Worship as suicide prevention: 1-22-09

Now here's an interesting study that may need more (or maybe less) study:

Researchers at the University of Manitoba in Canada have found what they think is a link between attendance at religious services and a decrease in the desire to commit suicide.

That is, people who regularly attend worship services seem less inclined to kill themselves. They note that this lower risk seems not to be prevalent in people who describe themselves as "spiritual" but who don't attend services.

Daniel Rasic, the primary author of the study, indicates that it's not possible to tell from the research he and his colleagues have done why worship attendance would lower the risk of suicide.

Well, I can't prove what I'm about to say is true, but I can hazzard a reasonable guess or two about the research findings.

Regular worship attendance puts people into a community. And faith communities tend to be (tend to be, not always are) supportive of their members. That is, people who are part of such communities often feel valued and cared for. I personally find it impossible to get through a Sunday morning at my church without people inquiring about how I'm doing and how my kids and grandkids are doing and what I'm up to and whether my wife and I are going to be attending this or that church event.

So I'm guessing that it's harder for people to get utterly despondent to the point of suicide if they know that others support them and value them. Suicide still happens among regular worship attenders, of course, because sometimes mental illness occurs and cannot be overcome in this way.

But I'm so sure that being part of a supportive faith community is a large part of the "why" of this new study that I think it would be a waste of money to offer a grant to university researchers to come to the same conclusion.

* * *

A NEW WAY AHEAD WITH MUSLIMS

Especially after all the campaign nonsense about Barack Obama being a Muslim, I was pleased that in his inauguration address he called for a new way forward in relations with Muslims and predominantly Muslim countries around the world. This analysis finds Muslims quite willing to get engaged in that new way, though after eight years of Bush administration policies they naturally want to see action more than they want to hear words. As it happened, I was with a few Muslim friends the evening of the inauguration and they were quite thrilled that the U.S. was entering a new presidential era.

Comments

[adam harrison]

I think it is apparent at this point, condidering the money that researchers get for grants, that there is usually a study by somebody somewhere to support just about any point you want to make.

Especially studies based on anecdotal evidence; which can be selected to support the preusppositions of the "researcher".

We can now sit back and watch the atheist trolls post their daily selection of cherry picked articles and quotemines! LOL!

[adam harrison]

An amusing study of methods of debate:

http://www.kcfreethought.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10

[adam harrison]

I notice the atheist posters are tyring to claim Obama's success as a victory.

In fact, this HUFFINGTON POST article shows that it is BAD NEWS for their agenda:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/president-obama-bad-news_b_141342.html

[adam harrison]

Perhaps this will explain things better:

Atheist Reason,

http://voxday.blogspot.com/

[j in mission]

Bill:

I agree with your assumptions about why people who attend church regularly are less prone to suicide. Not only are they surrounded by people who support them but they are reminded constantly that God loves and supports them. That realization has gotten me through many a low moment in my life. I also think that attending church regularly gives people many opportunities for service, especially the introverted that may not feel as comfortable doing something that forces them to deal with people they do not know initially. Helping other people is a great way to help yourself, emotionally and spiritually. I think that it goes a long way toward believing that you have a purpose.

[memberofKCFreeThinkers.org]

Yesterday:

a theist

John 18:38? John 8:44? Are you serious?

You can spout scripture all you want. It means nothing to me.

The bible was written by people, mostly men, if not all. You can’t prove any other way. Only according to the bible was it divinely inspired. The book itself, proves itself(?), no other text of the time, or since, shows this.

Can you not think for yourself? Are you that weak and naïve? Ancient and primitive writings are what you believe in? And these, with no proof, but within itself? Do you hear what you are saying?

I read, watch and listen outside myself, so I can gather information to make up my own mind. You seem to adhere to what you were instructed to think by whatever outside influence.

I question. Then I can decide.

I am not trying to argue with you. Only to make a suggestion that you think for yourself. And if then, you decide to wish upon invisible, unprovable pseudo science, then have fun, and please, stop deluding others, for the sake of humankind.

Peace For the Sake of Goodness Cole

[memberofKCFreeThinkers.org]

A recent testimonial: PART 1

I was raised a strict Catholic. We would say the rosary every night (and on every trip that took over 15 minutes) while kneeling around my parents bed. Thankfully, at that age I didn't realize what types of activities went on in that bed!

I went to Catholic school from 1-3rd grade, and then for 2 years in high school. We went to confession at least once a month. I was confirmed because that's what you did as a Catholic teenager.

As a senior in high school, my parents moved to Illinois, leaving me in Arizona. Without my parents' constant harassment, I stopped attending church, and was easily persuaded to attend a different church with a friend.

