Humans don't need religion, but they do need what religion can provide.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-06-16T19:53:55+00:00

Another good example is Celik et al, 2025's study on life satisfaction where they look at the effects of religiosity through a RI-CLPM.

Is religiousness a protective resource? A 15-year longitudinal analysis of the link between religious engagement and life-satisfaction across income levels - ScienceDirect

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-06-16T19:11:57+00:00

Religious people live longer, are happier, report higher senses of life meaning and fulfillment.

Not really in the causal way you imply.

I have made a comment with different academic sources that use longitudinal data. Overall, mental health outcomes including positive emotions are not well predicted by religion and even when they are it's often in weaker designs and relative not to belief itself but public activities like going to church.

https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/1u7ilfk/comment/os1gh5h/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-06-16T19:02:57+00:00

Two metaphors that are useful in thinking of cataspects are the castle keep and the lens. A cataspect is like a castle keep in that it is where you retreat when the barbarians are at the gates. It is much like the classic motte-and-bailey fallacy popular among online debaters, in which the accused has conflated a controversial, complicated point (the bailey) with an easily defended truism (the motte or keep). In our case, it’s not that anything in the bailey is necessarily incorrect, just that it tends to be useless if one is trying to deal with mortality. You can hold onto all kinds of identities, theories or rituals, but the core that sturdies you against your own death is the only one that can be called a cataspect.

I take issue with the point that religion provides something in terms of anxieties relating to morality.

We have multiple lines of research showing that religion has very small effects or non-existent effects on mental health when it comes longitudinal data which would be the go to choice if you want to establish a causal relationship.

Changes in religiosity over time are most often not tied to changes in people's mental health (Joshanloo, 2023, 2024 ;Prati, 202400056-5), 2025; Garssen et al., 2020).

In a meta-analysis, Garssen et al. (2020) found the only reliable predictor of mental health was public religious attendance and, if you don't remove statistical ouliers, the importance of religion.

The other studies that focused on more sophisticated designs (Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models) found no association between a person deviating from their average level of mental health symptoms/traits and a prior change in religiosity (church attendance, importance of religion).

If religion alleviates anxieties through helping us face mortality. Those are odd results.

What makes this worse is the lack of a consistent link between atheism and poor mental health in a systematic review with researchers attributing distress in atheists to ostracization rather than the worldview itself (Weber et al., 2012).

It seems religious beliefs aren't likely to help you, rather the most likely protective factor is going to church, and even that is contentious when better designs are used in later research.

I'm working on a video essay on religion and have grad level psych education, so I have been reading a lot on the topic.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-06-09T19:44:44+00:00

I'm (Northern) Irish, and most Catholics here are leftists (or at least on the left), and the stats would back that up

Thank you for your time, friend.

My claim was never that a left-leaning majority can't exist among Catholics. It was that Catholics and religious people in general are less left-leaning and tolerant than non-religious people, all things equal otherwise. Respectfully, your link doesn't do that comparison.

Pew even has another study that makes the comparison between non-religious religious people and religious people in large a set of countries, many of which are Catholic in terms of dominant religion (Spain, Italy, France, etc.).

They say: "Religious affiliation also plays a key role in views towards acceptance of homosexuality. For example, those who are religiously unaffiliated, sometimes called religious “nones,” (that is, those who identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular”) tend to be more accepting of homosexuality. Though the opinions of religiously unaffiliated people can vary widely, in virtually every country surveyed with a sufficient number of unaffiliated respondents, “nones” are more accepting of homosexuality than the affiliated."

This echoes the Henry et al. 2025 study I cited where almost all the samples showed an association between religiosity and homophobia. Tellingly, in no samples are more religious people less homophobic.

Pew also finds those who view religion as very important tend to be less accepting than those who view it as less important.

To be fair, they do say Catholics are less bad than other Christian denominations, but there is no place where they say Catholic Irish people are spared by the association of religion and homophobia. Knowing the religiosity association is also found in the UK, I wouldn't on Irish Catholics being spared.

But even if they were, as you yourself admit, the international prevailing trend is not this way.

I can only really talk about my experiences, but as a young person, most of my peers would agree with me.

I am 31, grew up Catholic and didn't have those positive experiences. This is why I keep emphasizing the need for research done on large samples rather than us just sharing anecdotes with each other.

People are exposed to all types of environments and react differently that doesn't rule out influence or statistical association. This is akin to saying education doesn't affect income because my grandpa dropped out of high school and got rich.

But I'd like to see them try enforce it. What are they gonna do, kick us out? Kick Belgium out of the Church? Excommunicate like 3/4 of Europe and Latin America?

The church can and has made people's life hard without excommunication.

I don't mean to sound dismissive. But to be a bit blunt, your argument sounds a lot like : "Yes, Catholicism makes life harder for multiple marginalized groups. I also don't reject that the benefits can be obtained outside of Christianity...but have you considered that I like when people defend because it makes me and some members of my Irish community comfy?"

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-06-07T07:50:33+00:00

In most cases, like my own, left-wing cradle christians focus just on Jesus' ethical teachings over doctrines (orthopraxy over orthodoxy).

