Are atheists mentally ill? (Revisited)

A ever-growing number of scientific studies comparing religious people to atheists find that religious people live longer, suffer fewer illnesses (including mental illness) and recover from illness faster than their non-religious peers. This is true even after adjustments are made for smoking and other health-impairing habits. Religious people are also found to be happier than atheists.

I'm thinking about these striking findings again after reading an article titled "Are atheists mentally ill?" by British writer Sean Thomas that appeared in the UK's Telegraph last year. Thomas' article was written to provoke, but the question is a valid one: Why does study after study find these disparities in health and happiness between believers and non-believers?

The answer, I believe, is that religious people are in touch with something real in the universe. They make their connection to this spiritual reality via a sixth sense we humans all possess, a faculty that is variously developed in different individuals and cultures. And yes, I think of this faculty as literally a sixth sense.

As with most mammals, we humans have five senses--sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste--that tell us facts about our environment. In addition to these five, however, we also possess a sixth sense that other species lack. In religious people this sense is more developed, while in the non-religious it remains latent. Some people in the modern West (dogmatic atheists) even do their best to keep it as dormant as possible, but of course the fact that it is there in the first place suggests it is not best left dormant. Why after all do we have this sense?

Advocates of a narrowly materialist empirical science (among which the New Atheists) have proposed several evolutionary explanations. Most of these explanations relate to religion's advantages for group cohesion. I find the arguments unpersuasive, but especially worth noting is that they all take for granted that what is being felt or experienced by religious people is purely illusory--i.e., in the case of this particular sense, unlike with our other five senses, the reality being perceived is asserted to be necessarily false. To this I would simply say: Science offers no final ground for making such an assertion.

Clearly this sixth sense we have is somehow connected to the human phenomenon of consciousness, but how it is connected we can only speculate. In any case I believe that it is literally a matter of perceiving the presence of a realm (the spiritual) or a reality (God) that does exist. It is a bridge allowing us connection to a power that begins to complete us once connection is made.

Why, then, the skeptic will say, are there so many different religions? If humans are, in religion, perceiving and reacting to a reality behind things, why do they react in so many different ways?

The wide variety of religions over history doesn't trouble me in the least. In fact I consider it just more evidence for my thesis. That humans perceive the divine somewhat differently from culture to culture is just what one would expect. The interesting thing is that they DO perceive the divine. It is something that is there, but that is perceived "through a glass darkly", as Paul puts it in the context of Christian faith.

Again: Evolution has brought us to a state where this connection is possible. Those who allow the narrow interpretation of science called "scientism" to shut them off from making it are, not surprisingly, suffering from their choice. Because it is part of our humanity to reach across the bridge to that partially revealed reality on the other side. This is what the studies tell us. Meanwhile the dogmatic atheists keep insisting it's religious people who are mentally ill.

Debating with atheists, I've often been struck by the feeling that sitting before me were people who lacked a part of the sensorium. As if we were tailing about a complex piece of music and he or she simply couldn't hear two of the seven instruments being played. It wasn't at all a matter of disagreeing about science--the disagreement was rather over whether science was fitted to tell us about the whole spectrum of sound we're capable of hearing. My ears pick up something that the atheist's do not. And the little meter he carries around in his bag (call it empirical science) simply doesn't have the range to deal with the music in question. Which is not surprising. Though science tells us much about the intricacies of the physical universe, it can tell us precisely nothing about why the universe exists in the first place.

It is clear that developing our connection to this spiritual level in the universe--which religion helps cultivate--is good for our being: it makes us healthier, more resistant, happier. There is an energy that sustains us and adds life to us. Anyone who still cares to doubt it can just look at the evidence.

The linked article is provocative, yes, but I think just this kind of provocation is needed at present given the aggressive tactics of the New Atheists. It is they who are misleading us as to what we are and what the universe is. And they are misleading themselves too. Which isn't doing them much good, is it?

Eric Mader
Taipei

(Sean Thomas' article is at http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/seanthomas/100231060/are-atheists-mentally-ill/. Thanks to the bloggers at the Freedom from Atheism Foundation for bringing it to my attention.)

The Minor Maladies

To turn middle-aged is to be forced to learn (and to learn the hard way) the real physical meaning of a whole slew of medical terms one had previously ignored as "other people's problems": terms such as bursitis, shingles, prostatitis, acid reflux, etc., etc. Turning forty, one begins to suffer from a new health issue every year or two, and with each of them there is the experience of something like, "Oh, so that's what bursitis feels like." Along with this comes the fact one must suddenly stop doing something one likes. Or doing less of it.

