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Belief In God Correlates With Better Mental Health Treatment Outcomes
Hatta writes "According to researchers from Harvard Medical School, belief in god is correlated with improved outcomes of treatment for depression. Quoting: 'In the study, published in the current issue of Journal of Affective Disorders, researchers comment that people with a moderate to high level of belief in a higher power do significantly better in short-term psychiatric treatment than those without. "Belief was associated with not only improved psychological well-being, but decreases in depression and intention to self-harm," says David H. Rosmarin, Ph.D., an instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.' This raises interesting questions. Does this support the concept of depressive realism? If the association is found to be causal, would it be ethical for a psychiatrist to prescribe religion?"
Correlate to better outcomes during sex?
That's what people crave. They can't live with the possibility that life might have no meaning at all, that we're just here and should make the best of it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Makes sense, at least in my point of view. I'm a atheist, and I have got into depressions regarding the meaning of life, the un/fairness behind it, a lot of trascendental questions, also a fear of death, which people that believes in a god, with fervor, may not feel, since they may believe there is a life after death, there is a meaning behind everything, that there is a god that loves you, etc.
That ignorance is bliss.
The key thing missing in the headline: "In treatment of depression".
Other things missing: "in one isolated study", "in an article summarizing the study, without any direct link to the research", and of course, "a highly biased interpretation meant to generate views based on obvious controversy."
Keep in mind, this may also be highly cultural, as many nations have much larger percentage non-believing populations, but not worse depression or suicide rates that correlate.
Ryan Fenton
It's God's will. God is testing me. It's beyond my control. There's also the "God gives me strength" angle.
I suppose it's easier to overcome mental health problems if one believes that they bear no responsibility for their troubles and that an infinitely powerful being will make everything okay if they just believe. A metaphysical placebo.
It's a bit rougher if you've only got yourself to blame for your shortcomings and believe the strength to overcome must come from within.
Then you can be tricked into believing you can be helped by the doctor. A weak mind is easily manipulated. Both for good and evil.
Does it also correlate with more than usual incidences of requiring help for such maladies?
Who did what now?
Having an invisible friend that you know not only believes in you but genuinely loves you is a powerful thing. I'd be very interested to know if people with human friends who love and believe in them enjoy the similar success.
Reality as it's given to us by society and interpreted through rationality IS depressing. The secret is - you don't stop there, you keep going. deeper.
"That a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than a drunk man being happier than a sober one."
Belief In God Correlates With Better Mental Health Treatment Outcomes
so does marajuana use, so therefore belief in god must correlate with marajuana use :P
Because both ideas are absurd and no one actually believes that the entire universe is a simulation.
That is, no one sane.
Those that do believe in such a theory could argue that the Christian god/Allah/whoever is immoral and us being an experiment is just research into artificial intelligence, and thus moral.
Damn, I dunno. Go ask the people who claim to believe in a simulated universe. When you find them? Let me know.
Not only unethical, but kind of pointless. Western religions aren't exactly subtle -- if you've reached adulthood and don't follow any, then you're probably not the kind of person who ever would.
p.s. Law only applies to headlines, but still funny.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
It's a same we can't moderate the article as flamebait.
Yes, in fact, that's exactly what's going on. Many studies have shown the placebo effect is real - but only if you think it will work...
People are so worried about how long they have to live and what will happen to them after death that they forget to enjoy the life they have. A close relative was diagnosed with low grade lymphoma a few months ago (manageable but unfortunately uncurable ) and she wander why I took such a devastating diagnosis to open her eye to the happiness of everyday life. "I don’t take life for granted anymore. I learned to live in the moment. I also realized that when I live in the present moment, life is wonderful" she said to me. It sounded like a frigging cliche but she seems happier than she has ever been. Perhaps we are just wired to constantly worry and its only when faced with the prospect of death that we realize how futile an effort it is.
