Trying to reconcile the hostility and greed coming out of the North Carolina General Assembly with their declared Christian beliefs is a daunting task. A new study reported in the Journal of Religion and Health may shed light on the subject.
In keeping with prior studies on this very subject, she queried the data on three types of believers: those who see God as angry, those who see God as neutral and those who see God as loving. Controlling specifically to weed out the non-believers, Silton found that a belief in a forgiving, loving God is associated with positive psychological traits, “almost protecting against psychopathology,” she told Raw Story.But for those who think God is angry and preparing punishments for sinners, “that belief seems to be very much related to these negative symptoms,” Silton said.
“If you look at the previous research, they’ve connected it to depression and all sorts of other psychiatric disorders,” she said. “We were looking at social phobia, obsession, compulsion, paranoia and a lot of features of anxiety disorders.”
The author is quick to point out there is no clear causal relationship in play. The research doesn't say whether belief in an angry god makes people mentally unstable ... or whether unstable people tend to believe in an angry god.
Either way, we all suffer the risk of their collective delusions.
Comments
Angry
A friend recently told me that god has good cause to be angry. In her words:
God as Ourselves
In other words God is what we believe God is.
Isn't it funny how this God that we have never seen, felt or experienced in any way (save our blind faith) is always on our side and shares our attributes.
Indeed
The irony is palpable.
It's is written that god created man in his [sic] own image. The writer must have had dyslexia. There can be no doubt that every believer has created god in his or her own image.
Fact of the matter is that
Fact of the matter is that Religion is a mental disorder.
If you fully believe in some mythical magical sun god then you are without question a Delusional Psychotic plain and simple. Makes zero difference of angry/loving/neutral, you are suffering from a very debilitating mind plague.
Nunyabiz
Fact of the matter is that you don't understand the difference between religion and faith. You are mistaking the abusive religion of the hypocritical conservatives with the strength, peace and fulfillment some of us find by following the teachings of Christ.
I feel sorry for you.
Feel sorry for me all you
Feel sorry for me all you wish.
I understand perfectly and there is a very VERY thin line between religion vs Faith, in essence you can't really have one without the other.
Not in a way that means anything.
I hear this bogus argument all the time.
But the Fact remains that ALL hate groups and ALL terrorist organizations are all religiously based.
Most all wars, civil unrest, genocides in all of human history have been because of "Faith" In "Religious Dogma".
That is what you have faith in, take away the dogma and you have at best maybe Deism but how many Christians would call themselves Deist? Zero.
If you believe in some mythical figure called "Christ" which is actually a "Title" not a name. Then you have faith in Religious Dogma plain and simple.
BTW I have studied religion, mostly the big 3, Judaism, Christianity and islam for over 36 years rather extensively.
Religion is nothing without faith and visa versa, so nice try but that dog don't hunt.
When you said "all"...
....your argument went to crap.
Nice try.
I feel even more sorry for you now.
very sorry you can not accept
very sorry you can not accept the facts but they are what they are and denial doesn't change it.
Name a single hate group that isn't based on religion, ga head ga head.
Black Panthers American
Black Panthers
American Border Patrol
American Immigration Control Foundation/Americans for border control
American Patrol/Voice of Citizens Together
Border Guardian
American Nationalists
need more?
American nationalist are
American nationalist are fundy nutbags.
All the rest even if they are not based on religion, you are talking 5 outa 1300+ and you can bet that 99.9999% of every member of those organizations are indeed religious.
So yeah list more, doesn't change a damn thing.
Fact remains that religion breeds hatred, always has, always will.
So all you got is...
....I'm right because I say so?
In some of what you say you go too far.
Nazi's & KKK were/are not religious hate groups. KKK embraced religion later as cover. Any nastiness perpetrated by communists is by definition irreligious - Peru, Nepal, Cambodia etc. To blame all the terrorist activity in history on religion is folly.
Many of the founding fathers have been described as Deists. Not sure if they called themselves that though.
Faith is certainly not always debilitating as you say in your first post on this thread. This case from Lourdes is a good example. You are free to think that there is some nonreligious, rational explanation (as am I) but you cannot dispute that it was his faith that led to his cure. No faith and he is a dead man.
Horatio:
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
Hamlet:
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 159–167
I actively oppose gerrymandering. Do you?
