Freethought & Rationalism Archive

elnoyle · 07-28-2003, 03:39 PM

Hey, I stumbled upon this article today. I'm not sure whether this would go with Science & Skepticism, or General Religious Discussion, because it somehwat fits both. Sorry if this turns out to be in the wrong forum!

Anyway, here's the article:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/...dlines-science

Quote:

Faith and life satisfaction. As baby boomers enter middle age, millions seek meaning in their lives that secular accomplishment cannot provide. People with religious faith tend to enjoy higher levels of life satisfaction, the foundation for psychological well-being, which itself may influence general health.

I don't know. Although I am only 16, I personally feel my life has been more fulfilling ever since I quit Christianity.

Quote:

Religious people have healthy lifestyles. Smoking and the abuse of alcohol and illegal drugs are contemporary plagues. Adolescents and adults from strong religious backgrounds are far less likely to drink alcohol, smoke tobacco, experiment with illegal drugs, or acquire sexually transmitted disease than the less religiously active.

Oh, please. One of my friends is a Catholic, and she has participated in almost all of those activities.

Quote:

Religion, coping and depression. Religious people cope better with major stress involving health problems or loss of loved ones compared to those who lack the comfort of faith or the emotional support of a congregation. Further, people who regularly attend worship services are significantly less likely to become depressed, and those with deep intrinsic religious faith have been shown to recover from depression more quickly.

Wrong again. I can think of an example: when I was a Christian! :banghead:

There's a lot more. To me, it seems like like the author is making a lot of this up. He doesn't mention any specific sources to back up what he says.

And here's something scary (in bold):

Quote:

Harold G. Koenig, M.D., is an associate professor of psychiatry and medicine at Duke University Medical Center and is director of Duke's Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health. He also is the author of "Spirituality in Patient Care" (Templeton Press, 2002) and gives regular hospital-staff training seminars on integrating spirituality into patient care. He wrote this for the Sentinel and can be contacted at koenig@geri.duke.edu.

Thoughts on this, folks? I know all of you will be able to tear this up better than I can.

Malagasy Rain · 07-28-2003, 04:26 PM

Personally, I think just lends credence to the notion that religion, for the most part, is sought for emotional reasons rather than rational. And my dad is a Christian and he smokes tobacco every other day.

MrFurious76 · 07-28-2003, 05:26 PM

I, unfortunetly, work in the social services and as such have to preach the wonderful BS of alcoholics/narcotics anonymous. I can assure you that when it comes to drug use and criminal behavior....suprise, all of them I've treated have religious beliefs, believe in god...yet still commit all manner of crimes. Then of course we have to get them to get God in their hearts AGAIN (guess they didn't believe strong enough before?) and he will take care of the rest.....and I wonder why we have an over 80% failure rate when it comes to keeping people clean

Religious people are just as likely as anyone else to go down that wrong path. I haven't encountered an atheist/agnostic yet in my job, but that is more likely due to my geographic location than anything. If you're human, you can mess up your life no matter what you believe.

meritocrat · 07-28-2003, 06:36 PM

Quote:

Religious people have healthy lifestyles. Smoking and the abuse of alcohol and illegal drugs are contemporary plagues. Adolescents and adults from strong religious backgrounds are far less likely to drink alcohol, smoke tobacco, experiment with illegal drugs, or acquire sexually transmitted disease than the less religiously active.

So alcohol has only been consumed in contemporary societies? HA!

This quoted paragraph is simply misguided stereotypical hogwash designed to demonise atheists.

beastmaster · 07-28-2003, 08:03 PM

Here are the abstracts for Dr. Koenig's studies:

http://www.dukespiritualityandhealth.org/research.html

Funny he doesn't mention in his article any of the equivocal results or, in particular, this study, which found a negative health effect caused by religious delusion:

Quote:

Religious Struggle and Mortality (When Religious Beliefs Adversely Affect Health)
Pargament, KI, Koenig HG, Tarakeshwar, N, Hahn, J (2001). Religious struggle as a predictor of mortality among medically ill elderly patients: A two-year longitudinal study. Archives of Internal Medicine, 161, 1881-1885.

Objective & Design:
The objective of this study was to investigate over time the relationship between religious struggle with an illness and mortality. A 2-year prospective cohort study was conducted to assess the effects of positive and negative religious coping on mortality, where negative religious coping was called "religious struggle." Participants were 595 patients age 55 or over on the medical inpatient services of Duke University Medical Center or the Durham VA Medical Center. Complete follow-up was obtained on 444 patients, including 176 who had died. Religious struggle was assessed by degree of subject agreement (on a 0 to 3 scale) to each of the following seven statements: wondered whether God had abandoned me; felt punished by God for my lack of devotion; wondered what I did for God to punish me; questioned God's love for me; wondered whether my church had abandoned me; decided the Devil made this happen; and questioned the power of God.

Findings:
For every 1 point higher on 0-21 point scale, there was a 6% increase in mortality (risk ratio for death=1.06; 95% confidence interval, 1.01-1.11; X2 = 5.88, p < .05). Patients who believed that God was punishing them, had abandoned them, didn't love them, didn't have the power to help, or felt their church had deserted them, experienced 19% to 28% greater mortality during the 2-year period following hospital discharge. The analyses were controlled for demographic (age, race, gender, education, and hospital), physical health (five measures, including number of medical diagnoses, global severity of medical illness, cognitive status, functional status based on 20 activities of daily living, and subjective health), and mental health variables (11-item depressive symptoms and five item quality of life index, that included social support). The investigators concluded that hospitalized men and women who use experience a religious struggle with their illness appear to be at increased risk of death, underscoring the need to identify such patients and help them work through these issues. For more information contact Kenneth E. Pargament (kpargam@bgnet.bgsu.edu) or Harold G. Koenig (koenig@geri.duke.edu).

scigirl · 07-29-2003, 12:12 PM

I have lots of problems with this Koenig guy.