Homer: Dear Lord, The gods have been good to me. For the first time in my life, everything is absolutely perfect just the way it is. So here's the deal: You freeze everything the way it is, and I won't ask for anything more. If that is OK, please give me absolutely no sign. OK, deal. In gratitude, I present you this offering of cookies and milk. If you want me to eat them for you, give me no sign. Thy will be done.
Because, while entertaining hypotheses can be interesting, using them to justify war, censorship, or other state policy are two very different things.
Shouldn't mental health be treating delusional behavior instead of encouraging it?
Disagreeing with you does not make me a troll.
a Slashdot community filled with raging atheists
I tend to think of it as a Slashdot community filled with raging Gods
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
There is a nice article in wikipedia
The point being, if the patient believes it works, sometimes it does.
Why is it that worshipers label all atheists as 'raging' while they play no-true-scotsman fallacy games when challenged about atrocities done in the names of their religions? It's perfectly normal to find such toxic irrationality enraging, especially when it's used to justify limiting liberty or committing murder.
Another way to look at their results is that there needs to be an improvement in the psychological treatment of atheists because there may be some bias in the treatment that tends to push people to appeal to the spiritual. Maybe a bit like AA.
There is a distinct lack of research in the area of atheist vs theist rates of psychological problems. Of the available research, here is one such study that suggests that atheists are less likely to suffer from depression:
http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/buggle_20_4.html
I haven't done the digging yet but the submitted article smells like the Templeton Foundation may have had an influence.
Because I can totally see belief in certain gods being correlated with catastrophically negative outcomes.
Probably the same reason atheists label all people of faith as "worshippers", "fanatics", or whatever. The overwhelming majority of atheists and spiritual individuals are laid back and don't advertise their disposition. However the ones that do make their beliefs (or lack thereof) known usually earn the label 'raging', 'cynic', 'fanatic', 'extremist', etc. and stigmatize the remaining likeminded population.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Ascribing any particular "meaning" to life would necessitate having a belief in some sort of purpose or specific design for life in the first place. People who do not believe in God do not typically subscribe to such philosophies.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I don't think it's so much that Slashdot is filled with "raging atheists" who think the universe is a computer simulation as much as it is filled with "raging atheists" that are at least willing to entertain such a notion for discussion far more willingly than they typically do with the notion that there is a god.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Thank you for opening my eyes -- it never occurred to me to hold belief in faith and belief in hypothesis testing (proof), as equivalent. It also never occurred to me, given that faith and proof are given equal weight, fortune telling and magic, are as likely as testable physical reality. I like unicorns, who are magical creatures, so they may exist. In my old age, I can hold the same beliefs I did as a child. Santa Claus, and "The Giving Tree" are real once again. Perhaps I can regress back to my infancy, when I had my nice warm blanket, and all things are possible. Innocence and a sense of wonder is restored.
The guiding moral principle of evolution is "survival of the fittest"
Nope, the mechanism for evolution involves differential reproductive success ("survival of the fittest"), but there is absolutely no "moral principle." The Theory of Evolution doesn't say whether it's good or bad or whocares to survive and reproduce.
People have built all sorts of flaky philosophies off of evolution (e.g. "Social Darwinism") that ascribe moral values to certain outcomes, but these are no part of the scientific theory of evolution.
atheists are religious too
And people who don't collect stamps have a hobby.
When they spend time trolling stamp collectors online, join non-stamp-collector organizations, take out ads on buses and billboards about how people shouldn't collect stamps, and go on and on about how much smarter they are than stamp collectors, then yeah, they do.
Says you. I've seen the source. It's not really even all that complicated. Most of the cycles are taken up by annoy method calls with my object as the target.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
> atheists are religious too; they prescribe to the dogma that there is no god
It's not dogma unless someone is willing to burn you at the stake for it.
