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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
[...] A new nationwide study of obituaries has found that people with religious affiliations lived nearly four years longer than those with no ties to religion.
That four-year boost -- found in an analysis of more than 1,000 obits from around the country -- was calculated after taking into account the sex and marital status of those who died, two factors that have strong effects on lifespan.
[...] "We found that volunteerism and involvement in social organizations only accounted for a little less than one year of the longevity boost that religious affiliation provided," Wallace said. "There's still a lot of the benefit of religious affiliation that this can't explain."
So what else explains how religion helps people live longer? It may be related to the rules and norms of many religions that restrict unhealthy practices such as alcohol and drug use and having sex with many partners, Way said.
In addition, "many religions promote stress-reducing practices that may improve health, such as gratitude, prayer or meditation," he said.
[...] Way said there are limitations to the study, including the fact that it could not control for important factors related to longevity such as race and health behaviors. But a potential strength was that, unlike other studies, religious affiliation was not self-reported, but was reported by the obituary writer.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 19 2018, @02:14PM (3 children)
If death results in oblivion then there's nothing to fear. But given we still don't understand consciousness it's hard to say for sure what happens. It could be our consciousness continues detached - no memory or senses to "read" from or write to. Just because a person with advanced Alzheimer's/dementia can't remember much doesn't mean they aren't conscious...
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday June 19 2018, @08:24PM
You make a very good point. However, I'd argue without the brain apparatus to feel pleasure, pain or emotions, let alone reflect on them or indeed form any thoughts at all (which you've touched on in your own post), I struggle to see how such a situation could be associated with any kind of experience at all. I can't see how it would even be some kind of oblivion that you'd have to sort of wait out because there'd be no way to sense or reflect on the passage of time itself even.
This brings me back to a conclusion that I think I've recently mentioned on this site, that unless it were a truly eternal oblivion (and eternity sounds physically dubious, although Heat Death of the universe could maybe allow it) then from your point of view it would be instantaneously over and replaced with whatever it is that happened next (due to physics and random coincidence if there's no higher metaphysical processes in charge), or more correctly with whatever the first thing is to allow you to form thoughts again. I suppose it's a sort of extension of the Anthropic Principle to a single conscious point of view.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @07:17PM (1 child)
While we don't understand consciousness itself, we can be pretty sure it is tied to the functioning of our brain. If you get hit on the head hard enough, you'll get knocked out. Brain cancers or brain surgery to remove parts of the brain can significantly change someone's personality.
There is no reason to believe consciousness can exist independently of the brain.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday July 02 2018, @11:33PM
An objective, scientific study of the brain and senses gives us no reason to believe that the first person aspects of consciousness experience exist at all, and yet they do. The functioning of the brain does not seem to depend on subjective experience, so it's certainly possible that they exist independently even though they intuitively seem to correlate.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?