TruthBook Religious News Blog

Friday, 19 September 2008

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- A new survey by Baylor University researchers suggests that megachurches are more intimate, believers less gullible and atheism less prevalent than popular stereotypes would suggest.

The survey found that members of such churches tended to have more friends within their congregations, hold more conservative or evangelical Christian beliefs, share their faith with friends and strangers more often, and be involved in volunteer work more frequently than their counterparts in churches with less than 100 in average attendance.

An additional factor suggested by the survey: Megachurches are far more likely than small churches to be conservative evangelical congregations. Meanwhile, smaller churches had a higher rate of affiliation with what the survey called a “liberal Protestant denomination,” or with mainline church bodies such as the United Methodist Church and the Episcopal Church.

The survey also found that active religious believers -- and particularly conservative Christians -- were less likely than the general public to believe in the occult and paranormal.

“The Baylor Survey found that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases credulity, as measured by beliefs in such things as dreams, Bigfoot, UFOs, haunted houses and astrology, with education having hardly any effect,” the survey’s authors said.

For instance, as measured against an index of belief in occult and paranormal beliefs researchers constructed, only 14 percent of respondents who described themselves as “evangelical” rated high on the index. Meanwhile, 30 percent of those who rejected the “evangelical” label scored high on the same index.

Those who described themselves as “theologically liberal” were actually more likely than evangelicals -- and than the public at large -- to believe in such things as the ability to communicate with the dead, the existence of mythical creatures such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, and alien encounters with Earth.

The survey, of 1,648 English-speaking American adults, used detailed questionnaires mailed in the fall of 2007. Collected by the Gallup Organization and analyzed by Baylor researchers, it has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.

It was funded by the Templeton Foundation, and is the second wave of a three-part survey project. The first set of results was released in 2006. The final set, researchers said, will be released next year.

Labels: Baylor Religion Survey, evangelicals, John Templeton Foundation, megachurches, paranormal

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Monday, August 04, 2008

Nature or nurture? Religion is the natural state, atheism is learned according to psychologist

Babies are hard-wired to believe in God, and atheism has to be learned, according to an Oxford University psychologist. Dr Olivera Petrovich told a University of Western Sydney conference on the psychology of religion that even pre-school children constructed theological concepts as part of their understanding of the physical world.

Psychologists have debated whether belief in God or atheism was the natural human state. According to Dr Petrovich, an expert in psychology of religion, belief in God is not taught but develops naturally. She told The Age newspaper that belief in God emerged as a result of other psychological development connected with understanding causation.

It was hard-wired into the human psyche, but it was important not to build too much into the concept of God. “It’s the concept of God as creator, primarily,” she said.

Dr Petrovich said her findings were based on several studies, particularly one of Japanese children aged four to six, and another of 400 British children aged five to seven from seven different faiths. “Atheism is definitely an acquired position,” she said.

Dr Petrovich is partly funded by the Templeton Foundation, which is devoted to making a connection between “faith and science” – in other words, in progressing religion at the expense of science.

NSS Chief Executive Keith Porteous Wood commented: "We will be hearing a lot more from Dr Petrovich on such matters if she attains her ambition for “a proper, funded post in academic psychology of religion within a psychology department”. The most enthusiasm I found on the web for her research was in a curious website called Science and Spirit - exploring things that matter

I note Dr Petrovich was described as a "member of the Faculty of Theology at Wolfson College, Oxford University” on a web page describing her credentials in relation to the conference in Australia.

Labels: atheism, Dr Olivera Petrovich, God, John Templeton Foundation, nature, religion

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Saturday, March 01, 2008

Origins of belief

Sat March 1, 2008

Researchers at Oxford University have been given nearly $4 million to investigate the origins of belief in God.

The three-year project titled "Empirical Expansion in Cognitive Science of Religion and Theology” is designed to determine whether belief in a deity is instinctive or learned. It will be funded by the Pennsylvania-based John Templeton Foundation.

Justin Barrett of Oxford University's Center for Anthropology and Mind and Roger Trigg of Oxford's Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion will lead the investigation.

Barrett said developmental psychology has determined that faith in God is a universal human impulse, found in all cultures and grasped from a young age. Researchers will use various methods to try to determine whether faith in a deity is inherent to cultures worldwide and throughout history.

Religious believers and nonbelievers will make up the research team, Barrett said.

Labels: belief, Empirical Expansion in Cognitive Science of Religion and Theology, God, John Templeton Foundation

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Saturday, February 23, 2008

$4 million study to understand why people believe in God

Washington DC, Feb 22, 2008

A group of researchers from the University of Oxford will spend $3.9 million on a three-year study to “explain” why humanity believes in God.

The Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion has decided to bring together anthropologists, theologians, philosophers and other scholars to academically define if belief in a “supreme being” is a basic component of humanity.

Roger Trigg, a senior research fellow at the Center, said the almost $4 million would be used to respond to the question, “What is it that is innate in human nature to believe in God, whether it is gods or something superhuman or supernatural?"

Trigg admitted that anthropological and philosophical research carried out up to now suggests that “faith in God is a universal human impulse found in most cultures around the world, even though it has been waning in Britain and western Europe.

"One implication that comes from this is that religion is the default position, and atheism is perhaps more in need of explanation," he said.

Funding for the study will come from the John Templeton Foundation, a U.S.-based philanthropic organization.

Labels: belief, faith, God, Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion, John Templeton Foundation, Roger Trigg, University of Oxford

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Thursday, February 21, 2008

Researchers to probe why people believe in religion

Wed Feb 20, 2008

By Peter Apps

Page one of two...click on external link for full article

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - A team of British-based researchers will spend the next three years probing why people believe in religion.

They will undertake what they said is the largest research project of its kind, armed with a grant of almost two million pounds ($4 million) from a U.S. foundation.