Now trying to distort the world to fit your worldview... THAT is dogma. You can't handle the fact that you are out of touch with some or most of the modern world so you find the need to attack or subvert it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Ia, Ia Slashdot fhtagn!! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
I'll field this one. There's a few different Gods we refer to when we start using "God" in thought experiments:
1. A Blind Watchmaker.
2. A Spoiled, Brutal Child
3. A Perfect, Immortal Machine
4. Further interesting ideas
However, people who are talking about God who isn't part of a thought experiment, but who actually worship Him usually are referring to American Jesus, who cries when you:
1 .Look at pictures of naked women
2. Play Dungeons and Dragons
3. Read Harry Potter books
4. Are gay
5. Refuse to believe that dinosaurs and humans coexisted.
A lot of people really don't like that guy.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
This is not about religion, but about the placebo effect in a new area. Fits right here,
You are mostly correct. The mechanism for evolution also involves the subsequent survival of the species whereas the offspring needs to live long enough to reproduce. While there is no such thing as "moral principle of evolution" the mechanics involved probably produced what we perceive as morality in order for our species to succeed. The unmoral ones were probably killed, killed others, weren't appealing enough to successfully breed, or didn't have offspring that lived long enough to breed. This may anger some of the spiritual folks reading this, but I remember a paper that hypothesized that religious disposition is instinctual and a product of evolution since the population that believed in a higher being were more successful than the population with no such beliefs (Google "Evolutionary psychology of religion").
The irony being that a corollary of the theory is that atheists act against evolutionary forces and are actually a detriment to society. ;)
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Probably the same reason atheists label all people of faith as "worshippers", "fanatics", or whatever. The overwhelming majority of atheists and spiritual individuals are laid back and don't advertise their disposition. However the ones that do make their beliefs (or lack thereof) known usually earn the label 'raging', 'cynic', 'fanatic', 'extremist', etc. and stigmatize the remaining likeminded population.
You really must know a lot of atheists. Because if you don't, how can you make such a blanket statement? Other wise, you would be the same as a person who says All Christians are fundamentalist assholes who want to take us back tot the dark ages.
I do know some fundies like that, who really shouldn't call themselves Christians because the definitely follow a angry old testament God who is just waiting to torture those people who don't worship him. I've still never gotten any answer when I ask why they don't follow Jesus' sermon on the mount.
But they aren't most religious people I know. In fact, they are a loud obnoxious minority. Most Christians I know follow a Jesus based religion, are decent people who aren't assohles.
So enough of the typecasting. There is also something to be said to standing up to the assholes.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The chief researcher's curriculum vitae: http://www.spiritualityandhealth.duke.edu/resources/pdfs/David%20Rosmarin.pdf (search the doc for "spiritual")
Not to say that he can't be right, but he has been pursuing this idea of "religious people are happier/mentally healthier" for several years. He has a lot invested and a lot of publications on the matter. It doesn't give the impression of a researcher free of bias.
I'd be interested in knowing what they controlled for when calculating the strength of the effect they found. Did they account for age, family history, income, race, sex and social involvement?
I wonder what a belief in J.R. Bob Dobbs does for one's mental health.
Some would argue that religion (blind faith in an untestable hypothesis) is in itself a mental health issue...
But that too is my big question with this study. Without correcting for the likelihood of a religious vs non-religious person experiencing these issues in the first place, it's hard to say if being religious is actually a net benefit or detractor in this case.
There are however relevant studies that equate higher levels of religion with lower levels of education, and with lower income levels, not to mention the fact that criminals are more likely to be religious than the general population, and given that all of those groups also have higher levels of mental health issues, there is certainly an argument to be made.
I'd say at the least, further research would be needed.
You don't have to prove something to believe in it, which is why Atheism is as much a religion as Christianity (etc); Atheists believe in the absence of god without proof, but in any argument they require proof of their opponents (Christians etc) that there is a god.
No, atheists don't believe that there is a god. That is not the same as believing there is no god. A person who say believes in the Christian God will spend time thinking about their God. They will pray to their God. They might go to church on Sunday to pray with others. They will at times have differences of opinion about their God, and split off into different churches that require a different belief about their God
It's really silly to say that a person is religious about nothing. I don't believe in a 6 foot duck that brings me tortillas and butternut squash. That doesn't mean I go to church every Sunday and pray to my belief that the duck doesn't exist. I made that up on the spot, and will never think about the duck again. Your logic would mean that everything we believe in or do not believe in is our religion, even if we don't think about it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You misread the article. Knowing God leads to better mental health outcomes. Ignorance of God leads to prolonged misery. Ignorance is misery.
