Pragmatic Spirituality

In trying to keep my Postaday2011 string alive this year, perhaps the most difficult subject has been Spirituality on Sunday.  Yes, I know.  I could deviate from my self-imposed weekly topic schedule but then again, if I weren’t impossibly stubborn, would I be two weeks from the end of 2011 with a post every day?   I suppose my difficulty in posting on spirituality is a combination of two factors: my largely non-specific beliefs are hard to articulate; and I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to convince anyone of anything.  After all, I am an evangeliphobe myself.  If there were a point I’d pass along it’s that even if you can’t attach yourself to a particular orthodoxy, it is possible to find a spirituality that makes your life better.

An article by Tom Knox I found on the U.K.’s Daily Mail Online makes the point nicely.   While visiting Salt Lake City, Knox was wandering the street at night and realized that he felt safe, something he might not have felt in most cities.  This is what he wrote:  Why did I feel safe? Because I was in a largely Mormon city, and Mormons are never going to mug you. They might bore or annoy you when they come knocking on your door, touting their faith, but they are not going to attack you.  The Mormons’ wholesome religiousness, their endless and charitable kindliness, made their  city a better place. And that made me think:  Why was I so supercilious about such happy, hospitable people? What gave me the right to sneer at their religion?  From that moment I took a deeper, more rigorous interest in the possible benefits of religious faith. Not one particular creed, but all creeds. And I was startled by what I found. 

What he found was that people who attend service regularly live on the average seven years longer than people who don’t.  They have lower blood pressure and are less prone to mental illness.  He found that religious believers, compared to non-believers, record less stress, are better able to cope with losing jobs and divorce, are less prone to suicide, report higher levels of self-esteem, enjoy greater ‘life purpose’ and report being more happy overall.  Some studies conclude the benefits arise from a sense of community but others have found they extend to a lesser extent to believers who don’t attend services.  Interestingly, Knox notes that neurologists are discovering that the frontal cortex of our brain may be wired for belief in God for the evolutionary purpose of making us healthier and happier … thus more likely to have children.

I’ve said here before that I choose to believe in God because my life works better when I do so.  There’s scientific evidence to support that whether the benefits are inherently spiritual, social or neurological.  Yet atheists argue … religiously, I might add … against belief, citing the evils that religion has brought to the world.   If belief is good for us as individuals, doesn’t it make more sense to argue for an enlightened spirituality and more religious tolerance?

What do you think?

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Tags: perspectives, postaday2011, psychology, religion, spirituality

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