The grant came from the Sir John Templeton Foundation. It was founded two decades ago by a Wall Street banker to support science by funding investigation into the "big questions".

Some experts argued there might be an evolutionary advantage to religious belief, possibly because a society believing in an all-knowing moral god might follow rules better, giving it an advantage over others.

"Groups that have religious sentiment might be more likely to co-operate, giving them a comparative advantage," Barret said. "Children seem to find the idea of an all-knowing God to be a very easy one to take on. It's very attractive in an intuitive sense."

As well as the monotheistic religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, researchers will also look at belief systems with multiple gods from Hinduism to ancient religions still practiced in parts of Latin America.

Labels: Britain, God, gods, John Templeton Foundation, Peter Apps, religion

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Thursday, January 03, 2008

Is forgiveness divine for body?

Researchers note possible health benefits for people who absolve wrongdoers, but others express skepticism

By Melissa Healy
January 3, 2008

Forgiveness - a virtue embraced by almost every religious tradition as a balm for the soul - may be medicine for the body, researchers suggest. In less than a decade, those preaching and studying forgiveness have amassed an impressive slate of findings on its possible health benefits.

They have shown that "forgiveness interventions" - often just a couple of short sessions in which the wounded are guided toward positive feelings for an offender - can improve cardiovascular function, diminish chronic pain, relieve depression and boost quality of life among the very ill.

Like proper nutrition and exercise, forgiveness appears to be a behavior that a patient can learn, exercise and repeat as needed to prevent disease and preserve health.

Psychologist Loren Toussaint of Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and colleagues were the first to establish a long-term link between people's health and their propensity to forgive.

Their national survey, published in the Journal of Adult Development in 2001, found forgiveness rare enough: Only 52 percent of Americans said they had forgiven others for hurtful acts. But willingness of young respondents to forgive showed no link to health; that propensity began to make a difference as respondents approached middle age. The survey found that those 45 and older who forgave others were more likely to report having better overall mental and physical health than those who did not.

Efforts to put forgiveness to a rigorous scientific test have been funded largely by a pair of philanthropies long associated with research on faith, religion and science: the Michigan-based Fetzer Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation of Pennsylvania, which effectively created the field in 1997 with a pledge of $2 million for research on forgiveness.

These origins raise discomfort and controversy among both scientists and those who help the physically and mentally wounded heal.

To many in mental health who fear that traumatized patients face pressure to forgive when doing so is premature or ill-advised, the new science of forgiveness is deeply worrisome.

"The whole Christian, 12-step mentality has permeated our culture, and the emphasis on forgiveness is part of that," says Jeanne Safer, a New York psychoanalyst and author of Must We Forgive? "For many patients, forgiveness is a double-whammy: First someone [hurts] you, and then it's your fault you don't want to embrace them in heaven. I'm not against forgiveness; I'm against compulsory forgiveness with no choice. And I'm against 'forgiveness lite,' which keeps you from feeling the intensity of the experience, from deeply grappling with what's been done to you."

Clinicians skeptical of forgiveness as a necessary endpoint of therapy say many of those who are quickest to forgive others do so because they blame themselves for the bad things that have happened to them. Others forgive too quickly because they are unwilling to acknowledge their general feelings of shame and anger or simply because they feel unworthy of better treatment.

Safer calls this "fake forgiveness." It allows victims to continue blaming themselves, she says. And it's a dangerous side effect of what Safer sees as a bid to sell forgiveness as a panacea.

Jeffrey R., a Maryland man whose father sexually molested him and three siblings as children, acknowledges that self-blame and denial after the abuse has exacted a terrible cost on his family. The Sun does not report the names of sex abuse victims.

After nine suicide attempts and decades of contending with crippling temper and suspicion toward others, Jeffrey says he's not ready to forgive the father who did it, the mother who looked the other way or the aunts and uncles who, after the abuse came to light, refused to discuss it. His sister, who was raped by her father at 5, has embraced forgiveness, says Jeffrey, telling her brother God will judge their father. Jeffrey says he's let go of the anger and bitterness caused by his abuse, and it "has saved my life."

But forgiveness on the same level as his sister's? "I'm not really there yet," he says.

Labels: Fetzer Foundation, forgiveness, health, John Templeton Foundation, Loren Toussaint, Melissa Healy

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Friday, December 28, 2007

Students' spiritual interests increase on campus

Issue Date: December 28, 2007

Though college students’ attendance at worship services declines, their interest in spiritual matters grows during their time on campus, a new UCLA study shows.

UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute compared the views of students who were freshmen in the fall of 2004 with the same students’ thoughts in the spring of 2007, when they were juniors.

The survey of more than 14,000 students found that more than 50 percent of students considered “integrating spirituality into my life” very important or essential in 2007, an increase of almost 10 percentage points from 2004.

Slightly more than half the students said they attended services in college at about the same rate as they attended them in high school. Almost 40 percent, however, said they worshiped less frequently. Seven percent said they worshiped more.

Researchers also concluded that an increasing percentage of students had an “ecumenical worldview.” In 2004, 42 percent said they endorsed “improving my understanding of other countries and cultures”; 55 percent said the same in 2007.

Students showed increasing agreement over time with the idea that nonreligious people can lead lives as moral as those of religious believers, with 90 percent approving the statement this year.

“The data suggest that college is influencing students in positive ways that will better prepare them for leadership roles in our global society,” said UCLA emeritus professor Alexander W. Astin, co-principal investigator for the research.

The research included 14,527 students attending 136 U.S. colleges and universities. Its margin of error is between 1 and 2 percentage points.

The project, which is in its fifth year, is funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Labels: church, college, Higher Education Research Institute, John Templeton Foundation, religion, spirituality, students, UCLA