Biological reason for religion?

Originally Posted by Blondin

I am skeptical of the studies showing that believers live longer. Who conducted these studies? Have they been duplicated? Where can they be reviewed? Even if the basic statement is true one must remember that correlation doesn't equate to causation. These factors could be related by some 3rd (unknown) causal factor. For example (and I'm just spitballing here), social/economic status.

The biggest one I saw made sense to me... at least in establishing a correlation between life expectancy and regular religious observance. The study I remember looked at elderly women and found that there was quite a discrepancy in average life expectancy between those who attended church weekly and those who didn't.

To me, the results made perfect sense, but not because of divine influence or anything like that:

- social interaction has significant health effects. For better or worse, church provides the lion's share of this for many people. They could probably get the same benefits in this regard from being in the Rotary club or even a weekly bridge game, but church works too.

- churches have support and charity networks, and they're probably more likely to take notice of a member who gets sick than an anonymous elderly woman in the neighbourhood who might not even leave her apartment.

- for an elderly woman, being able to get out and about once a week to attend church is a pretty good test of fitness. The group of women who don't attend church once a week would include both women who don't want to attend and women who aren't healthy enough to attend. This skews the results.

God the internet is addictive! I did a little perusing and picked 3 studies related to religion and life expectancy:

1)http://www.jabfm.org/cgi/content/abstract/19/2/103

2)http://www.templetonpress.org/bookre...asp?book_id=63

3)http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:...ient=firefox#4

The first study was published in the JABFM by a medical doctor who is also an Episcopal priest, so probably not reliable due to its bias.

The second study seems like it was conducted by medical doctors who are also people of faith, so again, the legitimacy is questionable.

The third study was done in 2007 in Australia and but the study admits that it was more exploratory than trying to reach any definitive conclusions.

Despite the ongoing conflict between science and spirituality, exploration of the lat-
ter is increasingly considered for inclusion in modern medical curricula.

So thanks for the skeptical questions, everyone. I'm definitely learning something by this!