You must not be familiar with
You must not be familiar with either one then.
Both the Nazis and KKK are Fundamentalist Christians to the core and always have been.
Hitler was a fundy Xian, every nazi soldier went into battle with a state issued belt buckle that Read: "Gott Min Uns" means "god with us" most if not all Nazis were part of the DC "Deutsche Christen" which most Nazi flags had DC on them.
As for the KKK the very reason that they are racist is because of religion. That was from the very inception back in 1865.
The KKK symbol from the very beginning was a white cross with a red blood drop in the center which symbolized the blood shed by Jesus Christ as a sacrifice to the White Aryan Race.
A COUNTRY or Government is not a "hate group" BTW.
and I am not saying that every single solitary act of violence ever in human history was solely because of religion, but I would safely say that a good 90% is.
and it is a fact that ALL terrorist organizations and all hate groups are religiously based.
You may pray all you wish, but praying has never once in human history cured anyone of anything except their money.
If faith in anything worked, if praying for anything worked and I mean even a tiny little bit then there would be no reason for science or medicine.
Faith in something that clearly does not exist IS debilitating.
It turns seemingly normal people into blithering idiots.
It completely destroys the thinking and reasoning mind.
think not? then try to have a rational conversation with a Fundamentalist Christian or Young Earth Creationist.
You are just as dogmatic about your views as those
you point the finger at.
The German phrase was from Bismark and was on the German helmets and belt buckles in WW1. The Nazis has zero to do with that. The only use they had for religion was as a way to make themselves more palatable to common people.
The KKK cross appeared in the late 60's. The 1866 version did not use crosses. The anti-catholic, anti-jew, religious hate garbage started in 1915. The cross you describe was not used as a klan symbol until the 60's or 70's when churches across the South started shunning the klan after they bombed Black churches. Originally it wasn't even a cross; it was an "X".
The Khemer Rouge, Shining path and the group in Nepal are, or were terrorist groups. I was refering to the countries where they operated. The Khemer Rouge of course took over the government of Cambodia, but that was after they had operated as a terrorist group for many years.
Faith did cure that man and the other 16 confirmed miracle recipients of Lourdes. (You might want to really read the book excerpt) There may be more to those cures than faith, but to dismiss it out of hand is narrow minded, albeit narrow minded in a different way.
I actively oppose gerrymandering. Do you?
Sorry but you are clueless on
Sorry but you are clueless on Nazi history.
They were in fact VERY Christian.
and you simply can even be serious about the KKK.
They were from the very beginning a Christian based hate group, everything they did was based in Biblical nonsense from DAY ONE. Today the groups are mostly affiliated with the "Christian Idenity" Neo Nazi's.
If being correct about the facts is considered "dogmatic" to you then great I am 100% dogmatic to the absolute irrefutable fact that religion BREEDS HATRED and always has.
The very reason for the hatred of blacks is RELIGION.
If you actually believe that faith cured anyone of anything more than a money out of their pocket then I have a bridge over some nice swampland you need to look at, will sell it to you cheap.
The irony that escapes you is that ...
... trying to have a conversation with you is just like trying
I actively oppose gerrymandering. Do you?
Use The Force, Luke
: )
I think it's safe to say,
religious beliefs have motivated men to do a lot of evil and a lot of good, but those proclivities may have already been present before the influence of scripture or dogma came into play. Did/does religious influence, as is often exercised by charismatic leaders, compound, enhance or energize said proclivities? Most assuredly so. Does religion provide a handy rationalization for otherwise evil thoughts and deeds? No doubt about it. Are people who believe in God crazy? I sincerely hope not, because there aren't enough therapists (or couches) to deal with over five billion crazy people.
I think the article is about
I think the article is about belief in an angry God.
quick question.
This study specifically controlled to exclude non-believers. The discussion in these comments has been about whether all terrorists are acting out of radical religious conviction.
My question is this:are there no terrorists without faith? I believe there are. I thought the anarchists of the 19th and early 20th century were atheists fighting the tyranny of plutocracy. Also, the Haymarket Square bombing and other anti-labor beat downs were committed in the worship of the almighty dollar, not a church.
So if terrorism is committed by the rich against the poor, in their defense of the 6 day workweek and the 12 hour workday and child labor, it is not terrorism?
Oh, and happy International Workers Day.