It is as Jesus said: you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.
It is as Colonel Jessup said: You can't handle the truth.
I happen to believe that there is a God and I will probably be modded into oblivion just for saying so. The fact that the article shows belief in God in a favorable light, will also not sit well with many.
"I believe in God, and I think Slashdot is a group of bigots that will mod me down for my personal beliefs" is flame bait, and should be treated as such. If you left off the taunt on the end, you might have not deserved the negative mods you are expecting, but haven't gotten at the time I post this.
Learn to love Alaska
Western religions aren't exactly subtle -- if you've reached adulthood and don't follow any, then you're probably not the kind of person who ever would.
I don't think demographics support this. While there is a small but growing fraction of the population who label themselves as "atheist" on religious surveys, there is a much larger chunk of "non-religious but spiritual" and "don't know or care." Folks who never went to church, or stopped going to church as soon as they left home, but never had a "burn-out" experience or otherwise developed hostility against religion. At least in the US, the majority of adults who "don't follow any religion" are not opposed to religion (on ethical or "rationalist" grounds); they just haven't stumbled across a church that seems worth their Sunday mornings. However, given a prescription to help their psychiatric condition, they'd likely give it a go.
The difference is that religious use religion as the *reason*, the atheists may target the religious (usually because the religious outwardly declare rebellion based on their religion), but that's not the same as atheism being the *cause* of the motive.
Learn to love Alaska
When the stamp collectors go out of their way pushing their stamps on others, standing your ground and stating your apathy is confrontational? If the stamp collectors stopped asking people about their hobbies, and pushing their favorite hobbies on everyone else, the non-collectors wouldn't ever be noticed. It's the aggressive stamp collectors that generate the backlash, then complain that people complain about them being pushy and annoying.
Learn to love Alaska
You don't have to prove something to believe in it, which is why Atheism is as much a religion as Christianity (etc); Atheists believe in the absence of god without proof, but in any argument they require proof of their opponents (Christians etc) that there is a god. Atheism is no worse than Christianity though, because Christians believe in the existence of god without proof, but in any argument they require proof from their opponents (Atheists) that there is no god.
Atheism is the lack of belief, not the active belief in a no-god. I reject all your conclusions because your premise is wrong.
Learn to love Alaska
From your link:
Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist.
The absence of belief in god is not the same as an active belief in the no-god.
I think your cite proves you wrong, not support your stated conclusion.
Learn to love Alaska
Too little, and you are a depressed atheist. Too much and you have sudden uncontrollable violent urges to blow up Olympic events and fly planes into buildings.
And what about the truly mentally ill people who fixate that god is telling them to drown their children? Who else would have the authority in their minds to demand that?
I am not saying the belief in God is pernicious. But it seems like there is a certain toxic baggage that has accumulated along with organized religion that keeps people dying a lot.
atheist: [ey-thee-ist] noun - a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
Origin: 1565–75;
Related forms
antiatheist, noun, adjective
proatheist, noun, adjective
Can be confused: 1. agnostic, atheist (see synonym study at the current entry) ; 2. atheist, theist, deist.
Synonyms
Atheist, agnostic, infidel, skeptic refer to persons not inclined toward religious belief or a particular form of religious belief. An atheist is one who denies the existence of a deity or of divine beings. An agnostic is one who believes it impossible to know anything about God or about the creation of the universe and refrains from commitment to any religious doctrine. Infidel means an unbeliever, especially a nonbeliever in Islam or Christianity. A skeptic doubts and is critical of all accepted doctrines and creeds.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
Just as believers are making a decision based on a belief (there is a God), atheists are also making a decision based on a belief of their own: that there is not a God. If believers decision one direction is considered a religion based on the criteria of making a decision based on faith, or lack of provable, testable, scientific evidence, then the same can be said of atheists.
