mental health. In 2006, population researchers at the University of Texas discovered that the more often you go to church, the longer you live. In the same year researchers at Duke University in America discovered that religious people have stronger immune systems than the irreligious. They also established that churchgoers have lower blood pressure.

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Meanwhile in 2009 a team of Harvard psychologists discovered that believers who checked into hospital with broken hips reported less depression, had shorter hospital stays, and could hobble further when they left hospital — as compared to their similarly crippled but heathen fellow-sufferers.

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"UCLA, University of Texas, Duke University in America, Harvard....."— I had the idea that this thread was about religiosity in the United States, not worldwide.

I actually agree with that, in some cases. But here are my exact words;

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I sometimes tend to let my own actual experiences lead me to conclusions, or at least use them to balance the proclamations I see from special interests, like the scientific community, or the news media.

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The bolded part is what applies to this thread. Since I used my skepticism to further explore the claim that was made, I found that it made a lot of sense in this case.

I agree. Your link "states by life expectancy" shows many different classifications for the different states, but shows only a 5 year variation between the two extremes. I think that's pretty insignificant, one of the most insignificant parts of the Heritage Foundation link. If it interests you that's fine - I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you on it.But I need to clarify what I meant by the "social stability" part of the sentence of mine that you quoted. I was more interested in the following statements from the Heritage Foundation link;

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There are many indications that the combination of religious practice and stable marital relationships contributes to a strong and successful next generation.

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Numerous sociological studies have shown that valuing Religion and regularly practicing it are associated with greater marital stability, higher levels of marital satisfaction, and an increased likelihood that an individual will be inclined to marry.

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Four of every 10 children experience parental divorce,[9] but a link between religious practice and a decreased likelihood of divorce has been established in numerous studies

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The last one especially, earlier in this thread we saw the claim that atheists are less likely to get divorced. Both can't be right.

Well yes, many days I hear God's name mentioned several times. With the word "damn" behind it.

Your NY Times link didn't work for me. I'll check it again some other time.