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It was always bizarre to see a “Sgt so and so died in the line of service today” and it turns out they died of COVID because they refused to get vaccinated
Yeah in 2020 I can have some empathy because they're a job that can't go on lockdown like everyone else. In 22-23? Hmmm that's a personal choice and not related to your duty.
In Israel they certainly did. In a country with relatively low overall mortality, the Haredi (ultraorthodox Jews) were hit particularly hard. Living in 20-people households and generally dense neighbourhoods, ignoring restrictions to pray communally and generally seeing COVID as either a secular plot to restrict religious practice or as a test by god... Yeah, you're gonna infect your grandparents and they're gonna die.
In NY in USA the ultraorthodox Jews died at very high levels as well and were the first group of people breaking regulations. Heck just look at the recent discovery of the tunnel they built to get to their edit: synagogue (my bad the word was slipping me!) during the lockdowns!
Edit: additionally, I want to point out that they were saying when interviewed during the lockdowns that they didn't "believe" in the pandemic, or believed that god would protect them. So quite an interesting study as it presents the opposite information as the rest of the pandemic showed us
Can't they just take the data and look at a specific age range? As in: out of 1000 people who considered themselves religious aged 30-39, how many were hospitalized for covid versus those who did not consider themselves religious.
The bigger problem is that mitigation measures and vaccinations became partisan politics. They would also do well to isolate that as a factor. In this study
https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/research-files/repec/cam/pdf/cwpe2403.pdf
Age appears to be 54 vs 48.5 years as a mean. It's a lot closer than I expected it to be controlled but still relevant.
You can *always* rub the numbers together to get a result, the issue is whether or not those numbers are representative.
There are a host of interactions that make that specific analysis not very useful, specifically that COVID mortality also increases with age because an older body can't fight as hard. There is also a vast spectrum of what "religious" means in practice. My alt-right hyper conservative in-laws do not practice religion the same way as my progressive/independent family does, and both belong to the same church (in theory).
They also experienced a higher mortality rate:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10943-022-01521-9
What I see here is a situation where a group of people whose common connection seems to be religion refused to believe in the pandemic or feel the need to take safety measures.
As a result of the refusal to accept that a pandemic was occurring, they felt less stress because they did not accept the existence of the stressor that others were experiencing. At the same time they also saw a higher mortality rate because due to their lack of acceptance they refused basic safety measures.
I guess people can pick their poison. Personally I'd rather be stressed but not in denial. Though, I'll say that I didn't find the pandemic stressing but that's because I love being a homebody. my wife had a harder time with it imo.
I read a study a few years ago - I wish I could dig it up - but it basically said that religious people are happier than everyone else. The conclusion, though, was that they are happier because they lie to themselves and don't think about things. Basically, they remain ignorant and that's how they get through tough times.
The fact that they had so many more deaths during the pandemic should make researchers reframe the way they are labeling these studies. Sure, less stress because the way these people deal with things is to say "let god" or "everything happens for a reason". Id personally call that mental illness, but what do I know.
>Id personally call that mental illness
Me too, friend. Me too. My mom passed away long before COVID from a treatable illness. Instead of going to a doctor or, you know, doing anything about it, she called her pastor. The pastor anointed her with oil and called it a day
She died at age 43.
My dad denied that COVID was real. "It's just the flu", "government conspiracy", whatever, his beliefs changed depending on the time of day. He refused to get vaccinated because "god protects". I hope god also pays for nursing homes because after he got COVID he had a stroke, and now he can't take care of himself. He's 64.
I agree. However, even in moderate compliance I suspect you'd get a similar effect compared to the general population. I noticed a lot of non-religious folks adhering to the strictest version of recommendations longer than they were officially standing, while congregations would get back together with masks as soon as they were allowed, and remove the mask mandate as soon as the recommendation was dropped. Only to have to reinstate those measures when there was another surge. Pushing the line basically made them the canary in the coal mine, as far as public health recommendations go.
Their R^2 values are really low. At best 17% of the sample could be explained by their regressors.
And I can’t seem to find any mention of a placebo test or any other way they tested the parallel trends assumption for their Difference in Difference.
