Health and Religion

[kryptqnick]

I don't think IQ depends on one's religious position, but I guess that this phenomenon can be explained anyway. Nobody is absolutely rational. This is just how human nture works for us. We have feelings, sometimes we want to do something totally useless not having much of a clue why... I suppose a rational person needs something to rationalize. And this something must be irrational. Just like a belief in God, who created everything and can even communicate with people in some ways. I guess it is something like a source of inspiration for a person. Therefore, if you have something unexplainable to think of, you appear to be smarter than those who try to be totally rational

[magnific61]

I am muslim.
I believe in Allah.
I feel respect to other religions so,  nobody has to believe same like me.
But, i don't think that there's any atheist on world,  because there should be a creator of universe and all of things can't become by a coincidence. I think atheism is a choice. Not belief. A choice of ignorance

[BADecker]

I am muslim.
I believe in Allah.
I feel respect to other religions so,  nobody has to believe same like me.
But, i don't think that there's any atheist on world,  because there should be a creator of universe and all of things can't become by a coincidence. I think atheism is a choice. Not belief. A choice of ignorance

You are right. There isn't any real atheist. They all believe in some form of god, evn if it is simply the god of themselves.

If you respect other religions, you are a very weak Muslim. You might respect the people of other religions, but if you don't kill them after you give them a long chance to convert to Islam, then you aren't following the Qiran and the Hadiths.

[BADecker]

<snip>

This is probably a major reasons why religious people distrust atheist religion can be looked at as a moral consensus. It is a system of rules which it's adherents (sometimes nominally) agree to live by. By declaring themselves atheists individuals choose to publicly reject that consensus which leads to suspicion. The bitcoin equivalent would be a miner publicly supporting a closed source hardfork.

That Scientific American article describes that as un unsupported cognitive bias. Just because people distrust atheists doesn't mean there's a reason for it.

And just because many religious people feel they need religious rules in order to act morally it doesn't mean that people who don't follow religious rules can't act morally. It's more likely that religious people need religion in order to be moral actors, just as BADecker wrote.

Anybody can act anything by accident. Give a monkey a typewriter, and he is bound to type a word sometime.

All moral laws that atheists follow spontaneously come from the writing of the laws that God did in their hearts. When the time comes that we actually understand the genome completely, we will find the moral laws written right in the genes.

[BADecker]

...
In the 21st century, we have other concepts that essentially function as religions.  Secular governments, science, data.  

Bitcoin is an example.  Two strangers trust bitcoin value because they trust Math behind it.  They are willing to co-operate (in this case exchange value) despite the fact that they don't know each other, might be actually enemies otherwise.  But they will co-operate the same way two Christian Kingdoms co-operated to kill and plunder pagan tribes.

You don't need to suspend your reason to believe some bronze age nonsense, today, you have other options.

af_newbie I am not suggesting you suspend your reason. I am advising you fully engage it.

Upthread Moloch brought Pascals Renewed Wager to our attention.

In this paper we see that belief in God coupled with observance of belief is correlated with numerous health outcomes including:

1) Happiness
2) Physical health
3) Mental health
4) Longevity
5) Stable marital relations

The data in the OP allows us to add fertility to that list.

The only possible counter is to argue that it's all just illusion with some other ultimate cause. That is exactly what the atheist counter paper cited by Moloch tries to do. The 15 page paper is full to the brim with attempt after attempt to to explain away the data. If you are looking for tips on how to strongly argue a weak position its a great source.

The reality is I have yet to see a single study where atheist (of any stripe) outperform the very religious on health metrics. Furthermore there is not a single current or historic non-religious group that has maintained reproductive replacement levels on the communal level.

If someone came to your door marketing lab grown soylent green and meat-x plus you would probably ask a several pointed questions before abandoning fruits vegetables and fish.

Specifically:

A) Are those eating soylent green maintaining physical health?
B) Do they live as long as those eating traditional diets?
C) Could the artificial stuff contain poisons that do bad things like reduce your fertility?

If you would ask these hard questions about soylent green why wouldn't you ask them of atheism? Wishful thinking aside there is no evidence to suggest that modern contrivances like socialism, humanism, or nationalism function as a viable and sustainable replacements for religion.

Bitcoin is a great example. Two strangers can transact in bitcoin because they have confidence in the consensus it represents. The math behind bitcoin is simply a tool that helps keep that consensus strong. This is why the hard fork controversy is so bitter. It is an attack on consensus in one of the few areas where math is not protective.

