Patient requests for "inappropriate" medical treatment (violations of the standard of care) based on religious beliefs should have special standing. Nevertheless, not all such requests should be honored, because some are morally disturbing. The trouble lies in deciding which ones count. This paper proposes criteria that would qualify a religious belief as medically valid to help physicians deci...

Objective: Religious beliefs may influence end-of-life decision-making among patients with Chronic Heart Failure (CHF). Objectives of the current longitudinal observational study were: 1) to explore whether and to what extent preferences for life-sustaining treatments and willingness to trade survival time for excellent health are influenced by religious beliefs among elderly patients with CHF;...

A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity. The association was stronger for college students and the general population than for participants younger than college age; it was also stronger for religious beliefs than religious behavior. For college students and the general population, means of weighted and unweighted correlations...

The world will be harmonious one, the people with different religious beliefs in the world should strengthen close intercultural communication. And the intercultural communication will avoid any different wrong recognition about religious beliefs and respect different religious beliefs from different countries and cultures. Otherwise, it will cause unstable, inharmonious and terrible disaster o...

Surely after more than 200 years, psychiatry has become reasonably sophisticated and we can assume that there is no such thing as an unbiased comment. Professor Cooper's attack on Professor Casey for being 'a sincere member of the Roman Catholic Church' 1 is only justified if he also states, as the Editor does, that the other comment comes from Dr Oates, who is a 'representative of the pro-choi...

Recent evolutionary accounts seek to explain religious belief and behavior in terms of native cognitive dispositions and culturally transmitted innovations that have persisted because they have adaptive value. Despite the often vitriolic evolutionreligion debate, new evolutionary theories typically avoid challenging the truth of religious beliefs. In this paper we do three things. (1) We descri...

although effects of religious beliefs on mental health have not been greately studied, however available evidence in this field has shown that these beleifs have substantial effects on all aspects of human life, e.g., they may prevent drug or alcohol abuse. deep religious beliefs buffer the outcome of stress, depression, delinquency and divorce in religious people and substantially reduce suici...

This research looks at the relationship between religious commitment/affiliation and traditional beliefs. Data from the 1993 General Social Survey is used to test hypotheses linking religious commitment and religious affiliation to traditional gender role beliefs and conservative political views. Findings show statistical significance but weak substantive support for the idea that fundamentalis...

At least since M ARX and F REUD , there has existed a conceptualization of religious belief as pathological. 1 According to this view, religious beliefs result from, and are indicative of, some kind of intellectual flaw or deficiency (P LANTINGA 2000). We might say that religious beliefs are here construed as reflecting doxastic dysfunction (from the Greek word “doxa”, meaning “opinion” or “bel...