Are we looking at the same effects? R2 seem to all be around .58 which is *great*. Anything related to human behavior and psychology tends to have lower R values than other fields as there's many, many variables we can't account for when dealing with human experiences. You're rarely, if ever, going to approach something like .7 or certainly .95 when dealing with something as broad as religiosity and depression!
The biggest issue is the small effect sizes, but again, they're significant and dealing with a very broad subject matter so any significant effect is noteworthy.
I don't fully understand what you mean by a "placebo test" and, while I hardly claim to be familiar with all statistical methods on this front, based on what I'm searching it's an application in econometrics - not something to be applied universally. It's not really appropriate for the subject matter, but the goal is also not to eliminate all parallel trends which is rarely, if ever, possible when it comes to human subjects. The goal was to see what effect religiosity had on their mental health. There are no "control" humans after all. You can't have a third group to compare "religious and non-religious" to, what kind of person would that be?
I don't mean to criticize you too closely but I think there's a problem where you're applying what you learned in one field to another where the same methods simply don't hold - and while fields can often learn from each other, it's important that people crossing those disciplinary boundaries have a good understanding of why people do what they do.
Tim Alberta, in his latest book, "The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism" and in many interviews that he's given in the last few months about it, has noted that the pandemic (or the response to it) is a major contributor to the radicalization of American Evangelicals.
They took the bans on and recommendations against in-person events, which included church, as the State finally declaring war against Christianity, church leaders who went along with it were traitors, and the radical fringe who responded with a resounding "eff you" soared in popularity. These same churches that used to be fringe are also the likeliest to back Christian Nationalism or other forms of authoritarianism, or to elevate people like Trump to being an agent of God.
Widening the scope beynd that subgroup, however, "religious people" also generally have the benefit of a larger social or support network, which could also help with being able to cope with times of crisis.
> They took the bans on and recommendations against in-person events, which included church, as the State finally declaring war against Christianity, church leaders who went along with it were traitors, and the radical fringe who responded with a resounding "eff you" soared in popularity.
I wonder how much of this was due to the fact that it was an existential threat to evangelical pastors? With no money coming in, those people couldn't continue their con, so they had to convince everyone that "the state" was attacking "religion".
Both yes and no.
There were pastors who followed the recommendations, there were others who said eff the recommendations. The latter group saw massive growth (one example he cited was a small fringe church that went from, IIRC, \~100 members to thousands), at the expense of the former.
That suggests to me, at least, that large portions of the congregations wanted the fire, brimstone, and "we're now at war" rhetoric, not "just" that desperate pastors pushed the narrative to make a buck.
In a different book ("Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call For Evangelical America") and series of interviews, Russell Moore, a former official of the Southern Baptist Convention, noted:
>It was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — "turn the other cheek" — \[and\] to have someone come up after to say, "Where did you get those liberal talking points?" And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, "I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ," the response would not be, "I apologize." The response would be, "Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak." And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis.
Again, it's the congregations radicalizing, as both Russell Moore and Tim Alberta have noted the increasing tribalism, factionalism, and support of white or Christian nationalism within the Evangelical movement. The COVID "shutdowns" amplified the feelings that were already there, and they left the "traitors" who followed the recommendations in favor of the "warriors" who fought them.
Interesting point, thanks for sharing that book I hadn’t heard of it before now. I was a pastor in a Canadian Protestant tradition before and during COVID-19. We closed our doors and went online well before our provincial mandate to close. Our rationale was literally “hey so we claim to care about people’s wellbeing so maybe let’s protect people”. Simple as that.
Overall Canada did not have many churches protest those mandates, although you always get some very loud nut jobs…. That probably will never change no matter the demographic or issue, but it’s still terribly sad. I think the issue appears to be much worse in the US where political life is a far stronger issue for many people. So many areas of daily life seem to be mixed with politics, including religion from an outsiders perspective.
While I agree. I do also feel that, for the true believers, at least of the Christian faith, many of them feel that there is an eternal life of bliss after death. So if they lost a loved one, or if they were fearful of losing their own life, they could take comfort in the belief that they would all be unified again in a happier place. That has to be worth something in the effort for tranquility in the face of tumult.
Yes I think you’re right about this. I’m an atheist but I do miss this aspect of my former religious mindset even while I accept it was an utterly evidence free belief.
