"Popular religious belief is caused by dysfunctional social conditions. This is the conclusion of the latest sociological research conducted by Gregory Paul. Far from religion benefiting societies, as the "moral-creator socioeconomic hypothesis" would have it, popular religion is a psychological mechanism for coping with high levels of stress and anxiety – or so he suggests."
My comment:
Swimming or yoga can give you a similar result with the additional benefit of being fitter and less likely to become a kook fighting over who's god's willy is bigger! Yallah!
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
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I found this most fascinating -
ReplyDelete"The critical step from correlation to cause is not easy. Paul analyses all sorts of possibilities. Immigration and diversity do not explain the relationships, nor do a country's frontier past, nor its violent media, and so he is led to his conclusions: "Because highly secular democracies are significantly and regularly outperforming the more theistic ones, the moral-creator socioeconomic hypothesis is rejected in favour of the secular-democratic socioeconomic hypothesis"; "religious prosociality and charity are less effective at improving societal conditions than are secular government programmes"."