This is probably a major reasons why religious people distrust atheist religion can be looked at as a moral consensus. It is a system of rules which it's adherents (sometimes nominally) agree to live by. By declaring themselves atheists individuals choose to publicly reject that consensus which leads to suspicion. The bitcoin equivalent would be a miner publicly supporting a closed source hardfork.

126-year-old living atheist celebrates birthday?
#1  Postby CIS » Feb 03, 2011 8:07 pm

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEcKbbcNfm8[/youtube]
No international longevity research body has yet verified her claim to be the oldest person ever (the current official titleholder—Jeanne Calment—died at age 122 in 1997), but she claims to have been born February 2, 1885, making yesterday her 126th birthday.

In the video above, she claims "not to be much of a believer (in afterlife/religion)". If she's really the age she claims, she'd have been born just 3 years after Charles Darwin's death.

OLDEST PERSON IN THE WORLD IS AN ATHEIST
RELIGIOUS PEOPLE ARE THICK AS SHIT..So what you say is not true?

Keeping busy makes you live longer FACT not to much stress on the body light walks every day bike rides gardening and so on.

I bet an old person in the garden would last longer than the old person going to church..
I understand why they live longer going to church than a couch potato because there moving around and keeping active..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hxfr5Tg7jY

The video above they were asked what was there secret and not one mentions GOD? OR CHURCH

God gives us all a chance. God had mercy on her, and gave her a particularly long time of opportunity. Did she make it? We will see in the resurrection.

[BADecker]

Hey! Some poison is good for you. Coffee has at least 119 toxins in it... in tiny amounts. But they cause your immune system to activate, so that you fight off a host of other things as well. <snip>

Untrue. "Toxins" in coffee do not cause your immune system to activate, so that you fight off a host of other things as well.

And vaccines don't work either.   

Wow. You're keen to bring on the crazy eh?

And you are really good at showing us in yourself what craziness is all about.   

[BADecker]

Hey! Some poison is good for you. Coffee has at least 119 toxins in it... in tiny amounts. But they cause your immune system to activate, so that you fight off a host of other things as well. <snip>

Untrue. "Toxins" in coffee do not cause your immune system to activate, so that you fight off a host of other things as well.

And vaccines don't work either.    

You must have seen the last X-Files episode  

An activated immune system works. Toxins, vaccines, and even a little, tiny cut on your finger, all activate your immune system.

I am a toxin to you. I am a vaccine to you. I am a tiny cut on your finger to you. I am activating the immune system of your mind. But you keep shutting your mental immune system down. Watch out or shutting your mental immune system down will kill you one of these days.

[CoinCube]

<snip>
It is reasonable to be suspicious of the values and morals of someone operating with no moral code. It is also reasonable to be suspicious of someone who knows and can anticipate your moral code but refuses to disclose his own. I fail to see the cognative bias.

is not useful information, since the religious person will be more suspicious of any out-group, regardless of the god (or lack of god) they follow.

Be careful of attribution error. We have identified two reasons why the religious might distrust atheist.

1) In-Group Favoritism: The tendency of any group to favor members of their own group.

2) Moral Unpredictability: The difficulty one faces predicting and evaluating the behavior someone who keeps their value system 'closed source' aka undisclosed.

The next logical question to ask is how much does each factor contribute to the society wide distrust of atheist that was discussed upthread. To determine this we should compare opinions on atheist to opinions on competing 'open source' groups like Buddhism or Islam.

The discussed study describing distrust of atheist is not public and behind a paywall in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. However, the news article about the study stated that study participants
believed atheist more likely to commit an immoral act (by failing to leave behind valid insurance information after hitting a parked car) than a Muslim. Even those with no religious affiliation felt this way.

The study appears to have been done in the west where Islam is non dominant and not particularly popular right now. Together these findings suggest that In-Group Favoritism is unlikely to be the primary driver of distrust towards atheist and that other explanations like Moral Unpredictability should be considered.

So let's return to your stated original argument.

I don't think any of these points come close to dismissing my original point, which is

<snip>
It's more likely that religious people need religion in order to be moral actors, just as BADecker wrote.

The statement is correct it needs to be broadened and generalized.

It is likely that humans in general need a coherent internal code in order to live healthy and moral lives. For the religious this is provided by their faith.

[anon_giraffe]

...
And what does fertility rate have to do with anything?
It's well known that people from area's with high infant mortality have more children than people with higher survival rate.
And that poor people have higher average number of children.
...

