> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > On Behalf Of William T Goodall > Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2007 9:55 AM > To: Killer Bs Discussion > Subject: Re: Religion is Valuable: Why it Must Be Encouraged > > > On 29 Jul 2007, at 15:31, Dan Minettte wrote: > > On the whole, it appears that the literature indicates that > > membership in a religious community has a positive effect on one's > > health. > > Correlation doesn't mean causation Dan. In a highly religious society > like the USA those who are not members of a religious community are > also likely to be outsiders in other ways which is likely to impact > their health and so on. > > But you knew that.
The US is religious, but most people are not active members of religious communities. I can see how a small fraction of people being outsiders could have a different mechanism (say atheists in the US being less healthy), but most people are religious, but not particularly active. One truism with any social study is that the arrow of causality is extremely difficult, at best, to establish. Thus, Communism has not been falsified in the same sense that the aether has. As a result, language such as "the evidence indicates" is used....because it reflects the state of studies such as these. If you want, you could argue that healthy people tend to be religious and people with social and behavior health issues tend to be agnostic and atheists, I guess....but I think the proposed mechanisms are better explained by the causality going in the other direction. Still, if your point is that social sciences aren't...that's valid. But, at the same time, studies do provide indications better than random chance. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
