28 October 2008

Spirituality religiosity and depression.

Actually this seems to be a set of results that will require further research. Spirituality Protects Against Depression Better Than Church Attendance But it is worth noting this: "Researchers also found that those who attended religious services were 30 percent less likely to have had depression in their lifetime, and those who had high levels of existential well-being were 70 percent less likely to have had depression than those who had low levels of existential well-being."
It just seems like the irony is that if we have evolved, somehow, we have evolved to function better with God ... a bit of a beggar for the no-god squad.

2 comments:

Steve Hayes said...

It sounds a bit like a circular argument to me.

Those who are not depressed are 70% less likely to be depressed than those who are... who kiddeth whom?

What is existential well-being but lack of depression, and vice versa.

Reality is an illusion caused by mescaline deficiency.

Andii said...

I was puzzling over whether there did seem to be a bit of having it both ways in the way the results were presented at one point. I suspect that this is a quirk of the reporting; but it's why I was a little more cautious in how I presented it. As to 'what is existential well-being', that's the kind of question to take to the article itself; however there seem to be fairly well established indices for such things. I was assuming that the article was using those. So probably not quite as tightly circular as you present it.

Christian England? Maybe not...

I've just read an interesting blog article from Paul Kingsnorth . I've responded to it elsewhere with regard to its consideration of...