Religious experience and mental health: anthropological and psychological approaches

ABSTRACT

Moreira-Almeida, Sharma, van Rensburg, Verhagen and Cook have written a very comprehensive position statement pertaining to religion and psychiatry. While presenting a good overview of studies of religion, spirituality and mental health it does not include the important area of the health implications of religious experience which is the focus of this piece. I begin by discussing definitions of religious experience before examining the work of William James. The second part of this paper focuses upon specific religious experiences and psychopathology with a focus on mysticism, hallucinations and culture.     

Infertility,epistemic risk,and disease definitions

I explore the role that values and interests, especially ideological interests, play in managing and balancing epistemic risks in medicine. I will focus in particular on how diseases are identified and operationalized. Before we can do biomedical research on a condition, it needs to be identified as a medical condition, and it needs to be operationalized in a way that lets us identify sufferers, measure progress, and so forth. I will argue that each time we do this, we engage in epistemic risk balancing that inevitably draws upon values and interests, often including social and ideological values. My main interest here is in the conceptualization of infertility as a disease. Infertility is a rich test case for exploring the interplay between interests and epistemic risk management. There is no uncontested or standardized definition of infertility. The various definitions of it are internally ambiguous and tension-ridden, and in spectacular contradiction with one another. Many interest groups who are invested in framing infertility as a pressing problem deserving of social and medical redress are quick to insist that it is a legitimate ‘disease,’ but they cannot agree on which disease it is, what its symptoms or diagnostic markers are, or even what its basic ontology is. I suggest that there are political explanations for this epistemic mess. Indeed, I contend that there are good scientific and ethical reasons to reduce away the category of ‘infertility,’ especially understood as a scientific or medical category; I argue that we should excise the concept from our research and clinical practices.

     

Evidence: wanted,alive or dead

This paper is meant to link the philosophical debate concerning the underdetermination of theories by evidence with a rather significant socio-political issue that has been taking place in Canada over the past few years: the so-called ‘death of evidence’ controversy. It places this debate within a broader philosophical framework by discussing the connection between evidence and theory; by bringing out the role of epistemic values in the so-called scientific method; and by examining the role of social values in science. While it should be admitted that social values play an important role in science, the key question for anyone who advocates this view is: what and whose values? The way it is answered makes an important epistemic difference to how the relation between evidence and theory is appraised. I first review various arguments for the claim that evidence underdetermines theory and shows their presuppositions and limitations, using conceptual analysis and historical examples. After broaching the relation between evidence and method in science by highlighting the need to incorporate epistemic values into the scientific method, my discussion focuses on recent arguments for the role of social values in science. Finally, I address the implications of the approach outlined for the current ‘death of evidence’ debate in Canada.     

深入研究马克思主义宗教观

当今世界,宗教在国际国内社会的影响力日益上升,正确认识和对待宗教问题,比以往任何时候都更加重要和紧迫。马克思主义宗教观是建立在现代自然科学、社会科学和思维科学基础之上的科学宗教观,是我们观察宗教问题的锐利思想武器、开展宗教工作的根本指导思想、搞好宗教研究的基本科学方法。当前,我们必须全面、深刻地理解马克思主义宗教观的精神实质,把握其历史唯物的基本原则、科学辩证的基本方法和与时俱进的理论品质,积极推进马克思主义宗教观中国化、时代化、大众化。     

Religious Non-involvement Among African Americans, Black Caribbeans and Non-hispanic Whites: Findings from the National Survey of American Life