My favorite of these minor maladies in terms of sheer annoyance value is acid reflux. I'd always thought it was just an issue of overeating. But no. When the problem started harassing me last year, making me wish I could somehow tilt my bed up, I went and investigated online as to causes. It turned out acid reflux wasn't really so much overeating, but rather a matter of a valve at the top of the stomach that didn't stay closed when it should. The acid came up from the stomach because the cap on the stomach was loose. Here, I learned online, were the key things that could loosen it:

coffee

alcohol

chocolate

tobacco

So if I wanted to stop the acid reflux, I just needed to stop using these four things. Pretty nasty, no? I mean, how sadistic can you get? This is a near exhaustive list of the still legal substances that make life worth living. I will experiment with bed tilting, thank you.

The most recent middle-age malady I've acquired is called shingles. Though I'd heard of shingles over the years, I never really knew what it was. If only I could have maintained that ignorance. Shingles is actually a belated attack from the virus that causes chickenpox. In fact it's like a Stage 2 attack of the same original infection.

I got chickenpox when I was nine, and I assumed that I'd thoroughly defeated it. No such luck. Rather, the virus that caused my chickenpox, varicella zoster, went into dormancy in my nerve cells, and now, 37 years later, has made up its mind to launch a second attack. It is doing this after almost four decades of idleness. Pretty impressive. But if it wanted to impress me, I wish it would just bring me the pox back, which I remember as itchy and mildly fever-inducing. Instead, it seems viruses develop a kind of attitude problem when forced into dormancy so long. Shingles, which has been plaguing me three weeks, is not itchy in the least: it is a vicious biting bitch of a scourge--tenacious and painful as hell. And I'm not doing well against it, though I continue to follow doctor's orders and am taking a regular hefty dosage of an antiviral drug which causes--another cheery medical term--tinnitus. Tinnitus is basically ringing in the ears. Which means that these weeks with the shingles I regularly hear mosquitoes buzzing round my head when there are none. Which is giving the real mosquitoes an unfair advantage. (No, I'm not joking. The ringing I hear is identical to the sound of mosquito wings. Almost uncanny. When it first started I actually believed there was a mosquito near me in the living room. It was only hours later, when I lay down to sleep, and heard the mosquito flying inside my pillow, that I realized it was an hallucination.)

But seriously: I know I've no right to complain about all this. These are only minor health issues, and I'm grateful for the decent health I've always had, as I'm lucky to have Taiwan's health care system taking care of me. Living as we do, amid such racket and pollution, we urban people certainly don't deserve good health. Though sometimes in pain, heartburned, tossing and turning, we are still right to be grateful if we've made it to middle age without any of the major maladies.

Pearl Milk Balls

The people are all in an uproar
The talk shows are flooded with calls
From parents irate
Who cry it's too late:
"Our sons have pearl milk balls!"

The government's caught with its pants down
Unsure just where the blame falls
Or who holds the buck
For having raised up
The boys with the pearl milk balls

The "hormone" was doled out slowly
From thousands of street-side stalls
That sweet chewy drink
Was not what they think
It's given them pearl milk balls

The future it looks a bit bleaker
All swish and raucous cat calls
But who will confess
To this free-market mess
If they're packing just pearl milk balls?

--.

Anyone new to Taiwan will immediately notice how the locals go for all things soft and chewy: chewy candy, chewy desserts, even drinks with chewy "pearls" floating in them. "Pearl milk tea" is probably the most famous of these local delicacies.

Unfortunately, researchers have recently discovered that many local companies produce these candies, desserts and jellies with the help of an emulsifier that is, well, basically plastic. This plastic emulsifier is cheaper and, not surprisingly, has a longer shelf life than natural alternatives. So Taiwan's population has unknowingly been consuming plastic as an ingredient in many of its food products: in the desserts mentioned, plus some fruit juices, plus children's chewable vitamins, syrups, and many other products too. It amounts to a huge health oversight on the part of society at large.

But how could this happen? Why wasn't this known until now? Because the government, firmly capitalist in outlook, never wanted to interfere in the free market, so there is scarce any regulatory arm. And what is the fallout of this huge ingestion of plastic? Research suggests the the plastic in question is linked to a variety of health problems, stunted male development being one, since it functions in the developing male body almost like a surrogate female hormone:

DEHP is suspected to be an endocrine disruptor, which could lead to the shrinking in size of the penis and testicles in men and thyroid dysfunction.

This is all still preliminary, but, wow, don't you just love free-market capitalism? Twenty-three million Taiwanese have been eating this stuff regularly since the 1980s, and, if my guess is right, its use in products has steadily grown over that time, most of it being in food and drinks marketed to kids. --E.M.

--.

