THE VAGARIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE by Daniel Gilbert (Edge)

Read this fascinating article on The Vagaries of Religious Experience carefully because it is not saying what you may think at first. Daniel Gilbert explores the nature of religious experience and shows how a good deal of what we might interpret as God's action may not be so. Gilbert is not arguing that his evidence shows there is no God. But what he is suggesting is that what we know about the human mind gets rid of the worst caricatures of God.

Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side' (Times Online)

This news item reports on a study published in the Journal of Religion and Society which demonstrates a correlation between a number of social indicators (eg, murder rates, levels of abortion, STD infections) and the level of religious belief in that society. It compares the highly religious society of the Unites States with more secular ones such as Britain, France, Japan, and Scandinavia. The US has higher rates of all of these indicators and the report concludes that:

The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.

Read the whole article here.

Keywords: religion, society, abortion

Related Links

• Why Religion Matters: The Impact of Religious Practice on Social Stability
• Victor J Stenger on the Epidemiology of Religion
• Faith and Health: Divine Intervention or Good Behavior?
• The Effects of Religion on Mental Health: Implications for Seventh-day Adventists