Do not be conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,
that by testing you may discern what is the will of God,
what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Romans 12:2 ESV
Outline
1. Happiness
2. Longevity
3. Efficient Causes of the Above
3A. Serotonin
3B. Physical Health
Introduction
The past decade has seen a renaissance of investigation into the role that theistic belief may play as a beneficial evolutionary adaptation.Esteemed founder of sociobiology E.O. Wilson maintains that “religious belief is itself an adaptation”[1] and “religious practices confer biological advantage.”[2]
Dean Hamer’s 2005 “The God Gene” - grounded largely in the work of devout Catholic geneticist Robert Cloninger - examined the role that a specific gene, part of a much larger polygenetic structure, might play in predisposing humans to religious belief.
Norwegian biologist and health official Bjørn Grinde, perhaps most interestingly, takes matters a step further by arguing that the evolutionary benefits of faith are such that they constitute a case for believing in God.
Although Grinde is, to my knowledge, the only writer since William James to propose in explicit terms the position I will detail here, he also expresses what is likely the - unfortunate - standard theist reaction to this research: a fear that it will lay bare and discredit the nature of faith. I submit to you that this reaction is a misguided one.
After all, if Grinde’s fears are valid and the compelling data on faith’s evolutionary utility – of which, you will see, there is a plethora – is an argument against the truth of God’s existence, one might expect famed atheist Richard Dawkins to make some use of it. Dawkins, after all, is an accomplished evolutionary biologist and an intelligent man by all accounts.
Yet the world’s leading critic of religion – in the face of the myriad studies I will present – peculiarly rejects outright the notion that faith confers any advantage whatsoever. Rather, he insists, religion capitalizes on evolutionarily beneficial behaviors without offering any benefits itself. Faith is not an evolutionary adaptation at all, Dawkins maintains; it is merely a selfishly self-replicating mental malignancy – a “virus of the mind.”
It’s my opinion – as I imagine it would be William James’, were he alive today – that Dawkins, in his cleverness, chooses to ignore the wealth of research into the evolutionary psychology of religion because he recognizes that it actually forms a strong case for theistic belief. I will present this case here.
1. Happiness
In 2006, the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research released a paper titled “Deliver us from evil: Religion as insurance.”[3] Clark and Lelkes, the paper’s authors, sought to study faith’s efficacy as a buffer against stressful life events. To do this, they amassed data from hundreds of separate studies on the subject.
Presenting their paper at the 2008 Royal Economic Society conference, they announced confidently that “Believers are happier than atheists.” The irreligious, they found, are not only broadly less satisfied than their theist counterparts, but suffer more psychological damage from divorce or the death of a partner. Conversely, they reported that people become happier the more they pray and/or attend worship.[4]
This means that increases in happiness associated with worship attendance and prayer are separate. For example, a 1998 study in the American Journal of Psychiatry followed 542 elderly patients who developed depression after being hospitalized for medical reasons. It charted their – rather understandable – despair and compared it to their intrinsic religiosity: the extent to which their faith actually held day-to-day importance through, for instance, personal prayer. It found that those with strong intrinsic religious faith recovered over 70% faster from depression than their desacralized peers. Among patients whose physical illness was not improving, the intrinsically religious recovered over 100% faster.[5]
The influence of extrinsic religiosity on our happiness is, of course, no less considerable. A 2000 study in American Psychologist found that, of people who regularly attended religious services, 47% were “very happy” as opposed to 28% who attended less than monthly.[6]
Studies of extrinsic religiosity are, in particular, sometimes labeled as dubious because benefit can easily be alleged to originate from some other source. Writer Warren Davies, of psychology blog Generally Thinking, offers us a prime example of such an allegation in his discussion of this last study.
