[Cali Panthers Fan]

Originally Posted by blankall

There's more than one study an one sample. There's a fairly large body of research on the subject:

https://www.webmd.com/balance/featur...le-live-longer

https://www.aau.edu/research-scholar...er-study-shows

https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/b...ly-live-longer

The trick seems to be having the option of religion, but not have society controlled by religion to the point that it stifles economic and scientific growth.

I saw what they did, but if you're using obituary mentions as your data, it's going to have some extreme selection bias. It's not a good way to get reliable data. It's flawed from the start.

As for the other links...

WebMD? Not a great site in the first place, but I cannot see the study they are talking about. next...

AAU is just linking the first study that I pointed out problems with. next...

Psychology today is pop science, and many of the sources are books, not specifically peer-reviewed studies. Yet even so, I think you'd better read that one again because he's making the case that secularism is actually beneficial for longevity in many examples, and if you read it all, it's hard to be sure of any affiliation between religions and longevity.

From the article:

In the U.S. some health researchers are fond of giving religion the credit for boosting life expectancy. Yet despite being a nation with a large religious majority, Americans have much lower life expectancy than is enjoyed by secular countries at a similar level of economic development such as Japan and Sweden. Evidently, the lower quality of life here both provides a market for religion and reduces life expectancy.

From that perspective, it seems bizarre that health researchers would be so keen to tout the alleged health advantages of religion (2). If religion really promoted longevity, how could people have such short life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa where virtually everyone is deeply religious?

Again, you need better data if you're going to make a claim like that.