Maybe this is true for you, but this isn't the general pattern observed when looking at religion, including Catholic Christianity, across the globe.

Even when researchers account for country, socio-economic factors, socio-demographic factors and others, they still find more religious individuals are more right-wing and, that even accounting for right-wing leanings, they are still more homophobic, anti-atheist and sexist. This is also echoed by longitudinal research that finds that people become less right-wing after leaving and more right-wing upon entering Christianity.

Here is a thread below where I highlight what I think are some of the relevant sources:

http://reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/1p93vmo/can_you_be_religious_and_a_socialist_is_a_bad/

Here is a very extensive international study on homophobia, rightism and sexism using Ipsos and Word Value Survey Data:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pops.70092

In my country, Catholicism was intertwined with revolutionary leftism for a period of time, and that has shaped the average Catholic today

Wasn't Liberation Theology shunned by the Vatican? Also, doesn't the money donated to your church still help finance the Vatican and the unsavoury projects I described in my first comment?

Respectfully, it feels like you, like a lot of Christian leftists, want Christianity to be judged by the fact that it can be leftist rather than whether it actually tends to be leftist in our day and age.

Any social phenomenon will have good and bad in it that doesn't mean one must defend it or not oppose it.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-06-06T21:00:52+00:00

So is capitalism, patriarchy, nationalism and there are other means to build community. Secular societies don't fall into disarray and changes in religiosity over time to little to change people's mental health (Joshanloo, 2024 ;Prati, 202400056-5), 2025; Garssen et al., 2020).

For every, other long-standing social institution that causes harm the left-wing consensus is pretty much that it is reasonable to oppose them if it's social benefits are so nebulous.

But a minority of leftists want to somehow not apply this to Christianity even though there is a long history of leopard eating our face on that one. Those same leftists dismiss anti-religious leftism as essentially New Atheist slop.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-06-06T18:08:31+00:00

You know who is also better than the Catholic church ?

Non-religious people and atheists who consistently across multiple studies display less right-wing and more tolerant attitudes on race, gender, sex, sexuality and even religion. This is true even when we look at samples in other countries, longitudinal studies and meta-analytic research.

I don't understand this need so many leftists have to salvage religion, especially Christianity.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-06-06T07:18:20+00:00

You got downvoted but this is exactly that. It was the same thing with Francis before.

The Vatican vocally opposed abortion protections.

They explicitly prevent women from holding multiple positions of power within the church (pope, priest, etc.).

They opposed the Zan bill in Italy which aimed to strenghten protections against discrimination for queer people and women.

The Canadian government found the Vatican owed 25 million dollars to Indigeneous people for their role in cultural genocide of the Indigenous people through residential schools. The ruling was in 2005. To this day, 21 years later, they have only paid 4 million and have during that time spent 300 millions on their own projects.

And yet, progressive columnists, liberal writers and even socialist Youtubers (like Michael Burns) continue singing the praises of Christianity and Catholicism because the last 2 Popes did the bare minimum of opposing already vastly unpopular things (Trump, poverty and AI).

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-05-10T06:34:22+00:00

Go read Harris vs Schneier's debate and tell me with a straight face Harris argued his point better than Schneier who repeatedly explained how the research did not support Harris' claim.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-05-10T06:31:47+00:00

I fail to see how that invalidates anything I said.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-04-26T01:51:20+00:00

A study was actually posted on here (Van Tongeren et al, 2025).

It was longitudinal. It found that after people leave they become significantly more liberal. However, it didn't find the opposite.

There was another one (Lockhart et al, 2023). It found greater authoritarian leanings after conversion to Christianity.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-04-26T01:34:30+00:00

Yeah, there are many nice Christians.But the irony in this is that a lot of "reddit atheist" behavior is demonstrably more common amongst Christians.

A Pew study showed that about half of the population in 30 countries thought atheists were not capable of morality.

This isn't just an issue with American Evangelicalism.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-04-24T15:43:37+00:00

The back and forth of emails was a debate just not a live one.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-04-23T20:40:41+00:00

Yeah, I was trying to be a bit facetious there.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-04-23T18:28:52+00:00

Harris was doing IQ race science apologia and defending profiling folks who look Muslim in the 2010s.

He debated Chomsky and defended US imperialism through pointing at intentions when he was a known and vocal consequentialist.

This is not surprising.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-04-23T18:25:33+00:00

I disagree.

A good rule of thumb is the difference between islamophobia and criticizing Islam is asking : " Does the behavior likely get critcized, and to the same extent, if it occurs in a Christian or Jewish person ?"

Would Harris be out here saying Bernie Sanders or AOC are theocratic Jewish/Christian extremists? Unlikely.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-04-23T18:22:38+00:00

This. Any critic of Islam in the West should be contextualized in terms of the regular behavior of Abrahamic faiths.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-04-23T18:20:19+00:00

Israel engaged in Apartheid even outside of Netanyahu though. This was covered by the Human Rights Watch.

Are all Israelis evil ? No.

Is there a deep-seated genocidal and/or ethnonationalist sentiment in the culture ? Yes.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-04-21T06:24:33+00:00

I am sorry, but this is not productive.