All of the data from the opening post is from populations living in the United States.

Fertility is a major component of Biological Fitness. If you judge your biological fitness to be unimportant then the fertility data can be ignored as tangential. Others may feel differently so I included it.

But artificial manipulation of fertility through contraception or other practices would make it only useful if you managed to discount those practices.
Just because an intelligent couple choose to have no children has no necessary meaning to their true "biological fitness"?

[anon_giraffe]

Some religious groups are not so picky as to necessarily distrust non-members of their religion. Many Christian sects get along famously irrespective of each others seeming heretical belief and multi-sectarian churches are commonplace.

There are also anecdotes of animals that seem to fit in the hunter/prey category getting along and playing together.

Suggesting that intellectual mindsets are necessary to create behaviours relies on our intellect being our ruling aspect. This does not seem true.
The intellect is never a truly objective entity and will always interact with subjective reality.

--edit
It actually seems that immoral behaviours are generally the product of the intellect or aberrant thought.

--edit
On reflection, it seems some arguments are based on the assumption that the intellect is the base cause for behaviour or morals.
This seems a weak point and has no necessary validity.

We all have minds, and we all seem to behave as if our minds are telling us what to do, but any awareness of sub-conscious activities highlights that much of our behaviour may be ruled by unconscious thoughts.
How to determine whether sub-conscious activities are purely intellectual seems problematic, when there is obvious proof of phsyical driven behaviours such as pain, hunger, sexual desire.

[anon_giraffe]

This is also interesting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

"Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in Psychological Review.[2] Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, some of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. Maslow used the terms "physiological", "safety", "belongingness" and "love", "esteem", "self-actualization", and "self-transcendence" to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through.

...

"Maslow's hierarchy of needs is often portrayed in the shape of a pyramid with the largest, most fundamental levels of needs at the bottom and the need for self-actualization at the top.[1][7] While the pyramid has become the de facto way to represent the hierarchy, Maslow himself never used a pyramid to describe these levels in any of his writings on the subject."

[CoinCube]

I am muslim.
I believe in Allah.
I feel respect to other religions so,  nobody has to believe same like me.
But, i don't think that there's any atheist on world,  because there should be a creator of universe and all of things can't become by a coincidence. I think atheism is a choice. Not belief. A choice of ignorance

You are right. There isn't any real atheist. They all believe in some form of god, evn if it is simply the god of themselves.

If you respect other religions, you are a very weak Muslim. You might respect the people of other religions, but if you don't kill them after you give them a long chance to convert to Islam, then you aren't following the Qiran and the Hadiths.

While there are certainly passages of violence in the Koran it is important to note that there are devout Muslims who are fully aware of these passages and have incorporated them (perhaps with some spiritual struggle) into a peaceful and non violent world view.

http://islamicsupremecouncil.org/understanding-islam/legal-rulings/5-jihad-a-misunderstood-concept-from-islam.html?start=9

WHAT JIHAD IS NOT

Jihad is not a violent concept.
Jihad is not a declaration of war against other religions. It is worth noting that the Koran specifically refers to Jews and Christians as "people of the book" who should be protected and respected.

All three faiths worship the same God. Allah is just the Arabic word for God, and is used by Christian Arabs as well as Muslims.

Military action in the name of Islam has not been common in the history of Islam. Scholars says most calls for violent jihad are not sanctioned by Islam.

Personally I feel that a Muslim who advocates respects and tolerance for other religions is the farthest thing possible from a "very weak Muslim".

The only talk of "death to the unbelievers" that I have seen in this thread has not come from a Muslim.

[CoinCube]

But artificial manipulation of fertility through contraception or other practices would make it only useful if you managed to discount those practices.
Just because an intelligent couple choose to have no children has no necessary meaning to their true "biological fitness"?

Biological Fitness is an empiric not a moral measurement.  
There are two accepted empiric measures of biological fitness these are Absolute Fitness and Relative Fitness. Both of these are directly proportional to fertility unless there is a large differences in infant mortality between the groups. As all of the data comes from one country USA there should be no large differences in infant mortality.

Now the case can certainly be made that Biological Fitness is an irrelevant metric. However, it is likely that some readers will feel this metric to be important and that makes the data relevant.

[organofcorti]

<snip>
It is reasonable to be suspicious of the values and morals of someone operating with no moral code. It is also reasonable to be suspicious of someone who knows and can anticipate your moral code but refuses to disclose his own. I fail to see the cognative bias.

is not useful information, since the religious person will be more suspicious of any out-group, regardless of the god (or lack of god) they follow.