To his credit, Davies shared my initial response to the 19-point disparity: to laugh at Sigmund Freud – who said that “When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life.” Davies aptly points out that Freud, had he actually used the scientific method instead of generating sweeping hypersexual narratives out of the air, might have known better. Davies then offers a disclaimer, however:
“Could this be divine intervention? Alas, these studies can’t inform us as to whether there is a God, only that people who believe in one tend to be happier. There are variables that need to be controlled for – religious people have communities that provide social support, and a belief system that provides structure to their lives and may alleviate some fears to a degree, such as the fear of death.”
Davies’ first point will be the focus of the fourth chapter: I believe studies like these can, in fact, tell us that there is a God. His next point, however, I’ll begin to refute now.
Unfortunately, it’s common for critics to assume that any benefits we see in studies of faith are merely the result of some correlate to which religion is ancillary. The average religious person, a skeptic might point out, is more likely to be a woman. Or they might argue that, as Davies implies, religious people are benefiting from interactions they could just as easily have through a community sports team or a book club.
Yet researchers can and have controlled for these factors – and when they do, the results become even more convicting. A 2010 The Telegraph column was aptly titled “Dawkins and Hitchens are wrong: Religious people are actually much nicer than atheists”[7] after a five-year study by David Campbell and Robert Putnam showed just that.[8] Says The Telegraph’s Toby Young:
“The authors were initially a little skeptical of these findings, but after controlling for a huge range of factors – women are more religious than men, for instance – their conclusions proved to be robust.”
Not only did the authors control for one’s number of friends, but they discovered that, in their own words:
“While having more friends is, for civic purposes, better than having fewer friends, what matters most is having friends within a religious congregation.”
The demographically-controlled data was striking. It showed that, compared to those who never attend religious services, worship-attending Americans volunteer for the poor and elderly 25% more, for school and youth programs 21% more, 13% more for neighborhood or civic groups, and 8% more for healthcare. Religious people are more likely to help someone find a job, donate blood, spend time with a friend in need, attend local meetings, vote in local elections, and work for social or political reform. Not only do religious Americans disproportionately donate to charity, they even donate more to secular charities than do secular Americans.
It seems, then, that you can become happier not only by becoming a theist yourself, but by having theist neighbors. Moreover, the desire to donate blood is, empirically, a symptom of religion; if religion is – as Dawkins says - “a virus,” then it is a dangerous virus indeed.
2. Longevity
Confront an atheist with the well-documented association between faith and longevity, and you’ll have put him in an interesting position. To avoid directly crediting theism with increasing longevity, he may grant that religion promotes the sorts of healthy behaviors that prolong life. Yet by conceding that religion actually benefits those who practice it, he’ll have ruled out Dawkins’ “virus of the mind” approach entirely.
In addition, he’ll have left himself open to another attack. While it’s true that religion promotes long life by encouraging healthy behaviors, faith itself - again - retains a powerful effect no matter how many of these behaviors we control for.
A 1998 study in the American Journal of Public Health scrutinized 1,931 elderly residents of Marin County, California and followed up with them 5 years later. Broadly speaking, persons who attended religious services were 36% less likely to have died during the follow-up period. After the authors controlled for age, sex, marital status, chronic disease, lower body disability, balance problems, exercise, smoking status, alcohol use, weight, depression and two indexes of social functioning and social support - those who attended religious services were still 24% more likely to be alive.[9]
If the elderly residents of Marin County don’t sound like a persuasive cross-section, consider a seven-year follow-up on the 1987 National Health Interview Survey of 28,000 people. Researchers were aware of the association between infrequent or no religious attendance and mortality and hoped to learn more about it. They controlled for education, income, marital status, number of friends, number of relatives, smoking, alcohol use, and broad indexes of health and behavior.
They found that people who never attended religious services had an 87% higher risk of dying during the follow up period – giving the religious, on average, about seven additional years of life. Specifically, those who never attended were twice as likely to die from respiratory disease, diabetes, or infectious disease. The research team also reported that, in particular, blacks and women can enjoy especially longer lives if they are religiously active.[10]
It should be no surprise, then, that centenarians – people who live to be 100 – disproportionately report being deeply religious. In fact, the New England Centenarian Project reports that almost all centenarians have a strong theistic faith.[11]
3. Efficient Causes of the Above
3A. Serotonin
In a 2003 study in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Jacqueline Borg and her colleagues asked their subjects, males aged 20-45, to complete a personality test called the Temperament and Character Inventory and then measured their serotonin binding potential, which limits the amount of the neurotransmitter serotonin circulating in the brain.
