CADRE Comments

This relates to my recent posts on some social benefits of Christianity in the U.S., which were prompted by a commentor who argued that Christianity offered nothing based on his dubious representations of social science data. In this post, I look at the relationship between attendance at religious services and health. First, to launch things off, I start with a quote from an article in the Southern Medical Journal : The beneficial effects of church attendance on all-cause mortality rates is the most solidly established positive effect on religion and health. "Methodologic Issues in Research on Religion and Health.” 2004, vol. 97, no. 12, pp. 1231-1241. This issue of the SMJ contained a number of articles on the relationship between religion and health. Next, the above-referenced issue of the SMJ contained a helpful review of related studies, "Religious Involvement and Adult Mortality in the United States: Review and Perspective." 2004, vol. 97, no. 12, pp. 1223-1230....

A number of recent studies have confirmed the links found by a number of previous studies that religious commitment -- in most cases Christian commitment measured by church attendance -- has substantial social benefits for America’s youth. In this post I will focus on three studies that I have recently reviewed. All three studies find significant benefits of religious commitment for America's youth, with two studies focusing exclusively on the beneficial affects of religious commitment on disadvantaged youth. I have linked to PDFS of each study. The Role of Religious and Social Organization in the Lives of Disadvantaged Youth The first study is “The Role of Religious and Social Organization in the Lives of Disadvantaged Youth,” submitted at the NBER Conference, April 13-14, 2007, hosted by Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, by Rajeev Dehejia, Thomas DeLeiere, and John Mitchell (August 2007). This study focused on the buffering effect religion had on a number of ou...

This relates to my Want a Good Marriage? and Want to be a Charitable Person? posts, which were prompted by a commentor who argued that Christianity offered nothing based on his dubious representations of social science data, including the erroneous claim that Christians had the same divorce rate as everyone else. That is not the case, as Christians have lower divorce rates than the national average and Christians who attend church regularly have dramatically lower divorce rates. Also, Christians -- especially those who attend church regularly -- are much more likely to give to charity and give significantly more than do the Nonreligious. Another social benefit of Christianity is that it promotes happiness. As Jonathan Haidt, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, notes , “surveys have long shown that religious believers in the United States are happier , healthier, longer-lived, and more generous to charity and to each other than are secular people.” (emph...

This relates to my Want a Good Marriage? post which was prompted by a commentor who argued that Christianity offered nothing based on his dubious representations of social science data, including the erroneous claim that Christians had the same divorce rate as everyone else. That is not the case, as Christians have lower divorce rates than the national average and Christians who attend church regularly have dramatically lower divorce rates. Another social benefit of Christianity is its promotion of charitable giving. As Jonathan Haidt, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, notes , “surveys have long shown that religious believers in the United States are happier, healthier, longer-lived, and more generous to charity and to each other than are secular people .” (emphasis added). Dr. Haidt is an atheist. As he states in this November 2007 interview , ”I'm an atheist, I don't believe that gods actually exist, but I part company with the New Atheists...

In the comments of a recent post, a discussion arose about Christian divorce rates. One of the commentors insisted that Christian divorce rates were no different than anyone else’s divorce rates. I pointed to the recent, extensive polling data developed by Gallup and Baylor University on the issue, as presented by one of the leading sociologists in the United States, Rodney Stark , in the book What Americans Really Believe . R. Stark does not provide data on divorce rates by belief, but he informs as to divorce rates correlated with attendance at religious services. “The average person is 50 percent less likely to be divorced or separated if he or she attends religious services at least twice a month.” Stark, Ch. 23, What Americans Really Believe . On the other hand, “[t]he divorce rate among those who never attend religious services is close to double that of weekly church-goers.” Id . I have heard others refer to a study by The Barna Group showing that "born again" C...