Reports from the Taipei Times:

Kids more Vulnerable to DEHP intake

Food Scare Leads to Massive Recalls

Getting Colds in Taiwan

If you’re from some northern clime, from Finland or Maine or Ontario, and planning to move to Taiwan, you’ll probably imagine before the move that one advantage of living on the island will be that you won’t have to deal with colds and flus anymore. The cold and flu season is winter, after all, and semitropical Taiwan doesn’t really have a winter to speak of. But I can tell you from personal experience and that of many others: you’re going to be sorely disappointed, friend.

One of the oddest suprises this particular semitropical island holds in store for newcomers from the West is how often they will get colds or flu. I’m not sure if it’s the humidity or the population density or something else, but the fact is that during the first year here, regardless of the relatively warm weather, the average Westerner will come down with four or five vicious viruses, often like nothing they had before when living in, say, frozen Nova Scotia. Why is it? And usually by the second year the colds are less frequent, but still can be quite nasty. But again: why is that?

The colds and flus of Taiwan are bad enough, but what makes them even worse is the reactions of people here. It is a standard of American wisdom not to give advice to others unless you are specifically asked. Taiwanese thinking on this seems to be the opposite. You come into the office feeling terrible, just wanting to get to work, and immediately your Taiwanese coworkers start in. “Did you go to the doctor yet? You didn’t go to the doctor? Why didn’t you go to the doctor?” “It’s because you’re not used to the weather here. It’s the weather: you’re not used to it.” “Don’t drink anything cold, especially not orange juice. Why are you drinking that? Hey, I just told you: don’t drink that.” “Don’t eat such and such: it will lower your body temperature. You should eat such and such, but not such and such.” “You need so and so; you shouldn’t such and such.” “Here. This is a map to a good clinic. When can you go? You really should go.” And on and on. And on and on again. And then on and on, and more people come into the office, and they have something to say too. Until your headache and congestion seem the least of your problems.

Of course the Taiwanese tendency to give advice shows concern. Your coworkers are trying to show you they care about you. For the average Westerner, however, it is nothing but annoying. Doubtless it’s because of our over-developed sense of self-reliance and individualism. Listening to all their advice, one can’t help but smile and think: “Who the hell are you to tell me what to drink and not drink? Just because you’re Chinese you think you know how I should take care of myself? The last time you got a cold, which was two weeks ago, I didn’t lecture you, did I?”

Another problem is that one simply doesn’t agree with their advice. For one thing, the fanatical prohibition against citrus. “Don’t drink orange juice! Don’t drink lemonade!” They somehow think the citric acid in the orange juice will irritate a sore throat and so will somehow make the cold worse. But the cold, as we know, is a matter of the progress of a virus. The soreness of the throat is merely a symptom of the cold; it is not the cold itself. Yes, it’s probably true that cold drinks are not good when one has a cold. But if the orange juice isn’t really cold, then it can do nothing but good: it’s liquid, it contains vitamin C, etc. Still it’s useless arguing such points with them: if their mamas have once told them not to drink orange juice, they will stick to the notion forever.

And their: “Quick, go see a doctor!” “Have you seen a doctor yet?” “Oh, my God! Why haven’t you seen a doctor?” “Here, let me draw you a map to the clinic.” Doctors, as we know in the West, cannot cure a cold. Doctors can only confirm that you have one and then give you something to make the symptoms less troublesome. But the drugs they give--these too are not necessarily healthy, so maybe it would just be better to let the cold take its course, no?

And the doctors here, regardless of what you have, will always prescribe antibiotics along with the other things they give. This is bad medical practice, as anyone who knows anything can tell you. Antibiotics can do exactly nothing against a virus, and prescribing them when they aren’t needed will only serve to make them worthless when they are needed.

The other day I was in the metro waiting in line for the train to come. A somewhat short Taiwanese man, aged around 40, was going down the line of people earnestly speaking a few sentences to each of them as they waited. He was speaking softly in Chinese, and I couldn’t quite pick it up, but it had something to do with health, with the heart and the body’s circulation system. When he got to me, he switched to English: “Excuse me. You should always go to bed before ten o’clock. It’s better for the heart and blood circulation. So remember: go to bed before ten, okay?”

These are the exact words the man said to me and this is all he said. And so: without a by your leave or any kind of self-introduction, a man in a metro station took it upon himself to tell me when to go to bed! If it were a Western country, I’d be sure the man was a lunatic. Here, he qualifies as just a bit on the eccentric side.

But how did I react to him? Did I ask him who the hell he thinks he is and tell him to go fuck himself? No. Since I’ve been here in Taiwan a while, I know how to react. I smiled, said, “Thank you,” and continued waiting for the train.