Graham,

There is growing evidence that having some sort of religious faith and being affiliated with a religious group does improve health and wellbeing.

So you are right.

But, seriously, how can doctors and other healthcare professionals make use of this?

A doctor can prescribe medication. A doctor may advise a patient to get more exercise.

But can a doctor really tell a patient to get religion?

How could someone like me acquire religious faith? I don’t think I could believe the core tenets of any religious faith even if I tried.

I don’t believe the ten commandments were handed down on Mount Sinai.

I don’t believe Jesus died for my sins and rose from the dead on the third day.

I don’t believe an angel called Gibril transmitted the koran verbatim to someone called Muhammad. I'm not even sure Muhammad existed.

I'm not sure how I COULD believe any of these things.

I don’t know anything about Hinduism but I suspect I would find it hard to believe in any faith that taught cows were sacred.

What does that leave?

I'm afraid I shall just have to live with the fact that I'm going to be less happy and healthy than I might have been were I able to subscribe to some religion.

Perhaps it's like having a congenital disease. Some people have to live with being born blind. Maybe I and those like me have to learn to live with being born spiritually blind.

So it goes.

Actually after some reflection I have revised my position regarding my previous statements. I think that comparing religion to anti-psychotic drugs,regular sex and exercise is not valid. These other treatments and lifestyle interventions have been shown to work well above placebo controls whereas religion has not. In fact placebos and religion share a great many attributes, not the least that they require a belief in their efficacy for any effect to manifest.

Recommending placebos for treatable conditions is an ethical minefield, so I can understand their reluctance to recommend them.

The article highlights the relationship between discriminatory behaviour and wellbeing. This is not startling in itself, it is easy to understand how negative feelings towards others might manifest an adverse physiological reaction.

Militant atheists or faith based fundamentalists who do not embrace a secular approach may all fall victim to this sydnrome. Any sort of bigotry (race, gays, religion, gender) would no doubt result in a similar finding.

From my own humble experience and without debating the philosophers, being comfortable and content in one's own skin goes a long way in accepting that others may choose a different skin and find contentment or enlightenment in different ways. It may be that those who possess a strong religious faith have found their 'nirvana'.

Those who hold a faith rather than seeking 'literal' truth (in a rudimentary sense) may have an advantage in these stakes. What is truth afterall?

Philosophies or approaches that come from the perspective of looking outward and stressing generosity in the care of others (less of the 'self') is also self-fulfilling in tems of wellbeing. A win-win if you like. Better for societies all round.

There is still much to be learned about the influence of psychology on human physiology and there is no reason to dispute the finding that spirituality plays a part.

In a mixed society, secularism provides a positive environment to foster wellbeing and works toward reducing discrimination than the alternative fostered by fundamentalism of any variety.

As stevenmeyer alludes, even accepting that religious faith may foster wellbeing, for an atheist one cannot just deny their 'truth'. If one has honestly and with integrity concluded religion to be a human construct it defeats the purpose to establish a dishonest facade in the hope of achieving wellbeing (from an atheist's perspective).

In other words it would be dishonest, but it is not dishonest to acknowledge others do not share that worldview and truly and with integrity believe as strongly in a supernatural force or God.

Graham,

I am not a psychologist, even less a psychiatrist, but you might want to check Viktor Frankl, one of the “holy trinity” of Viennese psychologists (Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler being the other two), the founder of the logotherapy school in psychiatry, with his emphasis on meaning:

"Rather than power or pleasure, logotherapy is founded upon the belief that it is the striving to find a meaning in one's life that is the primary, most powerful motivating and driving force in humans. " (Wikipedia).

Maybe religion is one of these contexts - certainly not the only one but perhaps the most important one - where such meaning can be found. Certainly Frankl thought so; see his 1946 book Man’s Search for Meaning, explaining his concept of logotherapy, and based on his personal experience in Holocaust concentration camps. The book ends with

“In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions … After all, man is that being who has invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who has entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips”

Maybe this is relevant also to what stevenlmeyer, and especially pelican, wrote.

Sorry folks but you seem to be missing the bleeding obvious.

I, for my sins (what one puts oneself through to chase a girl), spent a number of years in the warm embrace of a fundamentalist church.

A version of the following would happen every Sunday night.

"Please Lord we pray for our brother Jimmy who has broken his hip this week, please help him rise above the pain and to heal quickly Lord"

"And please heap your blessings Jesus on Jenny who is looking for work. Please help her support her three children with her talents as a hairdresser."

"And Jesus we pray that you support Simon and his family as we all remember the loss of Sally last year in that tragic accident. We know Lord she is at peace with you enjoying your love and protection."

"And Lord we pray that you guide Luke, Ben and Samantha as they study for their VCE exams."

With about three hundred good natured souls in attendance you can be sure that Jimmy would have received many visits, a cheap or free wheel chair would be found, warm and very nutritious meals would be sailing through the door (Christian Fundamentalist women can cook).

Jenny would have work within a week but not before receiving both money and food.

Sally would be remembered and Simon and his family would not be alone during the anniversary.

And the three students would study even harder knowing others were thinking of them.

Believe me it might sound trite but it works, quite powerfully sometimes, and certainly enough to show up in statistical analysis.

As our family sizes get smaller the benefits of being in an extended family such as offered by a Church are very real.

Indeed csteele, I can see how it works. And not a God in sight, even in a fundamentalist church. Amazing.

I wonder why doctors don't recommend it more.