Here's an interesting article that a CSC student shared with the staff. According to the articl
e, people who attend Church are happier because the relationships they form at Church are more significant to them compared to relationships formed outside of Church communities.
The results of this study would have come as no surprise to the atheist philosopher John Dewey. He noted in his book _A Common Faith_ (a copy of which should still be in the CSC Library) that what he opted to call "the religious" does energize and motivate people to fulfill whatever goals they may have. The problem according to Dewey is that religion which is obviously the traditional source of "the religious" provides the wrong goals. It makes people believe in superstitious bunk, according to Dewey. But even though religion as unscientific nonsense must go, but Dewey does not thereby want to let go of "the religious"; it's too valuable as a motivator. Dewey argues that we can detach this motivator from its traditional source, religion, and re-attach it to, say, thisworldly social concerns where by Dewey's lights it would do more good. While this study does not specifically endorse Dewey's argument, it does make precisely the same distinction as Dewey did between "the religious" and religion insofar as it considers the subjective state of churchgoers independent of what their respective churches actually teach. In other words, churchgoing makes you happy regardless of what the church actually has you believe. This opens the door wide open to Dewey's proposal to use "the religious" for social tinkering. It also opens the door for con-men like Elmer Gantry.
ReplyDeleteI am sure that people who attend, say, a church that teaches pre-tribulationism are very happy, but, nonetheless, what they believe is, to put it mildly, problematic. For instance, at John Hagee's church, where nothing but pre-tribulationism is preached, the congregants seem to be rapturously happy. But what they believe motivates them to fund Israeli Settlements in the West Bank, thereby making the Palestinians there decidedly unhappy.
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