House of Eratosthenes

Let’s dispense with the crude metric of IQ and look at the actual lives led by atheists, and believers, and see how they measure up. In other words: let’s see who is living more intelligently.

And guess what: it’s the believers. A vast body of research, amassed over recent decades, shows that religious belief is physically and psychologically beneficial – to a remarkable degree.

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.

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.
:
Obviously, it’s the believers who are smarter. Anyone who thinks otherwise is mentally ill.

And I mean that literally: the evidence today implies that atheism is a form of mental illness…
:
Therefore, being an atheist – lacking the vital faculty of faith – should be seen as an affliction, and a tragic deficiency: something akin to blindness. Which makes Richard Dawkins the intellectual equivalent of an amputee, furiously waving his stumps in the air, boasting that he has no hands.

Dunno if it’s fair to lump everyone in the same group like that. There may be many reasons for not having faith. Someone might have lost theirs, for example, like Mel Gibson’s character in Signs.

But of course on the Internet, in the is-not-is-too debates, the atheist is — for the most part — one of those kids who “still knows everything.” They have yet to learn how much they still have to learn, and they’ve “figured out” that the God stuff is a bunch of nonsense. Based on what? That’s the point where the conversations get really awkward.

I believe in the spurious relationship, myself. The lack of belief is, in some ways, a cause; but in most ways, it is an effect of a lurker variable, the many other effects of which show up in the form of what the article rattles off. The decreased health, the higher blood pressure, the weaker immune system, the shorter lifespan. The lurker variable is passive narcissism, the kind called out in one of those Things I Know:

174. Being an atheist; maintaining a distinction between right and wrong; respecting the viewpoints of others. You may have two of those. Max.

The problem is, of course, for you to maintain a distinction between right and wrong, you have to get one from somewhere. That much is just obvious. How can you “maintain” what is not there? And you have to maintain it, in order to stand up for it. What do you do when you see slavery? What do you do when you see someone mugging someone else? It’s all “nature,” so are you to intervene? And if so, then on what grounds? Protesting “it’s wrong” is easy; but why? What makes it different from a cheetah going after a gazelle, or a spider going after a fly? You may find some who will protest that those are wrong too, somehow, but I’m pretty sure nobody outside the looney bin is going to counsel toward intervening in all of them.

Well with atheism, if you want to produce this right-wrong contrast so you can act on it, you pretty much have to make it up. How else could it be done? And there, we come to the thorny part: What happens if another atheist disagrees? Can you simply agree-to-disagree? No, you can’t. It’s right/wrong stuff. Action is obligatory. So if the line is to be drawn, then how do we get our straightedge?

We must necessarily…and the irony is, atheists relish using the phrase that immediately follows, to put down their believer brethren…shove our morals down someone else’s throat. That is the only option left available. You can change your mind and believe in a Higher Power, you can refuse to intervene and thus become an accessory to crime through lack of action, or you can let the law be your guide and just follow instructions. None of those is as popular among atheists as the personal invention of right-and-wrong, followed by the thundering away about “that’s wrong”…usually along the lines of the abortion issue, sometimes with capital punishment and euthanasia. And, the intervening. It makes me sad, and embarrassed by proxy, to see it happen. They work themselves into such a righteously indignant, frothy rage about the faithful shoving morals down throats — and, in the very next syllable, they do that very thing.

“In 2004, scholars at UCLA revealed that college students involved in religious activities are likely to have better mental health…the more often you go to church, the longer you live…religious people have stronger immune systems than the irreligious…churchgoers have lower blood pressure.
… 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.

Obviously, it’s the believers who are smarter. Anyone who thinks otherwise is mentally ill.”

Huh?!?! Better mental health, longer lives, stronger immune systems, lower blood pressure, less depression..equals smarter? What the fuck am I missing here?

Also, I realize you’re generalizing, Morgan, but the description of atheists seems a tad harsh. Some of us, and more so that actually don’t mouth off on the interwebs, are very respectful of religion, give credit to Judeo-Christian morals for teaching us right and wrong, etc.

I have nothing to back it up but I’m gonn’a go out on a limb here, unless proven incorrect, and proclaim that most of us heathens are NOT as you describe but rather respectful, considerate and thoughtful to our pious brethren. (Please exclude anything from whomever wrote the above “findings” as I’m already leery of his work).

I realize the squeaky wheel and all that but two wrongs doesn’t make a right. No need to put them down as they do you. Forget the loudmouths. I’m sure Jesus/the Bible said/has something similar.
- tim | 08/22/2013 @ 09:41
I have nothing to back it up but I’m gonn’a go out on a limb here, unless proven incorrect, and proclaim that most of us heathens are NOT as you describe but rather respectful, considerate and thoughtful to our pious brethren.