Where to start. . .

1) Nearly all of his "data" fit his theory. Even the absolute best drugs that we have don't have this good of data. Yet he rarely publishes confidence intervals, or power calculations, or anything like that, at least in the abstract.

I suspect - he is collecting way more data than he is showing us. For example, look at this study:

Quote:

Religious activity was examined versus a single composite construct and then split into three component variables that were examined individually. Finding: The rate of depression in subjects who attended religious services once/week or more, was only about one-half that of subjects who attended services less than once/ week; this association persisted after controlling for physical health, social support, age, sex, and race (OR 0.56, 95% CI 0.48-0.65).

Hmm - so there were three variables examined individually - but he only reports the religious services data. What were the other two variables, and how did they correlate with depression? Looks like data manipulation to me.

2) Do you notice that his definition of "religion" keeps changing? In one study he'll say "bible reading with x" but in the next, it's "church going" and then in the next it's belief in god. Makes you wonder if he just asked them 10 religious questions, analyzed all the data, and just picked the one that had the highest r squared. . . . he needs to keep his religion definition consistent throughout the studies to have any credibility whatsoever.

3) A great majority of his studies rely on the patient's honesty about risky behaviors such as smoking, drinking, or crime. Hmm - do you think it's possible that the rates of lying/denial in extremly religious people differ from the rates of lying/denial among the heathens?

scigirl

scigirl · 07-29-2003, 12:25 PM

I was right.

Here's the abstract that was listed on the Duke web site:

Quote:

Modeling the cross-sectional relationships between religion, physical health, social support, and depressive symptoms. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 5, 131-143.

Objective & Design:
Investigators surveyed 4,000 health older adults as part of the NIA's Established Populations for Epidemiologic Studies in the Elderly survey. Using structural equation modeling (LISREL), investigators examine models of the relationships between religious activities, physical health, social support, and depressive symptoms. Religious activity was examined versus a single composite construct and then split into three component variables that were examined individually. Finding: The rate of depression in subjects who attended religious services once/week or more, was only about one-half that of subjects who attended services less than once/ week; this association persisted after controlling for physical health, social support, age, sex, and race (OR 0.56, 95% CI 0.48-0.65).

But here's the abstract at PubMed: I bolded the parts that were mysteriously "left out" of the Duke web site.

Quote:

Modeling the cross-sectional relationships between religion, physical health, social support, and depressive symptoms.

The authors examined models of the relationships between religious activities, physical health, social support, and depressive symptoms in a sample of 4,000 persons age 65 and over. Religious activity was examined first as a single composite construct and then split into three component variables that were examined individually. Religious activity as a single construct was correlated with both social support and good physical health but was unrelated to depression. Split into the three components, model fit was significantly increased. Frequency of church attendance was positively related to physical health and negatively related to depression, but was surprisingly unrelated to social support. Frequent churchgoers were about half as likely to be depressed. Private prayer/Bible reading was negatively correlated with physical health and positively correlated with social support, but unrelated to depression. Religious TV/radio listening was unrelated to social support, negatively related to good physical health, and, unexpectedly, positively associated with depression.

So it's exactly as I expected - the Duke site only mentions the data that support their theory that being religious is better, but leaves out the data that clearly refutes their theory. Completely unethical in my book - if they worked for a drug company and did the same thing, the community would be screaming bloody murder. OH well, I guess it's ok to lie for Jeebus.

I wish I had these "christian" morals - publishing my research would be so much easier. :banghead:

scigirl the honest atheistic scientist

braces_for_impact · 07-29-2003, 12:33 PM

That's right, it's a good thing these people have a superior morality handed down from god.

Deacon Doubtmonger · 07-30-2003, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by MrFurious76
I, unfortunetly, work in the social services and as such have to preach the wonderful BS of alcoholics/narcotics anonymous. I can assure you that when it comes to drug use and criminal behavior....suprise, all of them I've treated have religious beliefs, believe in god...yet still commit all manner of crimes. Then of course we have to get them to get God in their hearts AGAIN (guess they didn't believe strong enough before?) and he will take care of the rest.....and I wonder why we have an over 80% failure rate when it comes to keeping people clean

I don't suppose the Jeebus-wheezers in your area allow you to use (or even check out) Rational Recovery?

http://www.rational.org/

07-28-2003, 05:26 PM	#3
MrFurious76 Regular Member Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Charleston, IL Posts: 153	heh I, unfortunetly, work in the social services and as such have to preach the wonderful BS of alcoholics/narcotics anonymous. I can assure you that when it comes to drug use and criminal behavior....suprise, all of them I've treated have religious beliefs, believe in god...yet still commit all manner of crimes. Then of course we have to get them to get God in their hearts AGAIN (guess they didn't believe strong enough before?) and he will take care of the rest.....and I wonder why we have an over 80% failure rate when it comes to keeping people clean Religious people are just as likely as anyone else to go down that wrong path. I haven't encountered an atheist/agnostic yet in my job, but that is more likely due to my geographic location than anything. If you're human, you can mess up your life no matter what you believe.

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07-28-2003, 04:26 PM	#2
Malagasy Rain Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: USA Posts: 664	Personally, I think just lends credence to the notion that religion, for the most part, is sought for emotional reasons rather than rational. And my dad is a Christian and he smokes tobacco every other day.

07-29-2003, 12:33 PM	#8
braces_for_impact Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: In a nondescript, black helicopter. Posts: 6,637	That's right, it's a good thing these people have a superior morality handed down from god.

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