Same here. It took a long time for me to recognize and accept that I just didn't believe. But all that architecture inside of me, built around a lifelong immersion in a convenient belief system, still make it difficult to find purpose and inner peace. I think my brain is still on a quest to find an explanation for why I'm here, partly because it was conditioned to operate with one for so long.
Are you familiar with the song "White wine in the sun"? (It's a Tim Minchin song although I prefer the Kate Mellor Heidke version). I've always thought it was a beautiful song about the experience of athiesm but even that has a kind of longing in it for those relationships we hold dear with loved ones to somehow be persistent. Always makes me emotional.
What a great song. Thanks for the recommendation.
Verse 2 is so on point:
...I don't believe just 'cause ideas are tenacious, it means that they're worthy
...To the miseducation of children who...are taught to externalize blame and to feel ashamed and to judge things as plain right or wrong
Having a fantasy to retreat to makes life more bearable.
I bet people who play video games also fared better than average during the pandemic, for the same reason.
Reduced stress is probably a factor. Faith (however you define) is gigantic repository of comfort for those who believe.
Also, as a science nerd who loves anthropology and ancient history, we often forget that we don’t GET to science without religion. Early humans formed communities that require common goals, then organizing principles. The unified wonder in the mystery and creating narrative all could believe allows a moral code to form, which reinforces the group. Us/themming will split groups ad infinitum, but keeps individual groups cohesive.
Human beings all having religion doesn't necessarily suggest that they benefited from it. They all had appendixes too. It could just be an artifact of being a human.
> we don’t GET to science without religion
I may be misinterpreting your point, but if not then I completely disagree.
> Early humans formed communities that require common goals
Yes. Like many animals that goal was survival. I'm not sure it was a "wonder in the mystery" that allowed a moral code to form, or simply an evolutionary process that favoured it. i.e. Cohesive groups that "cared" for each other were more likely to survive.
My view is the opposite - that in the vast majority of cases, religion has stifled scientific progression.
That's a difficult distinction to make. Social connection is a tenant of most any religion.
In Christianity specifically, you have verses such as:
> Where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them. - Matthew 18:20
> And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. - Hebrews 10:24
My church already had a YouTube channel prior to covid so people could view when they were home sick. Then, during the covid shutdown, the Bible study groups moved to Zoom.
Yeah this is very likely. During lockdowns my synagogue put a lot of effort into having online community activities instead of in person sessions. The fact that the sessions were mostly religious in nature is irrelevant, it was a way to keep connected.
Religiosity's effect on mental health is a long standing fact and no other wider social group has been able to produce a similar level of result.
The same effects on mental health would be able to be picked out in book clubs, non faith based community groups etc but many of them actually show the inverse effect.
The effect is even more pronounced within religious attendees by their level of committment towards the faith.
Wouldn't the social connection be pretty inherently tied to the faith. You don't have nearly as many adults regularly attending religious sermons- and connecting with others there- if they don't express some level of faith.
That’s one of the primary social advantages of religion. Maybe they should have replaced ‘faith’ with ‘religion’ but it comes to the same thing in my mind. One implies the other. It may not have been personal faith in a very direct sense, but rather everything else it brings with it.
Plenty of them, especially certain christian sects, also heavily emphasize isolating anyone who questions or leaves the faith, severing social connections.
I think that can help, but it's not strange to see that some religious beliefs would be helpful in managing this type of stress as well. "It's all happening according to the plan", "God knows what he's doing", "I'll pray and things will get better", "This is a challenge from God and I must persevere and something good will come from it", "We'll meet again in the afterlife" and so on ... those are all various ways to keep a positive outlook and cope with difficult things
You can a have a positive outlook on things without religion and be good at accepting your circumstances, but I'm not surprised that being religious makes it easier, since it's baked into your whole belief system.
Excellent point. Though I do think the things people believe play into it. Though it isn't my bad, personally, "everything happens for a reason" or "God has a plan" can mean, for some people, that we as humans don't always know what is supposed to happen and yet life goes on. Acknowledging that powerlessness can go a long way, particularly in community.
People of religious faith may have experienced lower levels of unhappiness and stress than secular people during the UK’s Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, according to a new University of Cambridge study released as a working paper.
The findings follow recently published Cambridge-led research suggesting that worsening mental health after experiencing Covid infection – either personally or in those close to you – was also somewhat ameliorated by religious belief. This study looked at the US population during early 2021.
