{"id":2238,"date":"2010-08-09T07:12:38","date_gmt":"2010-08-09T11:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicholsclan.com\/tinblog\/?p=2238"},"modified":"2010-08-08T12:43:38","modified_gmt":"2010-08-08T16:43:38","slug":"god-reduces-distress-for-believers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2010\/08\/god-reduces-distress-for-believers.html","title":{"rendered":"God Reduces Distress for Believers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"God<\/a>A study published in Psychological Science<\/a> shows actual brain wave evidence that thoughts of God have a calming effect on the brain.\u00a0 However, this only holds true for those who believe.\u00a0 And given that some 85% of the planet holds some sort of religious belief, that’s most everyone.<\/p>\n

More interesting is that for atheists, the study showed the exact opposite.\u00a0 Given a stressful situation, thoughts of God actually increased the subject’s anxiety.\u00a0 The unanswered question is whether this is a cause or effect.<\/p>\n

Is it because you don’t believe in God that thoughts of God are stressful, or is it that you don’t believe in God because thoughts of God induce stress.\u00a0 I’m unaware there is a definitive scientific answer to this question, but personally I believe it’s the latter.<\/p>\n

In my life, I came to accept the non-existence of God entirely because the world made a lot more sense to me that way.\u00a0 The existence of God in this world was extraordinarily confounding.\u00a0 It wasn’t remotely comforting.\u00a0 It made me want to confront the deity and yell, “What the hell were you thinking?”\u00a0 A world without God, governed only by the laws of nature, was much more comforting.\u00a0 It was simply less stressful.\u00a0 And so I went there.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, I recognize I am in a minority.\u00a0 It has always seemed to me, and now this study confirms, that most people find great comfort and solace in God.\u00a0 Their world’s made more sense to them.\u00a0 I’ve also always believed that the specific God was less important than there simply being a higher power.\u00a0 People who are devout Christians in America would doubtless be devout Muslims if only they had been born in Dubai.\u00a0 The comfort of their religious beliefs on their minds would be the same.<\/p>\n

All of this reinforces my firm belief that the so-called new atheists who would opt to convert believers to atheism are on a fool’s mission.\u00a0 For most people, atheism would be an untenably stressful situation.\u00a0 Would they adjust?\u00a0 Maybe to a degree, but I think the brain is somewhat hardwired to believe or not.\u00a0 Forcing either side to accept the other is a pointless imposition of stress with no net gain.<\/p>\n

At some level, people seem to instinctively seek out what they need to make their world make sense.\u00a0 For most, that’s a belief in God, but for some it’s not.\u00a0 Proselytizing from either side is not just annoying, but is likely destructive.\u00a0 Live and let live.\u00a0 You have to do what works for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For atheists, the study showed thoughts of God actually increased the subject’s anxiety. The unanswered question is whether this is a cause or effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geekypursuits","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2238"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2244,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238\/revisions\/2244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}