This study examines the association between race/ethnicity, socio-demographic characteristics, and religious non-involvement among a national sample of African Americans, Black Caribbeans and Non-Hispanic Whites. The relationship between religious non-involvement and selected measures of religious participation, spirituality, religious coping is also examined. The study utilizes data from a national multi-stage probability sample, the National Survey of American Life (n = 6,082). Very few individuals, <1 out of 20 respondents, both never attended religious services and have no current denomination. Overall, <8 % have never attended religious services since the age of 18. Both African Americans and Black Caribbeans were significantly less likely than non-Hispanic Whites to report never attending religious services and not having a current denomination. The greater reliance upon religious institutions for support and guidance among African Americans and Black Caribbean Americans relative to Non-Hispanic Whites may help explain the importance of race in predicting religious non-involvement. Women, married persons, Southerners, and the more highly educated are significantly more likely to be involved in religion. Finally, this study indicates that the religiously non-involved are less likely than others to participate in religious activities, to identify as spiritual, and to rely upon religion to cope with trying circumstances. Nonetheless, even respondents who never attend religious services and do not have a denomination still report some level of religious participation along with relatively high levels of religious coping. We posit that religious non-involvement is less indicative of apostasy, but rather likely reflects a critique of organized religion.     

Whose harm? Which metaphysic?

Douglas Diekema has argued that it is not the best interest standard, but the harm principle that serves as the moral basis for ethicists, clinicians, and the courts to trigger state intervention to limit parental authority in the clinic. Diekema claims the harm principle is especially effective in justifying state intervention in cases of religiously motivated medical neglect in pediatrics involving Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Scientists. I argue that Diekema has not articulated a harm principle that is capable of justifying state intervention in these cases. Where disagreements over appropriate care are tethered to metaphysical disagreements (as they are for Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Scientists), it is moral-metaphysical standards, rather than merely moral standards, that are needed to provide substantive guidance. I provide a discussion of Diekema’s harm principle to the broader end of highlighting an inconsistency between the theory and practice of secular bioethics when overriding religiously based medical decisions. In a secular state, ethicists, clinicians, and the courts are purportedly neutral with respect to moral-metaphysical positions, especially regarding those claims considered to be religious. However, the practice of overriding religiously based parental requests requires doffing the mantle of neutrality. In the search for a meaningful standard by which to override religiously based parental requests in pediatrics, bioethicists cannot avoid some minimal metaphysical commitments. To resolve this inconsistency, bioethicists must either begin permitting religiously based requests, even at the cost of children’s lives, or admit that at least some moral-metaphysical disputes can be rationally adjudicated.

     

Shari’a Reasoning and the Justice of Religious War

Most contemporary advocates of the Just War Tradition (JWT) condemn religious war. If they are correct, waging war should be a secular affair, fully justifiable on non-religious grounds. This secularized understanding of the JWT draws on normative commitments that lead many political theorists to advocate in favor of a secularized politics in western liberal polities. As a matter of historical fact and contemporary commitment, many Muslims have rejected the secularized conception of the morality of war found in contemporary conceptions of the JWT. I argue that, given appropriate distinctions between relevantly different kinds of religious war, advocates of the JWT have excellent reason to rethink their antipathy to religious war. Specifically, I argue that distinct kinds of religious war can enjoy differential normative standing and that there is no compelling reason to believe that religiously justified wars must be waged in a morally improper manner, viz., in a way that violates the JWT's in bello requirements.     

Storytelling in Liberal Religious Advocacy

Previous research suggests liberal religious advocates often find it necessary to use broadly accessible technical or moral language to communicate with policymakers and public audiences, yet this conformity to secular speech norms diminishes the distinctiveness of their religious voices. Communicating through storytelling offers them one way of overcoming this dilemma. This is demonstrated by examining liberal religious advocacy during recent healthcare reform debates in the United States, using data from interviews and public communications by advocates. By embedding stories within religiopolitical performances that highlight their religious identities, advocates convey policy‐relevant information without relying on explicitly religious language that may be inaccessible or unpersuasive to diverse audiences. They also deploy storytelling strategically, bearing witness to injustices experienced firsthand, secondhand, from the pews, and from the past, depending on the context. These findings have implications for ongoing debates about religious citizens’ capacity to communicate across lines of difference in the public sphere.     