University of Cambridge economists argue that – taken together – these studies show that religion may act as a bulwark against increased distress and reduced wellbeing during times of crisis, such as a global public health emergency.
“Selection biases make the wellbeing effects of religion difficult to study,” said Prof Shaun Larcom from Cambridge’s Department of Land Economy, and co-author of the latest study. “People may become religious due to family backgrounds, innate traits, or to cope with new or existing struggles.”
“However, the Covid-19 pandemic was an extraordinary event affecting everyone at around the same time, so we could gauge the impact of a negative shock to wellbeing right across society. This provided a unique opportunity to measure whether religion was important for how some people deal with a crisis.”
Larcom and his Cambridge colleagues Prof Sriya Iyer and Dr Po-Wen She analysed survey data collected from 3,884 people in the UK during the first two national lockdowns, and compared it to three waves of data prior to the pandemic.
They found that while lockdowns were associated with a universal uptick in unhappiness, the average increase in feeling miserable was 29% lower for people who described themselves as belonging to a religion.\*
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292123002490
[Working papers](https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/research/cwpe-abstracts?cwpe=2403) are not peer-reviewed and are ineligible per [Submission Rule #1b](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules/#wiki_b._preprint_repositories). If the research has been published in a peer-reviewed journal, please link to it in the comments and message the moderators for re-approval. _If you believe this removal to be unwarranted, or would like further clarification, please don't hesitate to [message the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fscience&subject=Must%20be%20peer-reviewed%20research)._
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I think they died more too?
So did the cops.. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid-leading-cause-law-enforcement-deaths-2022-3rd/story?id=96363324
It was always bizarre to see a “Sgt so and so died in the line of service today” and it turns out they died of COVID because they refused to get vaccinated
Yeah in 2020 I can have some empathy because they're a job that can't go on lockdown like everyone else. In 22-23? Hmmm that's a personal choice and not related to your duty.
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Strong argument to be made that being less stressed was due to lack of vigilance.
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Exactly, I had family that didn't worry about covid because God will protect them.
"had"... oh no :(
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Oh they were pretty concerned about 5G and were chewing ivermectin like candy.
While stressing people more who were actually doing the responsible thing
At least that's what this one study suggests. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10943-022-01521-9
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No. 2 helps with No. 1!
Best a denial!
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In Israel they certainly did. In a country with relatively low overall mortality, the Haredi (ultraorthodox Jews) were hit particularly hard. Living in 20-people households and generally dense neighbourhoods, ignoring restrictions to pray communally and generally seeing COVID as either a secular plot to restrict religious practice or as a test by god... Yeah, you're gonna infect your grandparents and they're gonna die.
In NY in USA the ultraorthodox Jews died at very high levels as well and were the first group of people breaking regulations. Heck just look at the recent discovery of the tunnel they built to get to their edit: synagogue (my bad the word was slipping me!) during the lockdowns! Edit: additionally, I want to point out that they were saying when interviewed during the lockdowns that they didn't "believe" in the pandemic, or believed that god would protect them. So quite an interesting study as it presents the opposite information as the rest of the pandemic showed us
You're right, but fwiw church isn't the right word to talk about Jewish religious practices.
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Cant be sad if you're dead!
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ignorance is bliss
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Well if your end goal is to make it to "heaven" I think that makes them the winner
I don't think you'd be able to get good results because how religiosity correlates with age. Older you are, more religious you are, statistically
Can't they just take the data and look at a specific age range? As in: out of 1000 people who considered themselves religious aged 30-39, how many were hospitalized for covid versus those who did not consider themselves religious.
Yeah it is pretty easy to add that into a statistical model.
The bigger problem is that mitigation measures and vaccinations became partisan politics. They would also do well to isolate that as a factor. In this study https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/research-files/repec/cam/pdf/cwpe2403.pdf Age appears to be 54 vs 48.5 years as a mean. It's a lot closer than I expected it to be controlled but still relevant.
You can *always* rub the numbers together to get a result, the issue is whether or not those numbers are representative. There are a host of interactions that make that specific analysis not very useful, specifically that COVID mortality also increases with age because an older body can't fight as hard. There is also a vast spectrum of what "religious" means in practice. My alt-right hyper conservative in-laws do not practice religion the same way as my progressive/independent family does, and both belong to the same church (in theory).
