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Study Finds the Pious Fight Death Hardest
Stanislav_J writes "A US study suggests that people with strong religious beliefs appear to want doctors to do everything they can to keep them alive as death approaches. The study, following 345 patients with terminal cancer, found that 'those who regularly prayed were more than three times more likely to receive intensive life-prolonging care than those who relied least on religion.' At first blush, this appears paradoxical; one would think that a strong belief in an afterlife would lead to a more resigned acceptance of death than nonbelievers who view death as the end of existence, the annihilation of consciousness and the self. Perhaps the concept of a Judgment produces death-bed doubts? ('Am I really saved?') Or, given the Judeo-Christian abhorrence of suicide, and the belief that it is God who must ultimately decide when it is 'our time,' is it felt that refusing aggressive life support measures or resuscitation is tantamount to deliberately ending one's life prematurely?"
I'd be praying for a quick death so my family wouldn't have to pay the millions to keep me alive after hitting the limit on my insurance policy.
If you think you're not afraid of death, try this test: get a friend, and go to the Grand Canyon. Stand on the edge. Have your friend hold onto your shirt and push you so that your balance goes out over the edge. Don't try it too many times - your friend might slip.
Now, were you okay with it? Did you feel any fear, any adrenaline, anything like that? If not, maybe you're not afraid of death.
I think the actual problem here is something the Tibetans call tetsom - lazy doubt. You sort of nominally believe that X is true, and you leave it at that - you never go any deeper, never really examine it to see if what you believe really stands up to analysis. You *think* you really believe it, but your faith is foundationless.
Then when your faith is tested by the approach of death, suddenly your lazy doubt catches you by surprise, and makes your fear of death just that much worse, and so of course you cling to life all that much more strongly.
The depressing thing about lazy doubt is that I think it's behind a lot of the really pernicious things we attribute to religion - e.g., creationism is a clear case of lazy doubt. "Oh, if it turns out that things evolved, that calls my whole belief system into question, and I don't want to have to question it, so I will pretend that things didn't evolve."
This is a terrible survey, the base demography are of terminal cancer patients. Have the surveyor ever consider the possibility of people become pious due to fear of death? Many soldiers get sent to the battle field also suddenly become more pious. That's not something new. It'd pretty much be the same as "We've surveyed slashdot, and it seems people who post on slashdot also tend to be avid computer users." All I can say about that is "well duh!"
Where is the "Ignorant" mod tag?
People who follow the instructions of authority, believe others should follow such instructions, and tend to believe that authority is right most or all of the time, are called authoritarian. People who hold to belief systems dictated by a hidden power with perfect judgement are some such. Those people also tend to believe/believe in other authorities judgements and power. Thus, people who hold strong religious beliefs tend to be the same people who most strongly believe in (and expect results from) the abilities of health care authorities -- doctors.
The same paradox was noted by Stanley Milgram in the Yale Experiments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment A nurse was one of the people who continued to follow instructions and "shock" a subject after the subject appeared dead, just because she was told to. At first it seemed a paradox that a nurse would follow instructions that would harm another. He figured it that he was equivalent to a doctor in the nurses mind, and so she was following his instructions to the letter without evaluation, just as she was trained to do with doctors. (Nurses these days are trained differently).
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
It's interesting. Do they realize on their death bed, they were actually raging assholes to their fellow man and are afraid of the wrath of their god on the other side?
EXACTLY! It was probably fear that lead them to the church in the first place. Then they surround themselves with like minded people and yell at the rest of the world for how evil they are(really there just mad everyone else doesn't have the same irrational fears of the natural world.) and have nice fantasies of the rest of the world rotting in hell. Then on their deathbed they wonder... "Is god gonna like those fantasies of all those people burning and being tortured because that's about as much as I thought about my entire life...All I ever wanted was for OTHER people to die and goto hell".
This study was done on terminally ill cancer patients. My wife is an RN, and in our discussions about her job it has been very apparent to her that death by cancer, slowly, causes a very different reaction in most people she has seen than other terminal illnesses.
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with the study, but I would like to see it expanded to, for example, heart/lung failure and other forms of terminal disease, and see what the difference is.
One aspect that I have seen in cancer end-of-life treatment is the heavy reliance on pain-killers to cope (nothing WRONG with that, just an observance). This could also have a very serious effect on EOL decisions.
-- I really need to bleed off some of this
Oh believe me, I agree with you 100%
I would choose to consider myself a "Christian", if one were to apply a label to my religious beliefs.
The core tenent of Christianity is to (paraphrasing) "Love God above everything, love others as much as you love yourself."
Now I have serious problems with pretty much all organized Christian faith. They spend all their time telling you that you're going to burn in hell if you don't do this, or don't say that, or if you vote in favor of gay marriage, or eat red meat on Fridays during Lent, or use a condom or Pay us 10% of your wages or fail to wear your holy underwear at all times. You have the godhatesfags.com morons who obviously really fucking hate themselves if they're "loving others as much as you love yourself".
Its not my place to pass judgement on ANYONE. I live my life, believe what I believe, pass on my beliefs when appropriate, and try my best to be good natured. And I fail miserably at times :). I try to do good overall in the world, and help other people out when they need it. And quite frankly, I can do that without someone telling me the myriad of ways I'm going to go to hell.
But I agree..the Burn in Hell shit is nothing but FUD. These people who call themselves Christian and constantly tell you how you're going to burn in hell....well, assuming hell IS real, my personal opinion is they'll probably be there too.
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The pope decided that the idea of limbo was too depressing and decided to drop it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5406552.stm
Who knows what happened to all the babies' souls that had supposedly been in limbo up until that point. It makes absolutely no sense to me how people can believe in religion when things like this are fairly common.
Sturgeon was an optimist.
I can talk about this first hand. You are all wrong. My father is very religious. He has had cancer twice. The second time was seven years ago. The doctor's gave him a 3% chance of living. He lived. And to this day, his medical bills are nuts. He works everyday to prolong his life in a manner which I know any normal mortal would be able to handle. I would have rolled over and died years ago. His quality of life sucks. He has been on a 90%liquid diet for seven years. For the past two years, he coughs up half of what he eats because it goes into his lungs. It takes him an hour and a half to eat a snack. It is an everyday battle for calories and strength. His oxygen levels are so low, that nearly every regular doctors visit, they send him to the emergency room. In fact, he went today.
So what is it? Is it a fear of death? Hell no. If you met my father for as little as one hour, then you would know that isn't it. He isn't scared to die. It is the combination of two things,
1) His faith gives him strength. What we may see as an unbearable life style, he has ways of dealing with it. It simply doesn't break will. He still finds joy in life.
2) My father believes in purpose. If God has given him a way to live, then God still has plans for him. Suffering everyday means something completely different to him.
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I should not that, personally, I am agnostic. All of you pining over the idea that the religious fight death hardest because they are scared of death, which does follow some logic, are VERY wrong.