National trust in god day
Oh I didn’t know it was National Prayer Day. I never do know it’s National Prayer Day. It’s not something that looms large in my schedule. But I got a press release from the Secular Coalition for America, so I read some more of their press releases, and doing that led me to something that mentioned National Prayer Day.
Well I know what it was: it was googling for information on an idiotic house bill making “In God We Trust” the “national motto,” whatever the hell that is. Googling for the one turned up mentions of the other. Life is like that. When the state tells you to do god, news of it turns up on related google searches. Whaddya know.
So it’s National Prayer Day.
…even hard-nosed doctors who have studied spirituality say science supports the belief that prayer brings health benefits…Research has also shown that the death rate of people who attend church regularly is about 30 percent lower than that among people who spend their Sundays doing something else, according to Dr. Lynda Powell, chairman of preventive medicine at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
I beg your pardon?
Let me get this straight. 30% of people who go to church are immortal? Is that what she’s saying?
Is this finding widely known?
Ah, journalism. And prayer. And syntax.
What explains churchgoers’ lower death rate? Is it because God smiles on the faithful?
Science has nothing to say on that question. But Dr. Powell, a leading researcher on spirituality and health, has identified health-promoting outlooks and behaviors that are common to all major religions.
Yes, but health is not the same thing as a “lower death rate.” Does this loon actually think health=a lower death rate?
Anyway. The Secular Coalition sent a letter to the members of the House Judiciary Committee, which the Committee won’t read, because who the hell cares what filthy secularists think. It’s quite sensible though.
The phrase “In God We Trust” was adopted only in 1956 during the McCarthy Era. For a secular nation that claims to provide equality, liberty, and freedom for all, the motto means that the beliefs of theists and nontheists are not treated the same at all.
And to put it more bluntly than the SCA will have wanted to, the state has no business at all telling us to believe in its magical made-up spooky hocus pocus you can’t catch me god. Furthermore, I don’t trust god; I think god is a shit; a non-existent shit, yes, but a shit all the same.
Isn’t the death rate the number of deaths per 1000 people per year? But yea, that 30% decrease for going to church has got to be bogus.
Is that what it is? I’m not familiar with it. But what can it possibly mean? Is it supposed to say something about early death?
That definition of death rate would be closely related to life expectancy. It’s a way of saying church improves life expectancy. Total BS beyond what any social community involvement has on life expectancy.
As far as I know there is no such thing as a “death rate” or (as OB pointed out) it would be 100% for everyone, what does exists is a “mortality rate” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_rate) which is usually done for births (infant mortality rate) and is used as a variable in comparing living standards in different regions/countries.
This loon (as it was well put) is talking out of her shoe.
You can never tell what they mean when journalists talk about “death rate,” because they incorrectly apply it to individuals (for whom, as Miles pointed out, the death rate is always 100 percent). Also as Miles said, we tabulate deaths per 1,000 population to come up with the “death rate” per annum. I encounter this misunderstanding a lot in my work. The funeral industry trade magazines (no, I’m not an undertaker, I’m a consumer watchdog) talk about projected death rates and make all sorts of prognostications about the Golden Age of Prosperity that’s coming when the Baby Boomers kick off in droves. What most ordinary funeral directors don’t seem to understand is that, over time, it must all average out. For every good year they have, they’ll experience years of decline, given they stay in the business long enough.
You see this sort of silliness in health stories, too. “400,000 extra Americans died of tobacco-related illnesses this year,” or “If Americans weren’t obese we could save 300,000 lives per year.” Well, no. You’d merely shift the date at which those three or 400,000 died. Over decades, the exact same number of people will die.
I know it’s pedantic, but it annoys.
In this case, I have no idea what this CBS reporter could mean. Is it that the death rate among the religious (who? Which sect? By what measure?) per year is 30 percent less than the non-religious? I highly doubt that, and even if it were true, averages will catch us all up in the end. Haven’t been to the article yet to see if they actually cite a paper.
And the claim that this researcher has found health-promoting goals among all religions? That’s flat ridiculous. Whatever they are — and I’m sure it’s vague pabulum like “everything in moderation” that’s surely contradicted somewhere else in whatever book they’re talking about — those effects are surely dulled (perhaps outright swamped) by the behaviors actually promoted by major religions in the real world. Like eschewing condom use.
People who regularly pray still die, but they die 30% less than everyone else. So they’re only mostly dead. You still can probably go through their pockets and look for loose change.
We know that patients after cardiac surgery do worse when they know that they are being prayed for. When they don’t know, nothing happens, as is to be expected, since transmitting brain waves over long distances to non-existent sky pixies who then wave a magic wand to effect matter on Earth does not really work.
The CBS article is full of woo and ambiguous definitions, the “death rate” nonsense has already been mentioned, and what on earth for example is meant by Yoga mantras “enhancing heart rhythm”. Faster, slower, more contractility, less contractility ? We aren’t told. And I need a new irony meter after this line :
Dr. Powell said she isn’t a religious person. But when it comes to the benefits of prayer and forgiveness, she’s a big believer.