They found that binding potential was inversely associated with self-transcendence – the dimension of the personality test most related to religious faith – and specifically with a subscale called spiritual acceptance. No correlation was found to any of the other six dimensions of personality on the Inventory. In other words, religious people have higher levels of serotonin.[12]
Many Americans are likely familiar with the function of serotonin thanks to, ironically, television commercials for antidepressants - which often act by reducing the brain’s serotonin binding potential. While dopamine is sometimes called the brain’s ‘stick’ – punishing, in a sense, detriment by withdrawing from the brain, serotonin is called the brain’s ‘carrot’ – rewarding benefit by proliferating in the brain.
Geneticist Dean Hamer’s The God Gene focuses on VMAT2, which works to increase serotonin levels in the brain – and is one of many genes that may predispose people to theistic belief.[13] Hamer’s book discusses two poignant, opposing examples that illustrate the neurotransmitter’s power.
In Walter Pahnke’s Good Friday experiment – alternatively called the Marsh Chapel Experiment – 10 students at Harvard Divinity School were given a placebo. Another 10 were given psilocybin - a compound that acts as a, perhaps exaggerated, mimic for serotonin. Together, the twenty students listened to a passionate Good Friday sermon about the life of Christ, then answered questions on a psychometric designed to measure spirituality. While the placebo group scored an average of 14%, the group that took the psilocybin scored an average of 64%.
After 25 years, subjects were given the same set of questions. While the control group’s average score had not budged, the independent group’s score had actually gone up one point to 65%. All reported enduring, positive changes in well-being. The experience had affected the students in ways that persisted for a quarter of a century.
If these results sound severe, consider Hamer’s contrasting example. One common method of determining a gene’s function is to create “knockout mice” – rodents engineered such that said gene is rendered inoperable. To better understand the function of VMAT2, Hamer’s colleagues created mice without it.[14] The VMAT2 knockout mice “showed little interest in suckling or eating … they were inactive, spending most of their time lying on the cage floor” and suffered “premature death”.
If these studies offer us any practical advice, it’s clearly to pursue behaviors associated with higher, rather than lower, levels of serotonin. Hamer’s serotonin-challenged mice were, in a sense, rodent atheists. Their unfortunate fate was a murine macrocosm of the heightened vulnerability that atheists have to psychological damage - and the comparatively low effort that secular people devote to secular charities.
I would certainly not advise anyone to go out and take psilocybin in order to have spiritual experiences - any more than I would promote antidepressants as a long-term solution to depression. On the contrary, the reliance of so many on substances like these is a consequence of our being designed for something more like the transcendence of Marsh Chapel yet living in a society constructed for atheist mice.
As of 2011, roughly 15% of men and 25% of women in the United States take prescribed psychiatric medication – a majority of which are antidepressants.[15] It’s difficult to believe that our creator – be He a conscious deity or a naturalistic evolutionary force – designed nearly all of us to have sufficiently operative eyes but so few of us to produce enough serotonin to function socially without artificial drugs.
3B. Physical Health
We know that the gap in longevity between theists and atheists is largely not caused by differences in alcohol use, chronic disease, depression, education, exercise, income, lower body disability, marital status, number of friends, number of relatives, smoking, social functioning, or weight – among other things. Theistic faith appears to offer a longer life both by promoting beneficial behaviors in many of these areas and offering a more direct benefit that transcends them. At present, the best explanation for this phenomenon may be that faith acts to prolong life by lowering blood pressure and bolstering the immune system.