It is the agnostics who are ambivalent towards the existence of any higher power/creator and don't bother themselves which such philosophies. This is what I believe you may have been referring to in your message above, and indeed is often confused with atheism, as mentioned in the dictionary.com article above.
All good. Everyone is on this rock to find their own way in life, or to help their fellow man find theirs... help, not force, or coerce mind you.
__
ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
__
ipsa scientia potestas est
"knowledge itself is power" - Francis Bacon
Survival of the fittest means that the animal with the biggest teeth or claws will survive over those with lesser equipment.
Nope --- otherwise every critter would be nothing but giant mounds of fangs and claws. In lots of environments, a bacterium, earthworm, or gerbil is quite well suited for survival, while saber-toothed kitties have all gone extinct. Your understanding of "reproductive fitness" is seriously flawed. However, that's not the worst mistake in your post.
Anyone who subscribes to the theory of evolution therefore cannot logically say that it is wrong to shoot as many "competitors for survival" as possible until someone with a bigger gun comes along.
No, they're logically allowed to say such a thing; they just won't base their claims (either way) on "evolution." "Evolution" neither says it is "right" nor "wrong" for the most fangly murderator to survive --- or even that it is right or wrong to survive at all. There's nothing "wrong" for a person who considers "evolution" an accurate theory to opt to be on the non-surviving side. Note that, despite your serious misunderstanding of reproductive fitness, a person who wants to be on the "reproductively successful" side would probably not strive to be the murderiest monster, since there are often huge survival advantages to friendly cooperation.
It's argue, not believe, but anyway.
http://www.simulation-argument.com/matrix2.html
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
No, atheists are seen as being as bad as evangelical activists, because a great many of them feel the need to go out of their way to interject their own ideology into the discussion as often as they can... Just like evangelicals. At leasts that's been the bulk of my personal experience, with both types of people.
I've had plenty of perfectly civil conversations about religion and related practices with Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddists, and others. But when it comes to atheists, every one of them seems to define their atheism as their own superiority to all others. All such discussions I've ever had have very quickly devolved into one-sided antagonism, where it's insisted that everyone else must try and "prove" their God exists, and be judged. As I said, that's just my experience, but it's been invariable thus far.
I've certainly never seen this persecution of Atheists you claim exists. And I certainly don't see it being more lonely or challenging to be Atheist than, say, being a lone Hindu or Buddhist in the west.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Because of all the talk-circut atheists racing around claiming to speak for the rest of us atheists and acting like intolerant assholes.
I might personally find christianity, islam, judaism, etc to be silly and mystical ways of viewing the world, but as long as they aint fucking with my shit, who am I to to get angry at them for believing in space ghosts?
Just like its been observed that conservatives are more obsessed with homosexuals than even homosexuals themselves, maybe us atheists need to be a little less obsessed with christianity/etc and start thinking about what *positive* things our atheism can bring to the world.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
So you feel inferior when talking to people who are less delusional than you? How is that their fault?
Then as I age, I get to see a repeat --- cases of, how shall I put it, "miracles" --- where patients that the medical doctors have given up on, made drastic recoveries
I'm going to go out on a limb that you can't put a number on that, and that you also can't put a number on the times a patient was told they'd be fine and then unexpectedly dropped dead.
Perhaps, just perhaps, deep inside our psyche, there is a force that we have not yet touch upon, a force so great that it can fight whatever illness the body has been infected with
A force which is a combination of an immune system honed over millions of years, modern scientific understanding, and pure dumb luck.
Till now, our human scientific knowledge is still very limited, there are still a lot of things that we do not know
That's no reason to start making shit up while grasping at straws for an explanation.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
No, no it hasn't. Many religious people are quick to point out that philosophically speaking atheist has very little to offer. Not being compelled to a belief in god is not a motivator. Believers are correct in this regard, weak atheism will not tell you much about the world and it does not really do anything for you. For a start purely descriptive statements cannot alone act as a motivators. As such it cant be the cause of very much.
