Hollie if you did you could see conjecture ans vivid imaginations is what holds your theories that you attempt to defebnd
together.
There is a reason why the science and the educational community has unequivocally rejected Christian creationism as science and the courts have done similarly.
I can understand that you feel a need to force your beliefs in fear and superstition on the public but you're on the losing end of reality in doing so.
Go thump your bibles elsewhere.
Yes ,because they have been brainwashed since they were very young with this nonsense.
funny the same can be said about the crap you spew and it would be backed by evidence.
Is religion bad for your health?Is religion bad for your health?
Published on September 15, 2009 by Clay Routledge, Ph.D. in Death Love Sex Magic
In my last post, I considered the numerous ways that religion may be advantageous for psychological and physical health. This poses the question: Is it possible for religion to be bad for your health? The short answer is yes. Religion can compromise your health. Let us consider how.
Religion can be distressing
Everyone knows that stress and anxiety can compromise health and well-being. Perhaps ironically, religion, which can help reduce anxiety, can also cause it. The reason is that many (but certainly not all) religious beliefs are at odds with scientific knowledge. For example, if a person strongly desires to believe the traditional Biblical view that God created humans in their present form but is confronted with an increasing amount of evidence that another perspective (evolution) is more accurate, this individual may be distressed.
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A rich tradition of research in cognitive dissonance theory indicates that people are distressed by these types of situations and go to great lengths to resolve them in some way. This explains what appears to be a thriving pseudo-scientific industry of creationist-based theories that seek to challenge, dismiss, or reinterpret the overwhelming amount of converging data that exclusively supports an evolutionary perspective. In short, when beliefs are at odds with facts, but people strongly desire to maintain those beliefs, the result is often negative emotion.
Religion can direct people away from conventional medical treatment
Everyone has seen the news stories of people refusing medical treatment for themselves or their children because of religious beliefs. In some of these cases, people deny medical treatment because the treatment is believed to be prohibited by their particular faith. In other cases, people deny medical treatment because they believe that turning to medicine instead of relying on God answering their prayers for healing would show a lack of faith or confidence in God.
Some of my colleagues and I were interested in this particular issue. In a series of experiments, we sought to investigate the extent to which religious fundamentalism played a decisive role in people choosing faith over medicine. The results of these studies were astonishing. We had participants come into the laboratory and complete a number of questionnaires, including a measure of religious fundamentalism. Then we asked some participants to think about their own death (something that is often on one's mind when making health-related decisions), and other participants to think about unpleasant topics unrelated to death. Finally, we assessed whether they favored faith (i.e., prayer) or medical-based treatments for disease. This preference was assessed differently in each study. For example, in one study we had participants read a court case about a sick boy that had been taken away from his parents because they refused life-saving medical intervention for religious reasons. We asked the participants whether or not they supported the position to deny medicine and rely on faith alone. In another study, we asked the participants to what extent they themselves would rely on faith alone when dealing with an illness. The results were always the same. The participants that were asked to think about death, relative to those asked to think about other things, chose faith over medicine, but only if they ranked high in religious fundamentalism.
In short, when death is on your mind, having a very rigid and dogmatic approach to religion (fundamentalism) can be hazardous to your health because it motivates a reliance on faith instead of conventional medicine. It is worth noting that people who are not fundamentalists, but are religious, are more likely to rely on conventional medicine, even if they also rely on prayer. That is, they use both, and using a combination of medicine and faith is not problematic for health as long as the religious component does not push one away from relying on conventional medicine.
Religion can be a form of avoidant coping
Avoidant coping is when people engage in efforts to avoid dealing with an unpleasant situation or simply try to deny that it exists. In the case of illness or disease, obviously, avoidance is bad for your health. As discussed in my last post, religion can be a psychological strength and can thus help people adaptively cope with illness by giving them the courage and strength needed to confront health threats. However, religion can also offer people a way to avoid the problem. That is, people can say things like "It is in God's hands" or "It must have happened for a reason". In other words, if people want to avoid confronting a health problem, they can pass the buck to God and this approach serves as a barrier to maintaining and improving health.
