marc9000 writes:
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,....
Heritage Foundation on religion and social stability.
There's considerable variation in religiosity around the world, marc, and also considerable regional variation in your own country.
I was interested to read this on the health benefits of religiosity. Interested, because I happen to know that there's a general negative correlation between high religiosity and longevity around the world, and also within the United States.
quote:
Religion and Physical Health
Greater longevity is consistently and significantly related to higher levels of religious practice and involvement, regardless of the sex, race, education, or health history of those studied. For example, those who are religiously involved live an average of seven years longer than those who are not. This gap is as great as that between non-smokers and those who smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. Predicting the life spans of 20-year-olds who are religiously involved compared with those who are not yields differences in life span as great as those between women and men and between whites and blacks. Among African-Americans, the longevity benefit is still greater. The average life span of religious blacks is 14 years longer than that of their nonreligious peers.
Studies on the effects of religious practice on annual death rates of various populations found that, after controlling for variables such as race, death rates for an age cohort (e.g., men age 59 or women age 71) were reduced by 28 percent to 46 percent (e.g., from 100 deaths per year to 72 deaths to 54 deaths) for that age group.
An earlier review of 250 epidemiological health research studies found a reduced risk of colitis, different types of cancer, and untimely death among people with higher levels of religious commitment. Conversely, at any age, those who did not attend religious services had higher risks of dying from cirrhosis of the liver, emphysema, arteriosclerosis, and other cardiovascular diseases and were more likely to commit suicide, according to an even earlier review by faculty of the John Hopkins University School of Public Health. The most significant pathway by which religious practice delivers these longevity benefits is a lifestyle that reduces the risk of mortality from infectious diseases and diabetes by encouraging a support network among family and friends that helps to maintain a pattern of regimented care.
Not only a person's own religious practice, but also parents' religious practice affects personal health. Adolescents whose mothers attended religious services at least weekly displayed better health, greater problem-solving skills, and higher overall satisfaction with their lives, regardless of race, gender, income, or family structure, according to a study of public school children in Baltimore.
So, as the author is talking about research in the U.S., let's do some research of our own.
States by religiosity
States by life expectancy
Straight away, we can see that Mississippi leads America in religiosity, but comes last in life expectancy. Utah is an exception, coming 10th in life expectancy, but the other nine on the "high religiosity" list all score very low in life expectancy.
In the low religiosity list, D.C. is the exception, at number 43 in life expectancy. Of the other 11, only Nevada and Alaska are below average, and 5 of the infidel states are in the top ten for longevity.
None of which means that religious practise never confers health benefits on the devout. There are several ways in which it can, but religious people themselves often seem to misunderstand the research which can show this.
The Telegraph article linked to in the O.P. makes a number of mistakes, but I'll just mention one for now. He talks about atheism, implying that any advantages gained from religious practise are due to theism. But they're not. Research in the east shows that non-theistic religions like Buddhism have exactly the same effects, and that what is actually believed by the believers doesn't matter. Secular groups of certain types that meet regularly can also confer the benefits on their members that the article gets so excited about.
Edited by bluegenes, : missing word added
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