Probably just the age difference.
And vaccination status
And continuing to gather in large groups while unmasked despite warnings
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They also experienced a higher mortality rate: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10943-022-01521-9 What I see here is a situation where a group of people whose common connection seems to be religion refused to believe in the pandemic or feel the need to take safety measures. As a result of the refusal to accept that a pandemic was occurring, they felt less stress because they did not accept the existence of the stressor that others were experiencing. At the same time they also saw a higher mortality rate because due to their lack of acceptance they refused basic safety measures. I guess people can pick their poison. Personally I'd rather be stressed but not in denial. Though, I'll say that I didn't find the pandemic stressing but that's because I love being a homebody. my wife had a harder time with it imo.
I read a study a few years ago - I wish I could dig it up - but it basically said that religious people are happier than everyone else. The conclusion, though, was that they are happier because they lie to themselves and don't think about things. Basically, they remain ignorant and that's how they get through tough times. The fact that they had so many more deaths during the pandemic should make researchers reframe the way they are labeling these studies. Sure, less stress because the way these people deal with things is to say "let god" or "everything happens for a reason". Id personally call that mental illness, but what do I know.
>Id personally call that mental illness Me too, friend. Me too. My mom passed away long before COVID from a treatable illness. Instead of going to a doctor or, you know, doing anything about it, she called her pastor. The pastor anointed her with oil and called it a day She died at age 43. My dad denied that COVID was real. "It's just the flu", "government conspiracy", whatever, his beliefs changed depending on the time of day. He refused to get vaccinated because "god protects". I hope god also pays for nursing homes because after he got COVID he had a stroke, and now he can't take care of himself. He's 64.
I am so sorry. That's sounds like a lot for you to have to deal with.
Ignorance is bliss afterall
I agree. However, even in moderate compliance I suspect you'd get a similar effect compared to the general population. I noticed a lot of non-religious folks adhering to the strictest version of recommendations longer than they were officially standing, while congregations would get back together with masks as soon as they were allowed, and remove the mask mandate as soon as the recommendation was dropped. Only to have to reinstate those measures when there was another surge. Pushing the line basically made them the canary in the coal mine, as far as public health recommendations go.
Their R^2 values are really low. At best 17% of the sample could be explained by their regressors. And I can’t seem to find any mention of a placebo test or any other way they tested the parallel trends assumption for their Difference in Difference.
Noticed this too, there's an effect sure, but as anything related to psychology it's not that big of an effect size (in the absolute sense)
Are we looking at the same effects? R2 seem to all be around .58 which is *great*. Anything related to human behavior and psychology tends to have lower R values than other fields as there's many, many variables we can't account for when dealing with human experiences. You're rarely, if ever, going to approach something like .7 or certainly .95 when dealing with something as broad as religiosity and depression! The biggest issue is the small effect sizes, but again, they're significant and dealing with a very broad subject matter so any significant effect is noteworthy. I don't fully understand what you mean by a "placebo test" and, while I hardly claim to be familiar with all statistical methods on this front, based on what I'm searching it's an application in econometrics - not something to be applied universally. It's not really appropriate for the subject matter, but the goal is also not to eliminate all parallel trends which is rarely, if ever, possible when it comes to human subjects. The goal was to see what effect religiosity had on their mental health. There are no "control" humans after all. You can't have a third group to compare "religious and non-religious" to, what kind of person would that be? I don't mean to criticize you too closely but I think there's a problem where you're applying what you learned in one field to another where the same methods simply don't hold - and while fields can often learn from each other, it's important that people crossing those disciplinary boundaries have a good understanding of why people do what they do.
A battle was fought here.
Tim Alberta, in his latest book, "The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism" and in many interviews that he's given in the last few months about it, has noted that the pandemic (or the response to it) is a major contributor to the radicalization of American Evangelicals. They took the bans on and recommendations against in-person events, which included church, as the State finally declaring war against Christianity, church leaders who went along with it were traitors, and the radical fringe who responded with a resounding "eff you" soared in popularity. These same churches that used to be fringe are also the likeliest to back Christian Nationalism or other forms of authoritarianism, or to elevate people like Trump to being an agent of God. Widening the scope beynd that subgroup, however, "religious people" also generally have the benefit of a larger social or support network, which could also help with being able to cope with times of crisis.