Yeah and I agree with that. Called you out, actually.

But also, like I said — step out on those innertubz and see what your more secular friends are doing out there. For every one like you, there are nine others who just quite plain & simply…well, let’s just get down to brass tacks on it. They don’t believe in God, because if they agreed to go to church when mom asked them to, it would have meant a lost couple hours playing their precious video games that they’ll never get back. And they’ve thought about it that way ever since then. You know it’s true.
- mkfreeberg | 08/22/2013 @ 10:03
Well actually I do think we have a disagreement about the “most” thing. I’ve always thought of your kind as somewhat unique within the atheist crowd.

When some are making more noise than others, it becomes a rather hard thing to measure.
- mkfreeberg | 08/22/2013 @ 10:04
Yea, I might be guilty of Liberalitis – thinking I want something to be true instead of the actual facts. I’m blaming it on the fact that Barry literally just went by less than a mile from where I sit less than an hour ago. Get the fuck out’a my town Asshole!

But I’m still calling BS on the “mental illness” vs health correlation.
- tim | 08/22/2013 @ 10:51
I’m not religious. I’m not an atheist, either — half-assed (or maybe only quarter-assed) agnostic is the label I’d cop to, I guess, if I had to. I buy this fellow’s argument without accepting his implied conclusion, that the Unmoved Mover is the God of the Christian Bible.

That said, once I got over my Angry Atheist phase, I started feeling my lack of religious sentiment as… well, a lack. Some part of the factory-standard package that got left out for some reason. And now I’ve come to feel a bit sorry for atheists, the way I feel a bit sorry for liberals. I mean, you’ve got the one correct way of viewing the world. The scales have fallen from your eyes. You’ve learned the true secret of how the world works. Shouldn’t you be, ya know, happier? Better adjusted? Calmer, cooler, more willing to live-and-let-live?
- Severian | 08/22/2013 @ 10:54
Well ya know, credit where it’s due, small-tee time is like that.

But I do see it over and over again, and this is within atheists who have a lot of demonstrated smarts and advanced edjyoomakayshun — they should know better: Their “proof” is something like, well, “I simply refuse to be told differently” or something.

Now to be fair, on the other side it works that way too. This word “faith,” that’s exactly what it is, when you get down to it. But there is some truth in the believers being more sane, since at least they’re willing to admit it. Heck, they’ve even got that word to describe it. “Of course the conclusion comes first and then the facts are accepted or discarded to make it fit; if we did it the other way, we’d call it ‘science’ or something.”
- mkfreeberg | 08/22/2013 @ 11:16
Works for me.

Part of what got me out of my Angry Atheist phase — the part that wasn’t just the maturity of small-tee time — was just that. Humility. To reject conventional morality means coming up with a morality of your own, and you just can’t live like that. Not well, and certainly not efficiently. You can really only be a Kantian, or a Nietzschean, or or whatever, in addition to or against traditional morality. I remember thinking long and hard about some ethical issue for a class or something, and coming up with what I thought was a reasonable position, only to find that some dead white guy had thought of all that centuries ago, and had demolished my position with a few completely obvious points that I’d missed in all my many hours of cogitation.

And I ain’t no un-dummy. I still think that arriving sui generis at a position once held by a famous philosopher is pretty good. But it took hours, and it took hours more before I got through admiring myself for it, and it took a few more hours before I realized that yep, that thinker was right, my position’s incoherent, and no matter how much I love it, I’ve got to give it up as untenable.

That’s the problem with atheists and liberals. Their initial positions are right, or right enough, but they can’t pay the freight for an entire worldview. The Cuttlefish are a great example — they’re so stuck on A that they can’t see B, C, D, E, F…..
- Severian | 08/22/2013 @ 11:48
Sev, your last sounds a lot like Chesteron in Orthodoxy, talking about how he and his fellow generation were going to be the ones to really set things right and know the world for what it really is. As he puts it, he strained his voice to be ahead of the times, only to find he was a thousand years behind it…. he labored to build a foundation and turned around to find the entire building completed long ago.
- nightfly | 08/22/2013 @ 12:55
Funny you should mention that…. I’m reading (meaning, “browsing in, when I have a few minutes”) Heretics right now. it’s amazing how so much of what he says is ahead of its time. It’s all pre-Great War stuff, but it sounds like someone embittered — and considerably enlightened — by the experience.
- Severian | 08/22/2013 @ 13:20
Interesting post about atheists. I see tim’s point and agree with him up to a point (my best man is an atheist/agnostic, depending on the day), but I think that he’s confused what I called conventional atheists with the Neo Atheists (hi Dawkins!) who are complete assholes about believers. Remember the term “brights” coined to self-describe atheists? These people are evangelical in their desire to yell at the rest of us for being retarded and all. The best way that I’ve seen them described is socially autistic. Sadly, that type of atheist seems to be growing in numbers.
- Physics Geek | 08/22/2013 @ 20:28
I’ve heard the term “ostentatheists” used for the folks you describe, PG. Great coinage, wish I’d though of it.
- nightfly | 08/22/2013 @ 20:40
Atheists are, as a friend of mine puts it, “running on the fumes of Christianity.”

