Website review: Religion might keep anxiety at bay ...
laodan discovered this in Religion
•1 reviews since Jan 2, 2008
religion
•scienceblog.com/cms/religion-might-keep-anxie...
People who like this website
StumbleUpon is the best way to discover great web sites, videos, photos, blogs and more - based on your interests.
Everything is submitted and rated by the community. Discover, share and review the best of the web!
Reviews of this website
laodan discovered 5 months ago- Religion might keep anxiety at bay in Science Blog about a study by Temple University's Joanna Maselko
According to Temple University's Joanna Maselko, Sc.D., women who had stopped being religiously active were more than three times more likely to have suffered generalized anxiety and alcohol abuse/dependence than women who reported always having been active. ... The study expands on previous research in the field by analyzing the relationship between mental health - anxiety, depression and alcohol dependence or abuse - and spirituality using current and past levels, said Maselko, who conducted the research when she was at Harvard University. Religion might keep anxiety at bay I retain from this article that religious belief (I guess this is valid for the belief in whatever worldview) keeps anxiety at bay. I suspect that those ideologically driven by rationalism will cry fool. But let's quieten down for a minute. This article, and the study it refers to, do not pretend that religious belief trumps rationality. It simply evokes the idea that our existential demons could be soothened through belief thus reducing the risk of falling prey to them. Let us look at this from another angle. - Belief answers our existential questions, what I call our existential demons, it simply erases the questions from our consciousness. Not believing leaves us at the mercy of those questions. The point here is not about the validity of the answers. The point is about being satisfied by a set of answers or remaining continually in search of acceptable answers. It seems evident that having found acceptable answers should have a quietening effect while a non satisfactorily search should have the opposite effect. This also indicates that the believer in rationalism, while not receiving all the answers, can find solace in his belief that science will eventually find the answers, later on, to the questions it presently can't explain. - Belief is shared with like minded people. Those sharing the same beliefs become our friends and we trust in them. This trust acts like a glue that cements the foundation of the societal grouping of those sharing a common foundational story. This has been the case with religions, popular philosophies, nations and civilizations. Modernity has broken the common belief in past worldviews without supplying a new one thus throwing us all, by late modernity, in the cauldron of a major existential malaise that people try to circumvent by returning to past worldviews. But this can't work over the long run, for, past worldviews do not adhere to the facts of the present.
- Religion might keep anxiety at bay in Science Blog about a study by Temple University's Joanna Maselko