In sum, religion can be good for your health. But it can also threaten your health. To the extent that religion serves to bolster feelings of hope, optimism, self-esteem, belongingness, and meaning, it may be an important psychological resource for many people. It is worth noting that many people do not turn to religion for these psychological and social resources but instead rely on romantic relationships, friendships, social groups, and other meaningful personal and cultural investments. And these secular investments work just as well. However, when religious beliefs are at odds with scientific facts, are extremely dogmatic or inflexible, or provide people a way to avoid taking responsibility for their health, they can be deadly.
Further reading
Vess., M., Arndt, J., Cox, C., Routledge, C., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2009). The terror management of medical decisions: The effect of mortality salience and religious fundamentalism on support for faith-based medical intervention. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 334 -350.
Is religion bad for your health? | Psychology Today
Faith and Foolishness: When Religious Beliefs Become Dangerous
Religious leaders should be held accountable when their irrational ideas turn harmful
By Lawrence M. Krauss
Every two years the National Science Foundation produces a report, Science and Engineering Indicators, designed to probe the public’s understanding of science concepts. And every two years we relearn the sad fact that U.S. adults are less willing to accept evolution and the big bang as factual than adults in other industrial countries.
Except for this time. Was there suddenly a quantum leap in U.S. science literacy? Sadly, no. Rather the National Science Board, which oversees the foundation, chose to leave the section that discussed these issues out of the 2010 edition, claiming the questions were “flawed indicators of scientific knowledge because responses conflated knowledge and beliefs.” In short, if their religious beliefs require respondents to discard scientific facts, the board doesn’t think it appropriate to expose that truth.
The section does exist, however, and Science magazine obtained it. When presented with the statement “human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals,” just 45 percent of respondents indicated “true.” Compare this figure with the affirmative percentages in Japan (78), Europe (70), China (69) and South Korea (64). Only 33 percent of Americans agreed that “the universe began with a big explosion.”
Consider the results of a 2009 Pew Survey: 31 percent of U.S. adults believe “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.” (So much for dogs, horses or H1N1 flu.) The survey’s most enlightening aspect was its categorization of responses by levels of religious activity, which suggests that the most devout are on average least willing to accept the evidence of reality. White evangelical Protestants have the highest denial rate (55 percent), closely followed by the group across all religions who attend services on average at least once a week (49 percent).
I don’t know which is more dangerous, that religious beliefs force some people to choose between knowledge and myth or that pointing out how religion can purvey ignorance is taboo. To do so risks being branded as intolerant of religion. The kindly Dalai Lama, in a recent New York Times editorial, juxtaposed the statement that “radical atheists issue blanket condemnations of those who hold religious beliefs” with his censure of the extremist intolerance, murderous actions and religious hatred in the Middle East. Aside from the distinction between questioning beliefs and beheading or bombing people, the “radical atheists” in question rarely condemn individuals but rather actions and ideas that deserve to be challenged.
Surprisingly, the strongest reticence to speak out often comes from those who should be most worried about silence. Last May I attended a conference on science and public policy at which a representative of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences gave a keynote address. When I questioned how he reconciled his own reasonable views about science with the sometimes absurd and unjust activities of the Church—from false claims about condoms and AIDS in Africa to pedophilia among the clergy—I was denounced by one speaker after another for my intolerance.
Religious leaders need to be held accountable for their ideas. In my state of Arizona, Sister Margaret McBride, a senior administrator at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, recently authorized a legal abortion to save the life of a 27-year-old mother of four who was 11 weeks pregnant and suffering from severe complications of pulmonary hypertension; she made that decision after consultation with the mother’s family, her doctors and the local ethics committee. Yet the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olm*sted, immediately excommunicated Sister Margaret, saying, “The mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s.” Ordinarily, a man who would callously let a woman die and orphan her children would be called a monster; this should not change just because he is a cleric.
Faith and Foolishness: When Religious Beliefs Become Dangerous: Scientific American
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