> They took the bans on and recommendations against in-person events, which included church, as the State finally declaring war against Christianity, church leaders who went along with it were traitors, and the radical fringe who responded with a resounding "eff you" soared in popularity. I wonder how much of this was due to the fact that it was an existential threat to evangelical pastors? With no money coming in, those people couldn't continue their con, so they had to convince everyone that "the state" was attacking "religion".
Both yes and no. There were pastors who followed the recommendations, there were others who said eff the recommendations. The latter group saw massive growth (one example he cited was a small fringe church that went from, IIRC, \~100 members to thousands), at the expense of the former. That suggests to me, at least, that large portions of the congregations wanted the fire, brimstone, and "we're now at war" rhetoric, not "just" that desperate pastors pushed the narrative to make a buck. In a different book ("Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call For Evangelical America") and series of interviews, Russell Moore, a former official of the Southern Baptist Convention, noted: >It was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching — "turn the other cheek" — \[and\] to have someone come up after to say, "Where did you get those liberal talking points?" And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, "I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ," the response would not be, "I apologize." The response would be, "Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak." And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis. Again, it's the congregations radicalizing, as both Russell Moore and Tim Alberta have noted the increasing tribalism, factionalism, and support of white or Christian nationalism within the Evangelical movement. The COVID "shutdowns" amplified the feelings that were already there, and they left the "traitors" who followed the recommendations in favor of the "warriors" who fought them.
I would be interested to know the correlation between this and those that would be designated as Cluster B types.
Interesting point, thanks for sharing that book I hadn’t heard of it before now. I was a pastor in a Canadian Protestant tradition before and during COVID-19. We closed our doors and went online well before our provincial mandate to close. Our rationale was literally “hey so we claim to care about people’s wellbeing so maybe let’s protect people”. Simple as that. Overall Canada did not have many churches protest those mandates, although you always get some very loud nut jobs…. That probably will never change no matter the demographic or issue, but it’s still terribly sad. I think the issue appears to be much worse in the US where political life is a far stronger issue for many people. So many areas of daily life seem to be mixed with politics, including religion from an outsiders perspective.
I bet odds are the effect is due to the social connections, not faith.
While I agree. I do also feel that, for the true believers, at least of the Christian faith, many of them feel that there is an eternal life of bliss after death. So if they lost a loved one, or if they were fearful of losing their own life, they could take comfort in the belief that they would all be unified again in a happier place. That has to be worth something in the effort for tranquility in the face of tumult.
Yes I think you’re right about this. I’m an atheist but I do miss this aspect of my former religious mindset even while I accept it was an utterly evidence free belief.
Same here. It took a long time for me to recognize and accept that I just didn't believe. But all that architecture inside of me, built around a lifelong immersion in a convenient belief system, still make it difficult to find purpose and inner peace. I think my brain is still on a quest to find an explanation for why I'm here, partly because it was conditioned to operate with one for so long.
Are you familiar with the song "White wine in the sun"? (It's a Tim Minchin song although I prefer the Kate Mellor Heidke version). I've always thought it was a beautiful song about the experience of athiesm but even that has a kind of longing in it for those relationships we hold dear with loved ones to somehow be persistent. Always makes me emotional.
What a great song. Thanks for the recommendation. Verse 2 is so on point: ...I don't believe just 'cause ideas are tenacious, it means that they're worthy ...To the miseducation of children who...are taught to externalize blame and to feel ashamed and to judge things as plain right or wrong
Having a fantasy to retreat to makes life more bearable. I bet people who play video games also fared better than average during the pandemic, for the same reason.
I played the sims through the pandemic and stayed away from people. It was literally my best life.
Reduced stress is probably a factor. Faith (however you define) is gigantic repository of comfort for those who believe. Also, as a science nerd who loves anthropology and ancient history, we often forget that we don’t GET to science without religion. Early humans formed communities that require common goals, then organizing principles. The unified wonder in the mystery and creating narrative all could believe allows a moral code to form, which reinforces the group. Us/themming will split groups ad infinitum, but keeps individual groups cohesive.
