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Freethought
Association of West Michigan
Meeting Minutes for March 12, 2003; #134
Topic:
Does Religion Do More Harm or Good?
Recorded
by Robert W. Collins, PhD
The next board
meeting was announced as a business-focused event to be held at
Jeff Seaver’s Home at 9AM on Saturday, March 22, 2003 with
members welcome to attend and to let Jeff Seaver know about their
intent to do so.
The next
meeting will feature a talk on “Dow Jones 40,000”
by member Bill Van Oosterhout, a stock broker.
Bob Collins
introduce David G. Myers, PhD to the group noting that just entering
his name on a search engine will bring his web page up and associated
information about his writings and prominence as a translator
for knowledge about both Psychology and Christianity and their
relationship. Dr. M was a native of Seattle, Washington, attended
a small Christian College in that State, Whitworth College, and
received a Bachelors degree in Chemistry, Magna Cum Laude. He
received his MA and PhD in Social Psychology from the University
of Iowa and came directly to Hope College in 1967 where he is
a full professor. He has published basic texts in both Introductory
Psychology and Social Psychology, which have gone through several
revisions and are in use in over 1,000 colleges. In addition,
he has written texts on of high interest to lay people on such
topics as Happiness, Intuition, and Spiritual Hunger in an Age
of Plenty. He has given talks at Harvard, Yale, Michigan, etc.
DOES RELIGION
DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD
Dr. Myers
began with the interesting observation that with the growth and
impact of science it was predicted that the influence of religion
would decrease substantially in its influence and cultural presence.
That has not happened by all kinds of polls. He asserted that
religion has helped to spread the value of science, medicine,
civil rights, and the emancipation of women. He defended these
assertions with some success in his talk and in audience participation
afterwards.
He presented
lots of data on positive correlations between various measures
of religious participation and attitudes to measures for subjective
self-ratings of happiness. He noted a “buffering effect”
of religion on measures of well being such as has been observed
for those in meaningful relationships. There was also a positive
effect on well being and participation in a communal, social support
network. Churches, of course, are very convenient gathering places
with institutional arrangements for support of its members. He
noted the benefit of looking beyond the self and toward a higher
purpose typical of communal success, but with personal benefits
of well being.
Dr. Myers
noted that the findings for psychiatric disorders or mental illnesses
with measures of personal faith is not as high as those shown
for happiness or well being measures.
On Societal
well being he gave a quote from Voltaire which admitted that while
he would personally prefer to be an atheist, he would want those
around him to be basically religious in nature to assure his own
well being and safety as to being hurt or robbed. He noted findings
that the more conservative religions tended to hold more racial/ethnic
prejudice attitudes while the more faithful and majority of religious
people were less prejudiced. He also noted that members of the
clergy were less prejudiced. There was also evidence cited that
social well being was more negatively correlated with egoism and
materialism, which he attributed to an awe and respect and dignity
greater than self.
Volunteerism
and contributions were noted to be highly correlated with attendance
and religiousness. He noted that conservative religionists contributed
more money than did those of a liberal persuasion.
He noted
that religiousness was beneficial and correlated with physical
health. In Israel the religious kibbutzim had lower death rates
that those of the secular kibbutzim. Lower death rates have been
noted among the religious for any age cohort. Post heart attack
death rates were greater for the non-religious, with the latter
living on the average to 75 years old and the latter to 85 years
of age. The religious cohort smoked less, which would be a confounding
factor, but controlling for this effect still left a substantial
advantage to the religious. He noted that close social ties were
also associated with better health and longevity.
In a closing
slide he made some very interesting parallels between Science
and Faith as to overarching concepts as follows:
SCIENCE FAITH
Body/Mind
Body/Spirit
Rationality/Irrationality
Imago Dei/Fallibility
Self-serving
bias/S-E (?) Pride/Grace
Person/Situation
Freedom/Providence
Judging from
the intense questioning and discussion, which followed, this meeting
was highly successful. Our Adrian visitor noted that he was surprised
at first that we would have a religious-oriented speaker, but
then realized that we indeed represented the best attributes of
freethinkers in being open to such presentations. He doubted that
the reverse would be as true.
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