Be careful of attribution error. We have identified two reasons why the religious might distrust atheist.

1) In-Group Favoritism: The tendency of any group to favor members of their own group.

2) Moral Unpredictability: The difficulty one faces predicting and evaluating the behavior someone who keeps their value system 'closed source' aka undisclosed.

The next logical question to ask is how much does each factor contribute to the society wide distrust of atheist that was discussed upthread. To determine this we should compare opinions on atheist to opinions on competing 'open source' groups like Buddhism or Islam.

The discussed study describing distrust of atheist is not public and behind a paywall in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. However, the news article about the study stated that study participants
believed atheist more likely to commit an immoral act (by failing to leave behind valid insurance information after hitting a parked car) than a Muslim. Even those with no religious affiliation felt this way.

The study appears to have been done in the west where Islam is non dominant and not particularly popular right now. Together these findings suggest that In-Group Favoritism is unlikely to be the primary driver of distrust towards atheist and that other explanations like Moral Unpredictability should be considered.

So let's return to your stated original argument.

I don't think any of these points come close to dismissing my original point, which is

<snip>
It's more likely that religious people need religion in order to be moral actors, just as BADecker wrote.

The statement is correct it needs to be broadened and generalized.

It is likely that humans in general need a coherent internal code in order to live healthy and moral lives. For the religious this is provided by their faith.

I think most people understand moral codes such as "respect and treat others as you wish to be respected and treated", however those that belong to groups which make clear delineations between them and "outsiders" are likely to have some moral codes that are not acceptable to other inward facing groups, thus causing conflicts. Conversely, groups which are not inward facing and accept outsiders based on their actions rather than the actions of the groups to which the outsiders belongs are likely to experience less conflict and unhappiness than those that judge all outsiders with suspicion.

To say that a persons moral code is provided by a religion is a concern. Religious code can be reinterpreted by holy men, who can then shape a group's moral outlook to suit their particular views. By relying on religious dogma to inform your entire moral code you risk acting immorally, possibly even against your in-built moral sensibilities.

In summary: People who rely on their native or built-in moral code are more likely to have a positive affect on their local social group than  people who rely on dogmatic moral strictures.

 

[CoinCube]

...
Suggesting that intellectual mindsets are necessary to create behaviours relies on our intellect being our ruling aspect. This does not seem true.
The intellect is never a truly objective entity and will always interact with subjective reality.
...
On reflection, it seems some arguments are based on the assumption that the intellect is the base cause for behaviour or morals.
This seems a weak point and has no necessary validity.
...

Let's examine base human behavior and morals when you strip away all "intellectual mindsets"

In a base state each person would have a right, or license, to everything in the world. There is no centralized authority and no external recourse against violence, coercion, or defection. Thomas Hobbes envisioned this as, a "war of all against all"

In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Now it is likely that we do have a 'built in' primitive moral code that allows us without any preconceptions to escape Hobbs baseline. This code is one of tribalism.

http://www.uvm.edu/~pdodds/files/papers/others/1993/dunbar1993a.pdf
Primates are, above all, social animals. This has inevitably led to the suggestion that such intense sociality is functionally related to the exceptional cognitive abilities of these animals, as reflected in their unusually large brains (Jolly 1969, Humphrey 1976, Kummer 1982, Byrne & Whiten 1988). This claim is supported by the finding that mean group size is directly related to relative neocortical volume in nonhuman primates (Sawaguchi & Kudo 1990, Dunbar 1992a). These analyses suggest that although the size of the group in which animals live in a given habitat is a function of habitat-specific ecologically-determined costs and benefits (see for example Dunbar 1988, 1992b), there is a species-specific upper limit to group size which is set by purely cognitive constraints: animals cannot maintain the cohesion and integrity of groups larger than a size set by the information- processing capacity of their neocortex.

(Red colorization mine.)

(Blue colorization mine.)

It is in maintaining social cohesion in groups larger then the information- processing capacity of our neocortex where "intellectual mindsets" are required. The role of these is to maximize individual freedom to build wealth, prosperity and happiness via cooperation while minimizing individual freedom to prosper from coercion, violence and defection.

I think most people understand moral codes...

People who rely on their native or built-in moral code are more likely to have a positive affect on their local social group than  people who rely on dogmatic moral strictures.

Our native built-in moral code may be helpful for daily decisions within local social groups but there is little reason to think it functional when dealing with those outside our local social groups.