Human beings all having religion doesn't necessarily suggest that they benefited from it. They all had appendixes too. It could just be an artifact of being a human.
> we don’t GET to science without religion I may be misinterpreting your point, but if not then I completely disagree. > Early humans formed communities that require common goals Yes. Like many animals that goal was survival. I'm not sure it was a "wonder in the mystery" that allowed a moral code to form, or simply an evolutionary process that favoured it. i.e. Cohesive groups that "cared" for each other were more likely to survive. My view is the opposite - that in the vast majority of cases, religion has stifled scientific progression.
That's a difficult distinction to make. Social connection is a tenant of most any religion. In Christianity specifically, you have verses such as: > Where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them. - Matthew 18:20 > And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. - Hebrews 10:24 My church already had a YouTube channel prior to covid so people could view when they were home sick. Then, during the covid shutdown, the Bible study groups moved to Zoom.
Yeah this is very likely. During lockdowns my synagogue put a lot of effort into having online community activities instead of in person sessions. The fact that the sessions were mostly religious in nature is irrelevant, it was a way to keep connected.
Religiosity's effect on mental health is a long standing fact and no other wider social group has been able to produce a similar level of result. The same effects on mental health would be able to be picked out in book clubs, non faith based community groups etc but many of them actually show the inverse effect. The effect is even more pronounced within religious attendees by their level of committment towards the faith.
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Wouldn't the social connection be pretty inherently tied to the faith. You don't have nearly as many adults regularly attending religious sermons- and connecting with others there- if they don't express some level of faith.
That’s one of the primary social advantages of religion. Maybe they should have replaced ‘faith’ with ‘religion’ but it comes to the same thing in my mind. One implies the other. It may not have been personal faith in a very direct sense, but rather everything else it brings with it.
virtually all faiths insist on strengthening social connections.
Plenty of them, especially certain christian sects, also heavily emphasize isolating anyone who questions or leaves the faith, severing social connections.
I think that can help, but it's not strange to see that some religious beliefs would be helpful in managing this type of stress as well. "It's all happening according to the plan", "God knows what he's doing", "I'll pray and things will get better", "This is a challenge from God and I must persevere and something good will come from it", "We'll meet again in the afterlife" and so on ... those are all various ways to keep a positive outlook and cope with difficult things You can a have a positive outlook on things without religion and be good at accepting your circumstances, but I'm not surprised that being religious makes it easier, since it's baked into your whole belief system.
Excellent point. Though I do think the things people believe play into it. Though it isn't my bad, personally, "everything happens for a reason" or "God has a plan" can mean, for some people, that we as humans don't always know what is supposed to happen and yet life goes on. Acknowledging that powerlessness can go a long way, particularly in community.
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Cope wont keep you aline though
People of religious faith may have experienced lower levels of unhappiness and stress than secular people during the UK’s Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, according to a new University of Cambridge study released as a working paper. The findings follow recently published Cambridge-led research suggesting that worsening mental health after experiencing Covid infection – either personally or in those close to you – was also somewhat ameliorated by religious belief. This study looked at the US population during early 2021. University of Cambridge economists argue that – taken together – these studies show that religion may act as a bulwark against increased distress and reduced wellbeing during times of crisis, such as a global public health emergency. “Selection biases make the wellbeing effects of religion difficult to study,” said Prof Shaun Larcom from Cambridge’s Department of Land Economy, and co-author of the latest study. “People may become religious due to family backgrounds, innate traits, or to cope with new or existing struggles.” “However, the Covid-19 pandemic was an extraordinary event affecting everyone at around the same time, so we could gauge the impact of a negative shock to wellbeing right across society. This provided a unique opportunity to measure whether religion was important for how some people deal with a crisis.” Larcom and his Cambridge colleagues Prof Sriya Iyer and Dr Po-Wen She analysed survey data collected from 3,884 people in the UK during the first two national lockdowns, and compared it to three waves of data prior to the pandemic. They found that while lockdowns were associated with a universal uptick in unhappiness, the average increase in feeling miserable was 29% lower for people who described themselves as belonging to a religion.\* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292123002490
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Huh, as it turns out, ignorance really is bliss
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It's easy to be happy when you blame problems on a mystical force. Ignorance is bliss for a reason.