Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Hmm, seems to me that there's more than one way to understand this.
Bit of news from physorg.com that I found somewhat interesting:
Researchers find brain differences between believers and non-believers
Believing in God can help block anxiety and minimize stress, according to new University of Toronto research that shows distinct brain differences between believers and non-believers.
In two studies led by Assistant Psychology Professor Michael Inzlicht, participants performed a Stroop task - a well-known test of cognitive control - while hooked up to electrodes that measured their brain activity.
Compared to non-believers, the religious participants showed significantly less activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a portion of the brain that helps modify behavior by signaling when attention and control are needed, usually as a result of some anxiety-producing event like making a mistake. The stronger their religious zeal and the more they believed in God, the less their ACC fired in response to their own errors, and the fewer errors they made.
Here's more information on the Stroop test.
Now, it seems to me that there are several ways of understanding this research. Religion could be a filter that allows you to not notice your mistakes. People who make fewer mistakes (or who are less bothered by them) could be more inclined to become religious. Atheists could just have a more developed ACC (perhaps an overdeveloped one). People who make mistakes could be more inclined to examine those mistakes and hence are more skeptical in general. Perhaps atheists are just plain wrong about the existence of God - after all, theists make fewer mistakes than we do, right? And those are just a few of the different ways of understanding this that I came up with in a minute.
But read the first sentence of this news item again: "Believing in God can help block anxiety and minimize stress, according to new University of Toronto research that shows distinct brain differences between believers and non-believers."
It's even at the top of the article, and bolded so that it has greater visual impact. That seems to put a pretty clear spin on things, doesn't it?
Nah, there's no bias for religion in our culture.
Jim Downey
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ignorance is bliss.
ignorance is bliss.
Actually I can see how this
Actually I can see how this might be true. I'd have no anxiety or stress either if I could just blame all my personal failings on "God's Will."
Another take on it
"Religion has provided people with a way to shove their problems and insecurities onto the shoulders of an invisible man."
Or, do as many in my family. ignore problems until they disappear, are resolved by someone else, bankrupt you, or kill you.
Huh.
That doesn't mesh well with my own personal anecdotal experience. Several of the most devoutly religious (but not always Christian) people I know habitually work themselves into frenzies over little things until they're reduced to blubbering, "Let go and let god; let go and let god" (or some similar mantra appropriate to their belief systems).
That says nothing about these people's ability to take a color test without anxiety, though. I'm just observing their behaviors in real life.
This study sounds to me like the kind of study that gets different results each time it's run. It's not like we've ever seen that kind of thing before in research psychology!
"Color test"?
"Color test"?
Never mind
I see this was referring to the Stroop test. Sorry.
Sorry back. I was being
Sorry back. I was being unnecessarily vague. It's a bad habit of mine - 'tis better to be vague than inaccurate! Except when the correct term is right in front of me. :P
Argh.
Yeah, this is why, a couple of times a year, those parents kill their kids by refusing to take them to a doctor. There's nothing in their heads to tell them they might be making a mistake.
It's why they voted for George W. Bush, and STILL think he's wonderful. It's why they think Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh are the soul of intelligence and fairness. It's why they think doubt and questioning makes you a traitor -- because they're incapable of it.
As to the number of mistakes, all that can justifiably be concluded is that people who stay calm make fewer errors. Leaping to belief in God as the cause is just silly Christian bias.
If this study stupidly concluded that people who believe in God make fewer errors, when it could have concluded that staying calm helps performance, once again the field of discussion is sucked over into the black hole of the religious meme. Rather than come up with some useful guidance for further scientific study that would return helpful data, it's just another way to send goddy thrills up the spines of the nitwit faithheads.
I'm guessing that the person who wrote the article had very few sparks in his anterior cingulate cortex while he was writing.
Here's my take on it:
Here's my take on it: Religion has provided people with a way to shove their problems and insecurities onto the shoulders of an invisible man. So instead of facing those problems and insecurities head on, overcoming them, and standing on their dead carcass, fists raised to the sky and bellowing a war cry, they have simply removed from THEM any responsibility for solving those problems and insecurities.
So why bother having anxiety attacks if you can just shove whatever causes it onto the shoulders of your own personal Atlas?