It was a charismatic church, with people speaking in tongues and rolling around - VERY freaky for a Catholic girl. I noticed that all the people seemed extra friendly - so many of them "used to be Catholic", which made me start questioning why I was still a Catholic (that's one way they "got me").

Another friend took me to her Bible Study, where I was immediately accepted. With my family so far away (not that I had a close family anyway), this love was much needed (another way they "got me"). I bought into the whole thing: I was a sinner, this book had all the answers, I needed to accept Jesus as my personal savior or I was going to burn in the fires of hell for eternity, etc.

[memberofKCFreeThinkers.org]

PART 2

I still have my Bible with the date I was saved written in it (I now keep it with my other fictional books in my library).

I started reading the Bible all the time, told my family they were doomed for hell, because they hadn't actually accepted Jesus as their savior (AND they worshipped idols!), and started talking to strangers in the hopes of converting a soul.

Come Valentine's Day, my 19-year-old self was asking God to bring me a good Christian man to be my husband.

I met him a few weeks later, at my Bible study - God had answered my prayer. A few months later, I was married. A few months after that, our daughter was born (yes, we forn#@&!ted - hey, Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven!!!).

My husband turned out to be a child molester (long story), but I didn't put it all together until we had been married almost 9 years. After all, God put this marriage together, who was I to question?

After 3 years of marriage, he left me for a few months (turns out, he was basically auditioning another woman for the role of "wife").

Calvary Chapel, my church home, shunned me. They had only met my husband twice (he was not a church-goer), but they figured that I must not have been submissive enough, or he wouldn't have left me.

After I was stupid enough to take him back, we moved to Arkansas and, still hurt from the shunning, I stopped attending any church.

[memberofKCFreeThinkers.org]

I spent several years being mad at God – not only had he taken my mother from me when I was 12, he allowed several horrible things to happen to me, AND he had me marry a sex-crazed (fill-in-the-blank).

I was starting to see the light. The turning point came when I decided to go to college at age 25. I credit reading Emerson with my de-conversion; his writings were the first I had ever read that questioned things like the trinity and miracles. That prompted me to start questioning all kinds of things that I had been taught.

Then, thanks to my literature courses, I read about Deism and found it made sense – I could no longer be mad at God, since he had nothing to do with my poor decisions. I remained a Deist for several years, but eventually, I started leaning towards Agnosticism.

As a sort of joke, I became an ordained minister in The Universal Church Triumphant of the Apathetic Agnostic. Finding like-minded friends through a Yahoo group called Exit-Fundyism, and reading books like The God Delusion and Letter to a Christian Nation, caused me to rethink my views, and I now have to consider myself a full blown Atheist.

[Iggy - www.KCFreeThinkers.org]

Just posted to http://www.KCFreeThinkers.org

Kansas City Area Residents Petition Obama to Decline Boy Scouts Title

Petition delivered to President Obama, signed mostly by Kansas City area residents, asks the President to decline the title of Honorary President of the Boy Scouts of America. The petition, signed by 27 Kansas City area residents and one resident of Iowa, argues that the President of the United States should not condone the Boy Scouts discrimination against atheists, agnostics and gay Americans. The petition is available online here: http://www.petitiononline.com/scouts but there are no plans to deliver additional signatures. A printed copy of the petition and its signatures, along with a short, introductory note, was sent by postal mail to the White House on Thursday, January 22, 2009.

[Lynne - www.kcfreethinkers.org]

Bill,

Other studies have also shown positive effects from church attendance, although no study including this one has separated the effects of social interaction from church attendance. So you are probably right that the driving factor is being in a supportive atmosphere with other people, regardless of what the group's theology is. I have always been a proponent of the idea of nonbelievers forming our own supportive communities. This is one area in which I agree that nonbelievers can learn something from believers. Churches do not meet once a month; they meet once a week, which makes social bonding much easier. And so I always argue that freethought groups ought to do the same thing.

Suicide is so sad because most problems and painful moods are temporary, and once the deed is done it can't be undone.

--Lynne
"Atheism as a challenge to organized religion has a worthy vocation to fulfill." --Retired Bishop John Shelby Spong

[Will Graham]

"Cole", your anecdotal biographical information, while possibly interesting to some, is irrelevant as a philosophical or even scientific argument.

Further, there is not a speck of proof for any of it and, given your track record of being willing to say anything about the theists who obviously despise, is suspect.

I am NOT saying you are lying, but as the atheists like to say, "I lack belief in your claims."

