I don’t have a lot of trouble believing this, because all the people I know (all of them men) who fit this category are kind of fucked up:
People who believe in an angry, punishing God are much more likely to suffer from a variety of mental illnesses, a scientific study published in the April edition ofJournal of Religion & Health finds.
The study, conducted by Marymount Manhattan College Assistant Psychology Professor Nava Silton, used data from the 2010 Baylor Religion Survey of US Adults to examine the links between beliefs and anxiety disorders like social dysfunction, paranoia, obsession and compulsion.
To do this, Silton viewed the data through the lens of what’s called Evolutionary Threat Assessment System Theory, which posits that parts of the brain specifically evolved to detect threats, and suggests that many anxiety disorders may be a result of dysfunction in the brain’s perception of those threats.
In keeping with prior studies on this very subject, she queried the data on three types of believers: those who see God as angry, those who see God as neutral and those who see God as loving. Controlling specifically to weed out the non-believers, Silton found that a belief in a forgiving, loving God is associated with positive psychological traits, “almost protecting against psychopathology,” she told Raw Story.
But for those who think God is angry and preparing punishments for sinners, “that belief seems to be very much related to these negative symptoms,” Silton said.
I can’t imagine living like that. It doesn’t leave you a lot of room to be human and make mistakes — or to grow.
“Controlling specifically to weed out the non-believers . . . .”
Would this not ensure that 100 percent of the participants were delusional?
I’m an atheist. I just see the world exactly as it presents itself. However, it does seem to support my theory that a belief in a god is a form of mental illness.
To me seeing the world exactly as it presents itself includes realizing that the vast majority of what happens around me will be more than I can even perceive, much less understand. Religion is the mental file where I put Everything Beyond My Understanding. I never do anything with the stuff in the file. How could I? Still, I keep it around to remind myself of the true proportion of things, where I am very small and the universe is very big.