The Concept of Death: A Religio-philosophical Analysis

In an age in which vast progress has been made in organ transplant technology, it is imperative to determine the point at which a human being is considered dead, for transplantation cannot occur until after death. Traditional religious views imply that a human being is dead upon the departure of the soul from the body. Taking the biological death of the body as a conclusive sign of the soul's departure is not an option. Biological death refers to decomposition, and this cannot equate to the death of the person as such, for this would make the concept and practice of transplantation absurd, for transplantable parts of a biologically dead—i.e. decomposing—body could not be used. On the other hand, if parts of the human body are themselves still biologically alive, could it not be said that taking such parts would amount to murder?

Two conclusions follow from this predicament. First, death as a ‘normative’ concept stands in sharp distinction from a purely biological concept. Second, a normative concept of death is entangled with a normative concept of personhood. That is to say, from the moment that a human being is not considered a person as such, parts of the body could be removed for transplantation or, indeed, for any other justified medical purpose. In this regard, various theories of the person are put forward. Which of these theories is compatible with a workable concept of death? In this paper two principal theories of the person will be discussed and it will be argued that a brain-based theory of death is conducive to a normative concept of death, thus allowing for organ transplantation.     

Religious Hinges: Some Historical Precursors

Recently, hinge epistemologists have applied Wittgenstein’s metaphor of hinges to religious belief. The most prominent proposal in this context is Pritchard’s “quasi-fideism”. This paper examines some historical precursors of the notion of religious hinges, with the aim of shedding more light on it. After outlining the framework of hinge epistemology and its application to religious belief, I briefly examine the views of Thomas Reid and John Henry Newman as acknowledged forerunners of this framework (or cognate views). Next, I turn to two hitherto unacknowledged forerunners, the pragmatists William James and Charles S. Peirce. I then focus on some insights that the pragmatists offer. On this basis, I conclude that religious beliefs are a special class of hinges. As such, while they can be defended through hinge epistemology, they cannot constitute a model through which we can interpret the nature of hinges in general.

     

Darwin Puzzled? A Computer-assisted Analysis of Language in the Origin of Species

The aesthetically optimistic view of life in the last paragraph of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species contrasts with the evidence in his autobiography of a supposed perceptive colour blindness to the magnificence of nature. Accepting the theory of evolution as one of the scientific theories that has contributed to disenchantment, my aim is to delve into the Darwinian perception of natural beauty and solve this contrast of perceptions within the framework of the Weberian concept of “disenchantment of the world.” To do this, I have carried out a computer-assisted study of Darwin’s language focusing on the frequency of aesthetic-emotional and religious adjectives and adverbs in the six editions of the Origin. A semantic analysis of the lexicon shows that, although disenchanted, Darwin perceives nature as aesthetically enhanced. I arrive at the conclusion that Darwin’s alleged colour blindness does not come from a loss of his capacity to aesthetically perceive nature, but from his loss of religious belief.

     

The Comparison of Death Anxiety,Obsession, and Depression Between Muslim Population with Positive and Negative Religious Coping

Death anxiety, obsession, and depression constitute three dimensions of death distress which can be influenced by religious coping in religious individuals. The aim of this study was to compare death anxiety, depression, and obsession between Muslims with positive and negative religious coping. In a cross-sectional study, a sample of 339 participants were selected via stratified random sampling method. The participants were screened using the Brief Religious Coping Scale, in which 60 individuals were identified to have positive religious coping and 62 individuals were recognized as individuals with negative religious coping. They responded to Death Anxiety Scale, Death Obsession Scale, and Death Depression Scale. The data were analyzed using factor analysis and multiple analysis of variance. The results of principal component analysis showed that death anxiety, death obsession, and death depression were separate factors of death distress. The results also revealed that individuals with negative religious coping gained higher scores than those with positive religious coping in all the three variables of death anxiety, obsession, and depression. Consistent with the previous studies and Terror Management Theory, this finding lays emphasis on the role of positive religious coping in reducing death distress and the possible consequent psychopathology.