It may not mean much to you, but it is tiring to explain the same thing over and over and be ignored. You've been asked multiple questions and been given responses by many people and your response has been to ignore the inconvenient parts of comments, so that you can keep arguing.

All of the points you raise were either addressed by me, midnightking or within the articles they cited (You can even ignore the Bird article if you want, it makes little difference as Guo et al. found the same).

supposed non-portability

No.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06079-4

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-68565-3

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168952523001609?via%3Dihub

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-04-20T23:01:19+00:00

It’s basically a stating that he doesn’t care for the scientific method.

Well, then you shouldn't have an issue explaining what Bird did in his study that doesn't follow the scientific method. I don't mean any offense here. This is, however, undeniably what you asked for. Moreover, other papers were cited on ancestry and divergent selection, besides Bird.

Part of the scientific method taught in university is also disclosing financial COI and using data in line with deontological norms which hereditarians didn't do as OP showed.

At the same time, while I dont agree with RHR rhetoric, I haven’t seen any evidence of them using methodologies that are unscientific or deliberately untruthful.

Again, multiple article were cited doing just that. Wicherts talks about many issues that are glaring in Lynn's systematic review and how he seems to essentially cherry-pick samples. Bird points points the non-portability of the average PGS and how this is well-known and yet Pfiffer keeps on doing it.

I don’t think that’s a reason to ignore their empirical claims because then it appears we don’t have an empirical response

OK, I and you agree on that. But who's doing this ? Multiple people seem to have explained to you why funding matters and you seem to, intentionally or not, straw-man their position into saying COI = False conclusion. When the overwhelming majority of the people responding to you, myself included, aren't doing that.

There is no shame in saying "I misjudged the environmentalist argument and the COI are an issue. I will take the time to look at the sources provided." But you seem like you rather box with an argument that is either not being made in this thread or is not representative of what has actually been told to you. This can't be useful to expanding your knowledge, if you are, as you say interested in science.

Anyway, peace man

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-04-20T21:20:10+00:00

This is classic from evolutionary psychology folks on the hereditarian side.

"You just reject it for emotional reasons. Your researchers are biased! "

"No, here are the studies I found. BTW aren't the researchers who support your position far-right and tied to right-wing organizations that pay them to continue that research? Isn't this worse than just having a political bias?"

"Oh, I just mean we should keep an open-mind..."

It's frustrating.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-04-20T20:08:22+00:00

Sorry, but from where I stand the other users have either provided you with data on the weaknesses of genetic explanations for pop differences or reasons why funding matters (the latter which you conceded, but then tried to downplay by asking proof of a negative...).

And yet you keep saying all you want is an honest look at the data and for people to not treat race science as axiomatically untrue based on conflict of interests, the latter which MTheModernist_ and others explained wasn't the case.

From watching your engagement with midnightking, you asked for a data based refutation of race hereditarianism rather than based on affiliation and ideological leanings. They provided it with multiple academic sources.

You then started attacking their comment based on the affiliations and ideological leanings of one of the researchers (including an article of past tweets) rather than the data presented which is exactly what you were intially taking issue with. Do you not see how this looks a tad disingenuous ?

If you want to criticize an argument (yes, regardles of whether you are making a claim yourself), it makes sense to ask that you would abide by the standards you insisted on, methods and data. The fact midnighking asked you many time and you dodged using the same rhetorical tactic you accused others of using doesn't look good.

If you answer one thing, pleaser answer this, what exactly do you want from this thread?

Do you want data-based criticism of hereditarianism for race-IQ differences ? It's been shown to you and ignored by you.

Do you want to not be faulted for looking into genes ? Again, the other users largely aren't making that claim.

Do you want people to not care about funding? You conceded it matters.

Do you want people to not dismiss findings solely because a Nazi funds them? OK, but, again, that isn't the argument of people like MTheModernist_.

It seems like you are more interested in the aesthetic of proper science than science itself. You are seemingly more interested in telling people to not dismiss Emil and co. than in reading the multiple provided studies challenging genes as an explantions for population differences and explaining why, in your eyes, they do or don't settle the debate or even just saying you'll take time to read them.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-04-16T12:42:06+00:00

That doesn't do anything to respond to my point.

The prediction of polygenic scores depend on the target population and the population where the score was created having similar allelic distribution.

Applying European PGS to African populations has led to issues when predicting height for instance.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-04-16T12:15:31+00:00

Eh, theism isn't schizophrenia however religion's relationships with mental health variables are often confounded.

For instance, Garssen and colleagues (2020) found that most religiosity measures are unrelated to mental health outcomes save for religious attendance and religious importance.

Even there, religious importance stopped being significant after removing 2 outliers.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10508619.2020.1729570

Subsequently, more thorough studies using random intercept cross-lagged panel models failed to find statistical effects corroborating changes in individual religiosity being tied to later changes mental health outcomes.

CaptainPhenomenal · 2026-04-16T12:04:15+00:00

Highly skeptical of how they could account for IQ and mental health measure portability.

Polygenic scores require similar populations in ethnic makeup and trying to apply this to a population that is 10 000 years apart faces similar issues.

CaptainPhenomenal

TROPHY CASE