Exactly. It’s simply not credible that she’s “not a religious person,” in any sense of the word.
So it’s National Prayer Day.
…and the other 364 are National Non-Prayer Days.
This http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111507405746322613-email,00.html seems to be the rource of the claims for the virtues of prayer. What it says seems to be rather more complicated than the advicates of prayer claim.
But I am sure she is spiritual.
OB: “Let me get this straight. 30% of people who go to church are immortal? Is that what she’s saying?”
Or maybe she is saying that seriously ill bedridden people stop going to church because of the physical difficulties that would entail.
A number of years ago, I remember reading that Seventh Day Adventists were, on average, in better health than the general population. This was thought to be due to the kind of healthy eating diet that they promote. I don’t know whether that was actually true, but it least it is plausible.
I think I read a piece debunking this statistic … or rather, looking at it more logically rather then “god favors church goers” … it goes something like, people that go to church, probably get their usual dose of guilt that keeps them from partying all night long, drinking, etc; hence they don’t do reckless stuff that other people do …Another way to look at it might be that nowadays, only the very conservative go to the church, a group of people that don’t take risks to begin with…?
I thought Francis Galton had nailed (ahem) this “power of prayer” thing in the 19th Century?
I think this is one of those statistical flukes you get when looking at a complex situation.
As far as I can recall the health of regular churchgoers is not that much different from atheist agnostics (rather than the “no religion” group which contains quite a few believers but who reject organized religion.)
Indeed atheists/agnostics (if I recall correctly) are more healthy than the average religious person (although perhaps not the highly religious sort that this survey highlights).
In addition, the US is a rather unusual exception compared to most developed countries in that organized religion plays a much larger role in social welfare in the US compared to other countries that have state supported national health systems. I think a comparison with these countries would help sort out whether the praying was beneficial rather than the more likely explanation that involvement with a church community that provides social welfare, is the major factor.
Oh, alright then……
Alfalfa, who farts in Devon,Bellowed be thy name.Thy wigwam come.Thy swill be scumIn Bath, which is near the Severn.Give us this day our sandwich spread,And give us our bus-passes,As we give those who bus-pass against us,And lead us not into Penn station,Butter the liver and the weevil.For thine is the wigwam, the flowers and the story,For ever and ever are men.
[not mine -can’t remember]
Didn’t we just read that they’re are no atheist martyrs? Well which is it?
At least it’s a Friday….normally the bastards save it all up for Sunday which is my one designated day off.
Except for the bloody muslims. I love leapfrog though…..
So, why is national prayer day on cinco de mayo? I will pray to the gods of tequila.
“Let me get this straight. 30% of people who go to church are immortal? Is that what she’s saying?”
You are hilarious, Ophelia…
I know. I even saw it once in a leaflet in a GP’s office, years ago. I pointed it out, and she laughed a little and admitted that yes, true, whatever healthy habit was being touted did not actually confer immortality. (Yes, I’m a pain in the ass.)
Can we confirm that life expectancy in very religious places such as Somalia or Colombia is significantly higher than in less religious places such as Sweden or Canada? I had thought that the opposite was demonstrably true, that religiosity was closely correlated with poor health, education, economic success and human rights.
I think Sigmund has put his finger on it. In some circumstances within a given community, being a member of a religious group has material advantages, being an outsider to religion has material disadvantages.
Maybe the author was thinking of the death rate for a more narrowly defined group. Maybe people who suffer a heart attack, while masturbating, between 10:00 Am and Noon on Sunday. I would imagine that people who are regularly in church at that time would have a lower risk. Whether it would be 30% lower is debatable.
Gregory S. Paul has done more on the relationship between societal indices of well-being and religion: http://www.gspaulscienceofreligion.com/index.html
Although I would have preferred a la Hitchens (Religion poisons everything) to interpret the correlation results as religion is the source of societal misery, Paul’s interpretation is more likely the truth: religion flourishes in societies of high inequality.
Wait. Wait. The entire point of going to church is so you can get into Heaven. And now you’re telling me that it will take longer to get into Heaven if I go to church regularly!
To the people who are praying so that they can stay on Earth longer and avoid going to Paradise so soon, I can only quote the immortal lol catz:
Ur doing it wrong.
I beg your pardon? Let me get this straight. 30% of people who go to church are immortal? Is that what she’s saying?
Hehe, good one. I am reminded of an internet discussion where somebody actually complained that so and so many percent of people die of old age. Um. As opposed to what, then? Would it be preferable to die of murder? Kind of leaves you speechless, doesn’t it?
Well, there’s always the Rapture…
“Science has nothing to say on that question” Any article that uses those words should stop there, unless the next sentence is “more research needs to be/is being done”. Though I still beg to differ, science has this to say, oh brilliant Dr. Powell: “correlation does not prove causation”. Yes, science has that to say about basically every question, which, really, just means you should start figuring it out at this point.