In 1998, Koenig and colleagues published a 6-year study of 4,000 older adults in the International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine. It examined the effects of church attendance, studying the Bible and prayer on blood pressure. After controlling for age, sex, race, smoking, chronic illness and body mass index, researchers found that participants who attended church once a week - and prayed and/or studied the Bible once a day or more – were 40% less likely to have diastolic hypertension.
Blacks and the recently elderly could expect religion to offer them especially lower blood pressure – perhaps explaining a similar pattern in the National Health Interview Survey. Of subjects who had been prescribed blood pressure medication, religious people were more likely to actually be taking their medication, but “this could not, however, explain the differences in blood pressure observed.”[16]
Another study by Koenig, published in the same journal, followed a sample of 1,718 older adults over a period of six years. It measured their levels of plasma interleukin-6, or IL-6 - a substance found at elevated levels in people with AIDS, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's disease, and diabetes, among other things. The study found that frequent religious attendance predicted for lower IL-6 levels in 1986, 1989, and 1992. Researchers suggested that their findings may partly account for the more robust health that religious people are known to enjoy. Moreover, they noted:
“Religious attendance was also related to lower levels of the immune-inflammatory markers alpha-2 globulin, fibrin d-dimers, polymorphonuclear leukocytes, and lymphocytes. While controlling for covariates weakened most of these relationships, adjusting analyses for depression and negative life events had little effect.”[17]It’s a fascinating pattern that, in studies of religion and physical health, controlling for depression does little to make the disparity between unbelievers and the faithful go away. Though we’ve seen that religion acts to stave off depression - and that atheists are more likely to succumb to it - faith appears to offer a benefit to physical health distinct even from its protection against misery.
We again see this pattern in a 2009 study by Dalmida and colleagues of 129 – predominantly black – women living with HIV. Researchers took blood samples from the participants and charted their spiritual well-being, religious well-being, and depression – while controlling for demographic variables, HIV medication adherence, and HIV viral load.
Predictably, there was a strong inverse association between spiritual well-being and depressive symptoms. As you also may have guessed, there was a positive association between immune cell percentages and both measures of faith. Interestingly, however, depressive symptoms did very little to account for immune cell percentages. Though faith reduced depression in the patients, it also seems to have bolstered the immune system in some other way.[18]
To be continued in The Evolutionary Case for Belief by Ian Huyett (Part 1 of 2)
[1] http://www.salon.com/2006/03/21/wilson_19/
[2] Edward O. Wilson: On Human Nature - Summary by Michael McGoodwin, prepared 1991
[3] http://www.ugr.es/~teoriahe/RePEc/gra/paoner/per06_03.pdf
[4] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1581994/Believers-are-happier-than-atheists.html
[5] A skeptical reader will doubtlessly be unimpressed by this last statistic. Having once opposed religion as adamantly I’m presently defending it, I can understand that, when not verified by observed results, the ability of theistic belief to comfort the dying seems almost a point for the other side. In the second and third chapters of this section, however, I will demonstrate not only that faith promotes actual physical recovery, but that it does so even independently of its ability to reduce depression.
[6] http://generallythinking.com/are-religious-people-happier-than-atheists/
Myers, D. G. (2000). Funds, Friends and Faith of Happy People. American Psychologist. 55(1), 56-67.
[7] http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100063761/dawkins-and-hitchens-are-wrong-religious-people-are-actually-much-nicer-than-athiests-according-to-magisterial-five-year-study/
[8] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-11-15-column15_ST_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip
[9] Oman, D., and Reed, D. 1998. Religion and mortality among the community-dwelling elderly. American Journal of Public Health 88: 1469-1475.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9772846
[10] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/05/990517064323.htm
[11] http://www.thecentenarian.co.uk/religion-and-spirituality-among-centenarians.html
[12] http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=176492
[13] Hamer, Dean H. The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes. New York: Doubleday, 2004. Print.
[14] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC23302/
[15] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2062634/One-American-women-medication-mental-disorder.html#ixzz1eOEzcqlj
[16] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9724889
[17] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9565726?dopt=Abstract
[18] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19533506
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