The ones I know, the ones who live in the Western world, mostly seem to agree on the basics of right and wrong: don’t steal, don’t lie to people, don’t do anything which injures others or detracts from their rights. And indeed most atheists seem to believe, to one extent or another, that human beings do indeed have rights.

The primary gulf is on how many of these rights there are, to what extent they apply, and whether so-called “victimless crimes” are really wrong or at least immoral. Gay sex, intellectual property theft, drug use, stuff like that. Many are also okay with abortion since they don’t see the unborn as actual human beings deserving of special protection.

It’s a waste of time, I think, to ask atheists where right and wrong come from, or how you define them without a Lawgiver or objective point of reference. They’re unwilling to concede the obvious – that objective right and wrong DO exist, and that logically there can be no moral law without a Lawgiver. Oh sure, they’ll claim that morality is defined by individual choice, but they howl the loudest when they believe some low-down dirty flea-bitten snake done and did ’em wrong. People who claim not to believe in such objective standards, will still call the cops if their houses are burglarized. This alone irrefutably proves that morality is a real and tangible thing, and not “defined by individual choice” as they claim.

As a Christian, I’m all done with having a “problem” with these people. I used to judge them and looked down on them, but God’s Word has shown me the error of my ways and reminded me to be more humble than that. It is written therein, “This (Jesus’ sacrifice) not of yourselves, so that no one may boast” and “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” That means that now that we’re saved, we’ve got no business looking down on people who are what we ourselves used to be before finding Jesus.

The strongest word the Bible will use against them is “fool.” It actually has harsher words for religious people who judge inappropriately, than it does for atheists. Jesus said, “If you were blind, you’ve have an excuse, but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.” He was addressing a group of haughty Jewish religious leaders when He said this. It also is full of reminders to judge SIN, not SIN-ners. Distinguishing between right and wrong BEHAVIORS is actually mandatory.

I have written a couple of times (including at least once in this space) that if I were an atheist, I’d be dishonest, smug, arrogant, directionless, and perhaps violent too. Why not? If there’s no God waiting to judge you (or reward you), do what you want or at least what you can get away with….right?

To try and wrap this up, my biggest gripe these days is not with atheists at all, but rather with proponents of other religions, especially the ones who pretend to be Christians but actually aren’t. (Mormons especially.) I resent the damage they do by feeding lies and misinformation about God’s ways when they speak to atheists. I also do not appreciate the idea of members other religions trying to kill members of mine simply for offering a view of God that differs from theirs…or the notion of teaching people to worship trees and rocks and other elements of creation, instead of the Creator who made all of it.

Not only do I then have to go in and undo the damage these false teachers do when I witness to these same atheists…I also am troubled by the negative stereotypes about Christianity among unbelievers. Catholics go around claiming that all these “pious” acts are required for salvation, when the simple truth of Jesus’ message is nothing of the sort. I’ve encountered dozens of sincere truth seekers online who had all sorts of whackadoodle ideas about Jesus, put there by false teachers.

It’s simple: God loves you, died for you, and wants a personal relationship with you. Invite Him in and He’ll take it from there. You don’t need incense, temples, men with pointy hats, rituals, statues, prayers in Latin, bribes, or a priesthood for that.

Sorry again for the long post, but this is a near and dear subject to me.
- cylarz | 08/23/2013 @ 01:04
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.

I’m guessing that their research demographics did not extend to…say…the Middle East, or other-than-Christian/Muslim sectors of Africa.

Obviously, it’s the believers who are smarter. Anyone who thinks otherwise is mentally ill.

And I mean that literally: the evidence today implies that atheism is a form of mental illness…

Oh noes! Are ” a team of Harvard psychologists” (any danger of psycological “groupthink” there?) now going to have to add their input
to DSM-V-R with “recent academic studies show” to accomidate SOME folks that might be uncomfortable, or conversly, inelligable for “consequence free” stuff in what has been added/subtracted from the official forensic list of what constitutes “That girl just ain’t right”

Of course, I would immediately dismiss as “incompitant” ANYONE in the “health” or “wellness” industrial complex who could not comfortably cite events where despite all the best “science” education (they’ve at least been exposed to), they haven’t personally witnessed “inexplicable” recoveries outside the medical “regimen” that can only be ascribed to some sort of Spirituality (including group prayer), as well as unexpected failure enveloped by stubbornly delusional self-proclaimed omnipitance.