[Will Graham]

Wow Iggy! 27 SIGNATURES! How can Obama resist dissing the Boy Scouts with that kind of pressure! LOL!

[Dolores Lear]

This week's Daily promise, 1/22/09: Obeying God brings great joy
Could be as consistent as Noah?
So Noah did everything exactly as God had commanded him. Genesis 6:22 NLT
A man of consistent obedience

Noah went against the grain of his generation. As Genesis 6:9 says, "Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless man on earth at the time. He consistently followed God's will and enjoyed a close relationship to him." He stood out from others of his time whose thoughts and actions were "consistently and totally evil." (Genesis 6:5)

Apparently folks had never seen rain fall out of the sky (Gen. 2:5), but Noah obeyed God's instructions: hammering, sawing, and building for 120 years (Gen. 6:3). Noah warned people of God's judgment (2 Pet. 2:5), but even if he had never said a word, his pounding hammer rang a warning of wrath to come. Later, the truth of those words echoed as the ark floated above a world of corpses.

After Noah's family of eight emerged into a washed-out world, he held a thanksgiving service. If God was pained by a world of ungrateful human beings (Gen. 6:6), he must have been consoled by a grateful Noah (Gen. 8:20).

Sadly, the father who was buoyed atop a world of water got drunk on land (Gen. 9:20-27). It only takes one indiscretion to mar a life of righteousness.

A bow with arrows was a principal weapon in ancient warfare. After the world was washed away in Noah's time, God set a (rain) bow in the sky to remind us that we would never again destroy the world by water. Our God is consistently faithful. "Men of Integrity Devotional Bible with devotionals"

Me:
This was a Planetary Flood Suicide. A planet under water. Bones of all types, and megalithic remains are on all Continents.

Continue.

[Dolores Lear]

Continued.

Me:
"A bow with arrows was a principal weapon in ancient warfare."

Until we connect the Myth of High Tech Atlantis Society, with the Noah Society, we will consider them as Primitive Humans. They built a boat/Ark, the size of our Titanic Ocean Liner.

They were a High Tech Science Society, with a population explosion, like we have today.

Atlantis used atomic/nuclear weapons twice, in Soddom and Gomorrah, like the USA did in Japan.

They had a population explosion, and Abused and Killed their Planet and Each Other, as we are doing today.

In Genesis, a mist watered the Garden, no rain. The land mass was all together.

Our Science: the Earth was on an even Axis, with a temperate temperature. The land mass all in one place, and a mist was the water source.

Science: A meteor fell near Central America, and this changed the Axis, and rain began on Earth.

Science: the Continents gradually drifted apart over millions of years.

Yet if we combine the Knowledge of a High Tech Science Colonization, that set up an Ice Canopy, along with the Ozone Canopy, we have the Cause of the Planetary Flood Suicide.

The Water divided above the Atomosphere was never explain by Humans that lost their High Tech Science, in translation of of Genesis 1:7. It did become an Ice Canopy.

The Noah/Atlantis Pollution broke the Canopy, and the Ice fell near Central America. Result: our Continents are divided in two main parts, as our maps show today.

Atlantis broke down the middle and sank. Our maps show Earth broke down the middle, through the Arctic and Atlantis Oceans, into two Hemispheres.

So now we have our Earth set up for the Planetary Fire Suicide of Earth.

Continued.

[Dolores Lear]

Continued.

My web site with all this Flood information with roadrunner was closed, in December. They gave me a new site, but I do not have the Original work to reload it.

I do have some old discs, that do not work on my computer. I also have a paper print-out of all the information that was on my web site, plus some Yearbooks from 2000 to 2006, when I thought we were pretty near up to date for the Planetary Fire Catastrophe.

So all I can do, is try to show that the Bible, does Prove how High Tech was on Earth two times before today on Blogs. Dolores Lear does go to many of these Blogs, and shows my web site shut down.

Life did not Evolve on Earth, and we have the High Tech Science to prove a Planet could be Colonized today.

And we also Know how to Clone. To Clone Purebred Humans would not be near as difficult, as making Nuclear Bombs. And a lot Safer.

Thank you Bill for the exposure you have given me, and many of these different phases of my High Tech Understanding is on your past Blogs.

I also sent Bill at the Star, many papers I typed, before I had a computer, and a web site.

Thanks to all that disputed with me, to give me many more clearer ways to post this, since my old web site was posted in 1999.

So lets get on with the Show. Prayer will not Stop our Future Human Fire Planetary Suicide.

[Will Graham]

Lynne, you are quite right that atheists can learn about meetings from believers.

In fact, atheists have to beg, borrow, and steal any morality at all that they have...since atheism, as simply a lack of belief in God, entails no particular morality.

