Battleangel

Two new studies on religion, its origins and what it’s doing to society.

The World Today - Study says belief in God may contribute to society’s dysfunctions - There’s a new twist to the evolution versus creationism debate. A new study from America suggests that widespread belief in God may contribute to the dysfunctions of a society.

The author, Gregory Paul, is an American dinosaur palaeontologist, who has used data from the International Social Survey Program, Interpol, and other research bodies, to compare murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy between religious and secular prosperous democracies.

And Gregory Paul says the US is the world’s only prosperous democracy where these social indicators are still high.

The way to put it is the United States is the only first world nation that retains rights to religiosity and scepticism for evolution that otherwise are found only in the second and third world.

Gregory Paul is spurned of course for not sticking to palaeontology and venturing into the field of social science with his knowledge of evolution. But his implications are intriguing and if anything, evolution has to be better rooted in social science as well, where people today treat it no better than would the worst sort of proponent of creationism or intelligent design. And this is a threat to science no less than intelligent design.
As an increasing number of people believe, there are biological markers for faith.

Quantum Biocommunication Technology - Is Religion Rooted in the Biology of the Human Brain? - To the great minds of the 19th century, religion was blatant superstition, which an increasingly enlightened society would soon discard. But today, in the most technologically and scientifically enlightened age the world has ever known, God’s numbers have never been better—church affiliation has never been higher, and more than seventy percent of the American population claims to believe in God.

What can account for the amazing staying power of religion? Why, exactly, won’t God go away?

Most secular thinkers believe that religion is an entirely psychological invention—born out of confusion and fear—to help us cope with the struggles of living and comforts us in the face of the terrible certainty that we will die. But researchers Andrew Newberg and Eugene d’Aquili offer a new explanation, at once profoundly simple and scientifically precise: the religious impulse is rooted in the biology of the human brain.