There’s no doubt in MY mind that there’s evidence of exactly the opposite parameters as well.
- CaptDMO | 08/23/2013 @ 01:32
Catholics go around claiming that all these “pious” acts are required for salvation, when the simple truth of Jesus’ message is nothing of the sort.

Well, I don’t want to have a sectarian brawl in the House, but permit me a small amendment: SOME Catholics go around claiming that all these “pious” acts are required for salvation…

What I call “Churchianity” is a problem in Catholic parishes, of course… and will be for as long as humans are parishioners. It doesn’t end there. I know plenty of evangelicals who go on about it: if you do any single un-church thing ever you’re “not really saved,” and if a woman wants to wear a pair of jeans and a t-shirt just to run to the store, or if a guy listens to White Christmas instead of Adeste Fidelis, well, they’re lost and serves them right. And the worst of the lot say it with a spiteful satisfaction that borders on gruesome.

I wouldn’t say that of the entire Evangelical movement, though, nor of every church therein. Humans in the pews there, too. And but for the grace of God there go I. That’s the common touchstone – by grace we are saved, lest any man should boast. Works of any kind are not meant to cause love of God, but to demonstrate it: they are gratitude for salvation and a light for those still searching. (Though even then I notice that we tend to grow to care more for people we treat kindly than those we scorn or ignore, and Jesus Himself is not exempt. Works can build a stronger faith.)

The Catholic Church didn’t start out with a highly-visible hierarchy and rituals and pointy hats and all that, and of course didn’t have them for centuries. One could say that these are all worldly trappings, “teachings of men not God” and such – well, God has provided churches of the sort that will allow the best relationship with Christ for all sorts of personalities, so that even His people will not be a stumbling block. I suggest that those external things aren’t evidence of backsliding or weakness… they’re equally concessions to attract people to Jesus who are comforted by a ritual and a “command structure” of sorts. They are a problem when they block Jesus from our heart, but they can also be lens through which He comes into focus. Mankind is religious, and religions often have rituals so everyone can follow along in unison – the unity of the congregation being a huge part of any faith.
- nightfly | 08/23/2013 @ 07:06
Nightfly,

what you call “Churchianity” I call “liberalism.”

I’m really not trying to be (too) flip here; I really do see them as two sides of the same coin. It’s that same hectoring, fault-finding, holier-than-thou mentality, combined with brain-busting hypocrisy (I don’t think I’ve ever met a Churchian — or a liberal — who didn’t at least try to cheat on their spouse). The older I get, and the more I watch political “debates” on blogs, the more I think that for a whole lot of people — maybe as high as 75% — the personality comes first, then the beliefs. As I said somewhere else, if Church dogma had changed and the Inquisition were banned, Torquemada would’ve chosen apostasy over unemployment in a heartbeat.

The rest of us muddle through as best we can.
- Severian | 08/23/2013 @ 08:06
Interesting, calm, mature conversation about religion and atheism. Maybe we’ll start a trend?

Cylarz,

Good points, just one exception.

“…if I were an atheist, I’d be dishonest, smug, arrogant, directionless, and perhaps violent too. Why not?”

So the only thing holding you back from that behavior is your belief in the all mighty? You were born to be all those things but only because you believe in a God you’ve decided to behave in a better fashion?

I’m not deputing the role of Judeo-Christian morals in everyone’s life, including myself, but that view seems slightly extreme.

Did cavemen only not behave that way because the Sun God or Fire God would punish them if they did?

Without some omnipotent being to worship Man is basically a degenerate? Of course disregarding Islam, where apparently just about anything goes as long as it in their best interests and hurts the infidel.
- tim | 08/23/2013 @ 09:35
I’m pretty sure that nearly all social groups (tribes, if you will) have the same basic moral ethos. Some things everybody knows are wrong, across all space and time. How does this happen? C.S. Lewis did the groundwork on tracing the ingrained moral structure back to Jesus in Mere Christianity. I don’t remember his argument, but it was convincing.

It’s funny that non-believers think that faith is akin to wishful thinking, baseless and unexamined. Try going to a Sunday School in any of the thousands of churches in America, and undoubtedly the world, and watch ordinary people wrestle with the paradoxes of Scripture, and delve as deeply as they can into their own faith.

I’m reasonably intelligent. If I didn’t examine my belief system, then how smart could I possibly be? And why would anyone assume that I adopted a worldview without constantly checking it’s performance?

There is a God-shaped hole in all of us. You can try to cram anything but God in there, but ultimately you’ll still feel its emptiness.
- chunt31854 | 08/24/2013 @ 16:56
I almost forgot. Man is not degenerate, he is fallen, along with the Creation that he was given stewardship over.
- chunt31854 | 08/24/2013 @ 16:57

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