Tag: religion
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Beyond the Pew: The Devotion-to-Diapers Link
The well-known commandment from Genesis to “multiply and replenish the earth” is interpreted by Christians as a mandate to procreate. In the 1960’s, studies comparing childbearing among Catholics, Jews, and Protestants found that Catholics had the highest childbearing rates, followed by Protestants, and Jews. However, later studies observed a sharp decline in Catholic childbearing rates,…
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Does Religion Improve Mental and Physical Health?
So far, many studies have been published on the impact of religion, spirituality, and prayer in helping people recover from illness or injury. These studies have been ongoing since the 1980s and have become more advanced, using scientific methods to understand how religion affects health. However, because of variations in study quality and small sample…
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Prayer for Mental Health
Does calling for divine intervention via prayer lead to reduced human suffering? Can this be studied scientifically? Numerous studies, including randomized controlled trials, have tested the effectiveness of prayer and religious interventions on physical and mental healing. This study is the first of its kind to apply a randomized crossover trial to in-person (vs. remote…
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Does declining religious participation affect “deaths of despair”?
In this “working paper” (which means it has not been subjected to peer review), the authors propose an interesting hypothesis: “Deaths of despair” (DOD) are connected to reduced religious participation which may have resulted from the repeal of “blue laws.” They point to the fact that the rise in DOD happened earlier than 1999, beginning…