As I pointed out five years ago in TIA, the New Atheist attempt to
kick out the supposed crutch of religious faith is not only churlish, it is actively harmful to those individuals who happen to need a crutch in
order to walk through life.
A new study
suggests belief in God may significantly improve the outcome of those
receiving short-term treatment for psychiatric illness. Researchers
followed patients receiving care from a hospital-based behavioral health
program to investigate the relationship between patients’ level of
belief in God, expectations for treatment and actual treatment outcomes.In
the study, published in the current issue of Journal of Affective
Disorders, researchers comment that people with a moderate to high level
of belief in a higher power do significantly better in short-term
psychiatric treatment than those without.“Belief was
associated with not only improved psychological well-being, but
decreases in depression and intention to self-harm,” says David H.
Rosmarin, Ph.D., an instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at
Harvard Medical School….Patients with “no” or only “slight” belief in God were twice as
likely not to respond to treatment as patients with higher levels of
belief. Investigators believe the study demonstrates that a belief in God is
associated with improved treatment outcomes in psychiatric care.
It’s
fascinating to see how some atheists believe that Templeton funding
renders a study intrinsically unscientific, while blithely citing
studies funded by Big Pharma to argue for the safety of
government-mandated chemical injections. All the while ignoring the
disproportionate tendency of atheists to kill themselves and others.
I
suspect it won’t be long before there is additional scientific support
for my hypothesis that atheism is a consequence of a mild form of
autism.