Communism, capitalism, imperialism are all complex beliefs with implications, screw up how you apply them and they can cause you to be a douche. Atheism isn't really as ism at all, we only label it as such because historically religious belief is so common we needed a word to describe not having one.
This is not to say there weren't atheists who happened to assholes ("Hi Stalin!"). But they weren't assholes because they were atheists. Because they were communists, or socialists, or fascists, or conservative, or liberal, or any number of other justifications for actions, sure, but not because they were atheists. Because atheism offers virtually nothing by way of imperative.
You want to warn me of the dangers of my politics because I'm a liberal, a social democrat, a believer in democracy, have at it dude. Plenty of very bad things have been done as a direct result of those ideals and I'm all for being careful applying them. But you are being disingenuous when you say religion was used as an excuse, just like I would be disingenuous if I claimed the reign of terror had nothing to do with radical liberalism. Religion can cause strife, any ideology can cause strife. It isn't just an excuse, it is part of a complex system of causes.
If you believe in something that is greater than you - whether it be God or Buddha or Yaweh or Allah or Satan what-ever-name-it-is - you have some sort of "psychological protective vest"
When I was younger I did not believe in the so-called "power of prayer" (no matter which religion it is, or which God the prayer supposed to go to). I thought the thing is rubbish
Step 1: Establish credentials by stating that you used to hold an opposing view. Provides a sense of credibility, and a starting point. What matters more is how the speaker transitioned from disbeliever to believer, which is what follows.
Then as I age, I get to see a repeat --- cases of, how shall I put it, "miracles" --- where patients that the medical doctors have given up on, made drastic recoveries
Step 2: Wheel out vague anecdotes and faulty reasoning as post hoc support of a conversion. Rather than indicating existence of supernatural super mind power, what you say here suggests more a need for a decent grounding in statistics.
I can't explain how the thing works, I am only an independent observer on that process
Step 3. Argument from ignorance and claim impartiality. This is a common tactic of conspiracy theorists who try to get out of a need for rigorous evidence by saying that they're not asserting, just asking questions. Of course the questions asked strongly imply an assertion, like asking "so why do you think so few Jews died in 9/11?", to imply a Jewish inside job without coming out and saying it.
Perhaps, just perhaps, deep inside our psyche, there is a force that we have not yet touch upon, a force so great that it can fight whatever illness the body has been infected with --- and perhaps, it's the "belief system" that there is something "more powerful than us", through "prayer", that made up a "conduit" or sort, that tap on that force deep within our own psyche, to fight the disease that has inflicted much pain and suffering on the victim / patient
Step 4: The baloney shotgun is armed. Perhaps in my liver I have an army of undetectable ponies that maintain a balance of power that prevents either kidney from seizing control of my renal system.
The word "perhaps" is bolted on to the front of a whole bunch of crazy speculations that are no more to the point than to postulate the universe being at the centre of a giant donkey's arse.
Till now, our human scientific knowledge is still very limited, there are still a lot of things that we do not know
Maybe one day our human can get our technoogy advance to the point that we can get "in touch" with that force deep inside our own psyche
Step 5: Speculation is at an end - shit just got real. At this point, make it clear that this imaginary bullshit for which there's no evidence is only obscured by our lack of technology/open mindedness/faith. Where earlier it was "perhaps", now it's taken as a given that this force exists. The only perhaps left is the question of whether we will ever advance sufficiently in our technology/open mindedness/faith to be able to understand this magical force.
