Recent evolutionary accounts seek to explain religious belief and behavior in terms of native cognitive dispositions and culturally transmitted innovations that have persisted because they have adaptive value. Despite the often vitriolic evolutionreligion debate, new evolutionary theories typically avoid challenging the truth of religious beliefs. In this paper we do three things. (1) We descri...

although effects of religious beliefs on mental health have not been greately studied, however available evidence in this field has shown that these beleifs have substantial effects on all aspects of human life, e.g., they may prevent drug or alcohol abuse. deep religious beliefs buffer the outcome of stress, depression, delinquency and divorce in religious people and substantially reduce suici...

This research looks at the relationship between religious commitment/affiliation and traditional beliefs. Data from the 1993 General Social Survey is used to test hypotheses linking religious commitment and religious affiliation to traditional gender role beliefs and conservative political views. Findings show statistical significance but weak substantive support for the idea that fundamentalis...

Research and theory increasingly suggest that attendance at religious services is protective against premature mortality. However, prior studies are limited and do not extensively explore potential explanations for the relationship, especially in terms of religious beliefs and behaviors associated with service attendance. This study estimates the impact of service attendance on mortality in a n...

At least since M ARX and F REUD , there has existed a conceptualization of religious belief as pathological. 1 According to this view, religious beliefs result from, and are indicative of, some kind of intellectual flaw or deficiency (P LANTINGA 2000). We might say that religious beliefs are here construed as reflecting doxastic dysfunction (from the Greek word “doxa”, meaning “opinion” or “bel...

Public representations of God range from the highly anthropomorphic to the highly abstract, and the present study explored whether differences in the interpretation of those representations are correlated with differences in one’s religious beliefs and religious practices more generally. American adults of varying ages and religious backgrounds completed a questionnaire that probed their belief...

Previous research has indicated that memories can be modified in conjunction with one’s attitudes, in particular, political beliefs. The current study extended this finding by focusing on the relationship between differing religious beliefs and false memories for news events. We predicted that religious people would be more inclined to remember fabricated news events positively depicting religi...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Emotional distress is common in the aftermath of stroke and can impact negatively on the outcome. The study was aimed at evaluating whether religious beliefs can protect from emotional distress. METHODS Data were collected from 132 consecutive inpatients who were hospitalized for stroke rehabilitation and met the research requirements. At admission all study participant...