     

How the “Not Religious” Experience and Witness Suffering and Death: Case Studies

ABSTRACT

This article is based on a subset of a multi-site (8), multi-year (4) research study that explored the cultural construction of dying and death in long-term care facilities. In open-ended interviews with residents and staff members, we learned how four individuals who describe themselves as “not religious” respond to queries about the meaning of suffering and death while working and living in long-term care.

We present case studies of two residents and two staff members from one of the sites–a secular, for-profit nursing home–who described themselves as not religious. We offer a brief history of their lives and daily activities, and present their responses to our queries about dying and death.

A finding of this article is that the nonreligious residents and staff members discussed here found significance in personal meaning systems developed through past, positive life events and present uncertainty about suffering and death. The self-described “not religious” provide another perspective on facing the end of life.     

Freud's Illusion: New Approaches to Intractable Issues

In his later theological work The Future of an Illusion, Freud (1927/1961) makes provocative suggestions about the psychological significance of religious ideas. Freud begins by analyzing their meaning in the lives of particular individuals. He then extrapolates to a critique of their effect on human civilization. Religion originally evolved in order to explain difficult concepts such as death and fate. It quickly outgrew its purely theological dimensions and became a social regulator by coercing compliance with a set of cultural norms.

The purpose of this article is not to evaluate whether Freud was right, that is, if religion in fact is an illusion. Rather, using concepts derived from current work in analytical theology, it examines the internal logic of Freud's analysis and some of the assumptions he made to reach this conclusion. Despite his theoretical insights, much of Freud's reasoning is invalid and many of his premises are questionable. Freud adopts assertions without explaining them and does not offer much in the way of deductive or inferential support for his argument. This article advocates an epistemological approach to understanding Freud's use of terms such as “wishes” and “illusions.” Adopting this perspective uncovers tacit presuppositions underlying his theory about the origins of religious belief and its relationship to culture and society, and clarifies the conceptual links holding it together.     

There is No Sacrum in it Any More: Revisiting Formalist Statehood and Religious/Civic Education on Baltic–Barents Borders

ABSTRACT

Even under globalised and hyper-diverse cultural and social conditions, representative liberal democracy conceives of itself as non-involved in issues to do with ethics, faith and belief. Drawing on a formalist systemic state identity it advocates a neutralist, secularist, generalist and non-biased approach to education in state schools. Building on a current research project on religious/civic education in the Baltic–Barents area, this article argues that this self-image is flawed and that representative liberal democracy cannot avoid being ethically biased. There is thus, the article argues, a need to better frame our understanding of different modes of religious/civic education as well as the logic of ethical neutralism characteristic of contemporary democratic statehood.     

The Will to Truth,the Death Drive and the Will to Power

This paper claims that Freud’s idea of the death drive is analogous to the will to truth in traditional philosophy and can be better understood as a truth drive. The argument is based upon Nietzsche’s interpretation of the will to truth as a concealed will to death. This interpretation emphasizes the opposition between truth and life; truth is a concept of constancy while life is a concept of change. Freud’s recognition of the conservative nature of the drives brings him to the paradoxical conclusion of the existence of a death drive. It is paradoxical, for Freud, since it considers death as a fundamental principle of life and as its aim. The paper suggests that by replacing the concept of death by the concept of truth and using Nietzsche’s idea of “the will to power” this paradox can be resolved without losing Freud’s insight of the dialectic nature of psychological life.

     

Reflections on Science and Technology

Science and technology are frequently confused. This essay points out thebases for this confusion and then focuses on a basic distinction, namely, that whereas science brings us information that we have little choice but to absorb and reflect upon, technology is something that humans elect to do and, hence, can also elect not to do. It is proposed that technological ethics are most cogently undertaken with scientific understanding as the linchpin and religious/artistic sensibilities as the muse.