Scientific knowledge is incomplete. Your knowledge of science is on a par with my knowledge of the Iranian dating scene. Like science, you know it does something because you fly in airplanes, and similarly I know Iranians have some form of dating because they marry and they produce children. I've no idea though how man meets women, and you appear to be viewing science as this big mysterious box, that may as well be a fucking great monkey skull shaped cave on a island that brings the rains when you do your little dance.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
The real issue is that those who believe in a God that watches over them also tend to feel that their lives are being guided, and they PREFER to feel that someone is guiding/controlling/watching over them. Now, a big part of depression comes from feeling powerless about your situation in life, so from that point of view, feeling like SOMETHING is looking out for you is a positive thing, no matter what or who it may be. The solution to treating depression then, is to provide a system(can be peer based, not government) where people who are depressed have others who may be able to help them, or watch out for them to give support. What has happened with modern society is that there is a notable lack of community in most places, and that lack of community leads to depression, and a feeling of isolation. Picture if you had no friends living near you, and the only thing you do is go to a bar and drink by yourself, where you see others who have connections or are making connections. Do that for years, and depression is sure to set in. Neighbors would help, but if society makes it so people are not interested in being connected to your neighbors, that leads to depression.
as do those who seek to persecute those who don't collect stamps, put stamp collecting into the pledge of allegiance, and integrate stamp collecting into their biology textbooks.
on nation, under god, indivisible (because you're on board with that god thing, right citizen?), etc
Some people believe in the existence of a higher being yet don't participate in an organized religion. It would be inaccurate to call them worshippers.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Well, who said that atheists can't have missionary zeal? And feel the urge to win the "delusional" faithful believer over to the side of reason?
Personally, I think god does not exist. I cannot prove it, no. I can't show you evidence that he's not there, no. If you wish, you could say I believe in him not existing, it would be just as right.
Maybe you could see atheism as a very special kind of religion. We believe that we should not believe.
In return, what can I say to people who believe in a deity, a higher power, spiritual entities or other things we can't prove or disprove scientifically? If it makes you happy, who am I to judge you? And it seems that study tells us that you're the happier people, so one could almost construct the argument that believing in a god is right, not because god exists but because it increases your quality of life.
But ... well, how should I put it... being able to sleep in on Sundays increases my quality of life a lot more. If they could put mass on some other time and make it a little more interesting, maybe have a few people from the parish perform a short play of the various scenes of the Bible for the congregation, I could really dig it. I like theater, and the material you have there is gold for sure. I think it would also be much easier to stay focused and not just slumber away as the pastor reads a section of a book you already know. How exciting is that, I have to ask you? In a performance, you could always find new aspects, depending on where the actors and the coordinator want to put the focus, the same scene could easily be exciting over and over, simply because you could compare the "versions" and you'd maybe see a new angle you didn't before.
But I guess that leads a bit too far, and goes beyond the scope of this reply.
TL;DR version: There's fanatics on both sides of the fence. They are the "loud minority" though. Also, on both sides of the fence.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't understand your example. If it was an attempt to argue by analogy you would be better served to give a clear example where atheism was a motivating factor. Please be careful no to confuse anti-theism (which I'm happy to admit can motivate people to do things) with atheism (which I claim rarely can). Note that it isn't enough for someone to claim they are doing something for a reason, they have to actually be doing it for that reason. The Reign of Terror was done in the name of justice and reason, but no one is insane enough to suggest that justice or reason caused the Reign of Terror.
I'm not deceiving myself. I'm just not confusing atheism with anti-theism. There is no gospel of atheism, and I hope that is just a poorly chosen rhetorical device. Many Christians tie Thomist notions to Christianity, but Thomism is not Christianity and if someone tried to suggest that Christianity implied Thomism I'd call bullshit on them just like I'm going to have to call bullshit on you here. Atheism is not anti-theism.
Anti-theism has indeed played the same role as religion in some historical atrocities. Many of it's adherents have been organised and used violence. But you are confusing a tertiary concern (lack of belief in deities) for the primary one (dislike of organised religion). I say this as someone who is an anti-theist so it isn't like I'd dodging criticism of my beliefs here, I'm just pointing that you are going after the wrong ideal. But you seem to think atheism either is anti-theism, or implies it. It isn't and it doesn't. If it were perspectives like my own about religion would be far more popular with non-believers than they are.