Interesting piece in the WSJ I have been meaning to discuss. From the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life: According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's monumental "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey" that was issued in June, 21% of self-proclaimed atheists believe in either a personal God or an impersonal force. Ten percent of atheists pray at least weekly and 12% believe in heaven. A study from Gallup and Baylor University finds that traditional Christianity results in lower levels of superstition: "What Americans Really Believe," a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology . It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudos...

Atheists often demonstrate more zeal for their lack of faith than many Christians do for their faith. Why is that? When I was balancing belief and non-belief, it seemed to me that the choice was between something that offered meaning and Nihilism. It never occurred to me to believe so there would be meaning or to disbelief to escape the burdens of belief. That was simply the choice. The human yearning for meaning, however, appears to transcend the logical extension of disbelief. This explains why atheist regimes have much more blood on their hands in the last few hundred years than Christians have compiled in its lengthier track record. (For a breakdown of the numbers, check out Richard Deem's article on the topic). It is hard to imagine an atheist believing in something so strongly that they would be willing to die for it, much less kill for it. But millions of victims of atheist states of the 20th Century bear witness to the contrary. Despite arguing that there is no t...

Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything , has been interviewed by FrontPage Magazine in an article entitled (appropriately enough) god is Not Great . (I don't know if the small "g" in god is a typo or intentional, so I left it in.) During the course of the interview, Hitchens makes a rather strange statement. As to the "good" that religion has done, I state very clearly in "God Is Not Great" that many believers have done exemplary things. But I insist that they are valued for qualities and deeds that any humanist can applaud, and that supernatural authority is not required to oppose Hitler or Stalin, say, or slavery. Whereas scriptural authority WAS required, for example, to justify racism and slavery in the first place. Now, I agree in part that religious teachings have been used (or, in the case of Christianity, misused) to support racism and slavery. I have heard (but have never looked for myself) that Islam...

An interesting article entitled Religion Is Good for Kids is available on Fox News. According to the article: Kids with religious parents are better behaved and adjusted than other children, according to a new study that is the first to look at the effects of religion on young child development. The conflict that arises when parents regularly argue over their faith at home, however, has the opposite effect. John Bartkowski, a Mississippi State University sociologist and his colleagues asked the parents and teachers of more than 16,000 kids, most of them first-graders, to rate how much self control they believed the kids had, how often they exhibited poor or unhappy behavior and how well they respected and worked with their peers. The researchers compared these scores to how frequently the children’s parents said they attended worship services, talked about religion with their child and argued abut religion in the home. The kids whose parents regularly attended religious services — esp...

While writing my recent post about Martin Luther King, I was considering doing a series on the Good Caused by Religion. Possible topics included Harriet Beecher Stowe or William Lloyd Garrison. But my most likely next blog in the series would have been about William Wilberforce, who may have done more than any other man to end slavery in the West. But it appears that Bristol Bay Productions may have saved me the trouble. They are releasing Amazing Grace on February 23, 2007, a film about Wilberforce and his abolotionist activities, which resulted first in the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807, and culminated in the freeing of all slaves in the British Empire one month after Wilberforce's death in 1833. The title is from the song, Amazing Grace , which was written by John Newton. Newton was a slave trader for much of his life, but eventually left the trade, became a minister and an abolitionist. Newton's sermons were a source of inspiration to Wi...

We often hear of all the evil done in the name of the religion, but rarely about all the good done in the name of religion. That was one reason I wrote articles describing how the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman empire resulted in the discouragement and criminalization of infanticide and the encouragement and institutionalization of charity. A more recent example is the American Civil Rights Movement. Many if not the majority of its leadership were pastors and reverends. Most notable of these is the Rev. Martin Luther King (who the atheistic "Rational Responders" recently proclaimed to have been mentally ill). The fact that these leaders were also clergy was not a coincidence. Their Christian faith infused and motivated not only their vision but also the courage to work for that vision. There is no atheistic moral justification for demanding equal treatment. There is no atheistic moral justification for anything, such as charity, equality, liberty, or a...