Cognitive scientists of religion argue that religious ideas are widespread because they are minimally counterintuitive. Traditional lab studies have found support for a better memory for minimally counterintuitive concepts. This paper presents an in-depth case study of the spread of a counterintuitive religious idea in the real world. It finds that counterintuitiveness alone is not sufficient t...

The analysis of 42 research studies investigating the role of religion in health, in which 126,000 people were interviewed, has established that religious involvement was helpful in the prevention of specific medical problems such as cancer, heart disease and mental illness. For example, the religious have lower blood pressure than the non-religious, but this is the first study to examine so co...

Previous studies of the marital fertility transition in Europe have found religious differentials. Using data collected from the population registers of The Hague, our aim in this study is to search for answers to the following questions: whether religious differentials result from socio-economic characteristics; to what extent religious ideology explains the behaviour of religious groups; whic...

Recent functional neuroimaging data, acquired in studies of religious experience, have been used to explain and justify religion and its origins. In this paper, we critique the move from describing brain activity associated with self-reported religious states, to explaining why there is religion at all. Toward that end, first we review recent neuroimaging findings on religious experience, and s...

a r t i c l e i n f o In view of the substantial number of recent studies on relationships between religious involvement and constructive or destructive behavior among adolescents, it is time to consolidate knowledge about these relationships through a meta-analysis. The meta-analysis conducted in this study involves 40 studies published from 1995 to 2009, covering adolescents with an average a...

This review discusses the relationships between religion, spirituality, and psychosis. Based on the DSM-IV, we comment on the concept of spiritual and religious problems, which, although they may seem to be psychotic episodes, are actually manifestations of nonpathological spiritual and religious experiences. Studies reporting that hallucinations also occur in the nonclinical population and thu...

BACKGROUND There is growing evidence that regular attendance at religious functions is associated with less cognitive decline (CD). However, little research has investigated factors that may moderate the religious attendance-CD relationship. The present study examined the effects of gender and depressive symptoms on the relationship between religious attendance and CD. METHODS Data were drawn...

PURPOSE The present study aims to examine the association between religious involvement and mental disorder (anxiety disorder, mood disorder, alcohol use disorder) in a general Chinese population, and explore connections between religious belief and mental disorders in the Hui and Han ethnic groups. METHOD Data were examined from a representative sample of 2,770 community-dwelling adults in t...

that those who were religious were less likely to have ever used drugs or to be a hazardous drinker. On the other hand, spiritual people were more likely than those who were neither religious nor spiritual to have ever used or to be dependent on drugs and to have abnormal eating attitudes, generalized anxiety disorder, any phobia, or any neurotic disorder. Furthermore, Laurent et al. found that...