Your error is your continued insistence to lay the limitations of humanity on the doorstep of religion when in actual fact religion is a critical and perhaps primary mechanism for overcoming these limitations.

[BADecker]

I am muslim.
I believe in Allah.
I feel respect to other religions so,  nobody has to believe same like me.
But, i don't think that there's any atheist on world,  because there should be a creator of universe and all of things can't become by a coincidence. I think atheism is a choice. Not belief. A choice of ignorance

You are right. There isn't any real atheist. They all believe in some form of god, evn if it is simply the god of themselves.

If you respect other religions, you are a very weak Muslim. You might respect the people of other religions, but if you don't kill them after you give them a long chance to convert to Islam, then you aren't following the Qiran and the Hadiths.

While there are certainly passages of violence in the Koran it is important to note that there are devout Muslims who are fully aware of these passages and have incorporated them (perhaps with some spiritual struggle) into a peaceful and non violent world view.

http://islamicsupremecouncil.org/understanding-islam/legal-rulings/5-jihad-a-misunderstood-concept-from-islam.html?start=9

WHAT JIHAD IS NOT

Jihad is not a violent concept.
Jihad is not a declaration of war against other religions. It is worth noting that the Koran specifically refers to Jews and Christians as "people of the book" who should be protected and respected.

All three faiths worship the same God. Allah is just the Arabic word for God, and is used by Christian Arabs as well as Muslims.

Military action in the name of Islam has not been common in the history of Islam. Scholars says most calls for violent jihad are not sanctioned by Islam.

Personally I feel that a Muslim who advocates respects and tolerance for other religions is the farthest thing possible from a "very weak Muslim".

The only talk of "death to the unbelievers" that I have seen in this thread has not come from a Muslim.

Seems to me that when a person goes against his religion, he has either forsaken his religion, or he is very weak in it.

The only time you get to pick and choose which parts of your religion you are going to follow, is when the religion, itself, says you get to pick and choose.

If some Muslim clerics are trying to whitewash some of the violence directives in the foundational writings of Islam, they are not trying to obey. Rather they are trying to change things. They are trying to make a new religion. At best, they are weak Muslims. At worst, they are not Muslims at all, and shouldn't be followed if you want to remain Muslim.

Things might be different if the violence writings were simply historical writings. But they are more than that in Islam. They are orders for Muslims to follow. Even though there is a lot of leeway as to the timing when to carry them out, they are still orders.

If you, as a Muslim, would rather ignore the orders, then you are not a very good Muslim. Maybe you are a Muslim in name only.

So, what are you trying to do when you are trying to be a peaceful Muslim:
1. Disobey Islam?
2. Change Islam?
3. Start a new religion and simply call it Islam?

[CoinCube]

...
So, what are you trying to do when you are trying to be a peaceful Muslim:
1. Disobey Islam?
2. Change Islam?
3. Start a new religion and simply call it Islam?

There are multiple other active threads regarding this topic and Islam.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1361553.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1364555.0

I have stated my position on the matter and you have given your counter. I would ask that further debate be directed to a thread where it would be on topic.

[BADecker]

...
So, what are you trying to do when you are trying to be a peaceful Muslim:
1. Disobey Islam?
2. Change Islam?
3. Start a new religion and simply call it Islam?

There are multiple other active threads regarding this topic and Islam.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1361553.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1364555.0

I have stated my position on the matter and you have given your counter. I would ask that further debate be directed to a thread where it would be on topic.

Does that mean you re ignoring the Koran and Hadith quotes listed at http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/quran/023-violence.htm?

[BADecker]

...
So, what are you trying to do when you are trying to be a peaceful Muslim:
1. Disobey Islam?
2. Change Islam?
3. Start a new religion and simply call it Islam?

There are multiple other active threads regarding this topic and Islam.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1361553.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1364555.0

I have stated my position on the matter and you have given your counter. I would ask that further debate be directed to a thread where it would be on topic.

Does that mean you re ignoring the Koran and Hadith quotes listed at http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/quran/023-violence.htm?

He is ignoring those violent verses, the same as you ignore yours from the Bible:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1367154.0

Islam violence verses are directives for Muslims. Any violence directives in the Bible were for ancient Israel. There are no violence directives for Christians. Now, does that sound like I am ignoring violence in the Bible?

Do you have fun twisting things? Thank you. It gives me opportunity to clarify things for people.

[zenitzz]

Atheism = Poison ? IMO, Religion is poison to the mind but Non-belief is God is the true poison of the soul!!