You can just as well be an atheistic Dialectial Materialist, Nietzschean advocate of the Master Race, or atheist Jew.

Six one way, half a dozen of the other.

[TrueFreethinker]

I JUST WANT TO EMPHASIZE TO EVERYONE THAT THE SO CALLED "MEMBERS" OF THE KCFREETHINKERS ORGANIZATION DO NOT SPEAK FOR THE ATHEIST COMMUNITY IN THE KANSAS CITY METRO AREA. THEY HAVE THEIR OWN GOALS, AND THERE ARE MANY ATHEISTS WHO DO NOT AGREE WITH THEIR METHODS. WE THINK THAT ULTIMATELY THEY WILL SET BACK THE CAUSE OF ATHEISM AND WE ALSO THINK THEY COULD CARE LESS AS LONG AS THEY GET WHAT THEY WANT. RECOGNITION AND PUBLICITY.

[TrueFreethinker]

I agree with a poster above that Hitchens is an example of the kind of atheist I mean. Read about Hitchens talking about filthy Jewish practices. My mother was Jewish and atheist or not, I spit on any atheist anti semite.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1901636/posts

[Lynne - www.kcfreethinkers.org]

What Will says about atheism can also be said about theism. Simple belief in God is not a system of morality. Christianity can be said to include a system of morality, although I would argue that it's more than one - depending upon how much authoritarianism is included in the person's particular version of Christianity. (The moral code of Will Graham, for example, does not seem to resemble that of Bill Tammeus, although both are Christian.)

Atheists' morality comes not from atheism per se, but from atheistic philosophies such as Secular Humanism, Positive Atheism, Ethical Culture, Zen Buddhism and others, including some that have not yet been named. My personal favorite is Secular Humanism.

Some fundamentalists argue that moral atheists simply borrow Christian morality, but I think that assumption is disrespectful to all the pre-Christian cultures that gave Christians the idea of The Golden Rule. Some Christians like to claim that was their idea but it was present in the writing of Confucius, among others.

[Lynne - www.kcfreethinkers.org]

From the Free Republic article posted above: "All of this happened four and a half months ago, on May 1. It was never reported in the press."

The press LOVES sensational stories about public figures in drunken stupors. Not reporting on an event like this would be like the press not reporting on Britney Spears. Perhaps the reason it was not reported in the press is because it never happened. This is the Free Republic we're talking about, after all. You have to consider the source.

[Will Graham]

"Lynne" you can't seem to get it straight with morality.

Christianity implies certain ethical standards, although of course there can still be disagreements.

Atheism implies...no standards whatsoever; you admit as much yourself when you say that atheist morality comes from secular humanism, or ethical culture, or take your pick.

But they are not implied by atheism...no particular act is inconsistent with atheism.

Whereas given acts can be inconsistent with Christianity, even if Christians are hypocritical about it.

Christians might, for example, hypocritically excuse some forms of murder...but the atheist is not in that boat. Murder is not inconsistent with atheism; neither is child abuse or helping the poor for that matter. You can plant a garden or kick a bum...no problem for atheism.

Pick what you want; just don't pretend that atheism gets the credit for it.

And LYNNE, when anything comes from the local atheists...I ALWAYS consider the source. Iggy, for example, will say whatever suits his agenda; i.e. his current smear of my friends and I on his site.

Personally, I find it amusing...a real demonstration of atheists in action. LOL!

[Lynne - www.kcfreethinkers.org]

Okay, then, who are the Christian hypocrites? The ones who opposed the Iraq war or the ones who said God was on our side? Which does Christianity imply? Face it, you don't have the same morality that liberal Christians do. It's like two (or more) entirely different religions.

[Lance]

Will, are you suggesting that we should just fake believing in your god just so we can all be "moral"? Morals don't prove a god. Morals are subjective anyway can be from religion or whatever you deem. At least you tried to form a complete thought this time instead of just posting more (to borrow from adam) "cherry picked articles" for your smear campaign.

[Iggy - www.KCFreeThinkers.org]

Lynne, however you slice it or dice it all all comes down to the level of proof.

Religion gets a break, expects a break, expected by default to be given a break by everyone, and demands a break in the BS sphere. It want to have no rationality to it or rather "redefine" rationality in irrational terms.

Over the breakfast on Wed we were brainstorming an idea of coming to a church with a minister's collar in shirt and just sitting quietly in the back and not respond to any personal inqiries - just always respond "I am here to just listen."

When you turn rationality onto irrationality in a manner like this I think some great things may happen - like people would start thinking. It may also lead to an open mike in the church during a service.