Cliffnotes: "Believing in God can help block anxiety and minimize stress"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0304160400.htm

Believing in God can help block anxiety and minimize stress, according to new University of Toronto research that shows distinct brain differences between believers and non-believers.

In two studies led by Assistant Psychology Professor Michael Inzlicht, participants performed a Stroop task – a well-known test of cognitive control – while hooked up to electrodes that measured their brain activity.

Compared to non-believers, the religious participants showed significantly less activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a portion of the brain that helps modify behavior by signaling when attention and control are needed, usually as a result of some anxiety-producing event like making a mistake. The stronger their religious zeal and the more they believed in God, the less their ACC fired in response to their own errors, and the fewer errors they made.

"You could think of this part of the brain like a cortical alarm bell that rings when an individual has just made a mistake or experiences uncertainty," says lead author Inzlicht, who teaches and conducts research at the University of Toronto Scarborough. "We found that religious people or even people who simply believe in the existence of God show significantly less brain activity in relation to their own errors. They're much less anxious and feel less stressed when they have made an error."

These correlations remained strong even after controlling for personality and cognitive ability, says Inzlicht, who also found that religious participants made fewer errors on the Stroop task than their non-believing counterparts.

Their findings show religious belief has a calming effect on its devotees, which makes them less likely to feel anxious about making errors or facing the unknown. But Inzlicht cautions that anxiety is a "double-edged sword" which is at times necessary and helpful.

"Obviously, anxiety can be negative because if you have too much, you're paralyzed with fear," he says. "However, it also serves a very useful function in that it alerts us when we're making mistakes. If you don't experience anxiety when you make an error, what impetus do you have to change or improve your behaviour so you don't make the same mistakes again and again?"

The paper, appearing online in Psychological Science, was co-authored by Dr. Ian McGregor at York University, and by Jacob Hirsh and Kyle Nash, doctoral candidates at the University of Toronto and York University, respectively.

the certainty of believers can be utterly terrifying at times

Damn. I don't know what to make of it.

Just conclude that the concept of religion has been evolutionarily useful for us.

Cliffnotes: "being a pothead can help block anxiety and minimize stress"

being a pothead can help block anxiety and minimize stress, according to new University of Toronto research that shows distinct brain differences between potheads and people who actually want to accomplish something in life.

In two studies led by Assistant Psychology Professor Michael Inzlicht, participants performed a Stroop task – a well-known test of cognitive control – while hooked up to electrodes that measured their brain activity.

Compared to non-potheads, the pothead participants showed significantly less activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a portion of the brain that helps modify behavior by signaling when attention and control are needed, usually as a result of some anxiety-producing event like making a mistake. The stronger their addiction and the more they crave the drug, the less their ACC fired in response to their own errors, and the fewer errors they made.

"You could think of this part of the brain like a cortical alarm bell that rings when an individual has just made a mistake or experiences uncertainty," says lead author Inzlicht, who teaches and conducts research at the University of Toronto Scarborough. "We found that addicted people or even people who simply use marijuana casually show significantly less brain activity in relation to their own errors. They're much less anxious and feel less stressed when they have made an error."

These correlations remained strong even after controlling for personality and cognitive ability, says Inzlicht, who also found that addicted participants made fewer errors on the Stroop task than their non-believing counterparts.

Their findings show THC addiction has a calming effect on its addicts, which makes them less likely to feel anxious about making errors or facing the unknown. But Inzlicht cautions that anxiety is a "double-edged sword" which is at times necessary and helpful.

"Obviously, anxiety can be negative because if you have too much, you're paralyzed with fear," he says. "However, it also serves a very useful function in that it alerts us when we're making mistakes. If you don't experience anxiety when you make an error, what impetus do you have to change or improve your behaviour so you don't make the same mistakes again and again?"

The paper, appearing online in Psychological Science, was co-authored by Dr. Ian McGregor at York University, and by Jacob Hirsh and Kyle Nash, doctoral candidates at the University of Toronto and York University, respectively.

cliffnotes 2: if you are gonna believe in god, do pot instead.

I never understood why people always perceive Bush as the penultimate Christian. He's a politician. On top of that his Daddy was a member of the Skull and Bones society at Yale and a lot of modern day Christians have theological problems with secret societies.

But I guess you'd have to be an informed Christian to even know that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_and_Bones

Its a little bit like the Ku Klux Klan. The founding of the KKK had its roots in freemasonry and freemasonry is pretty much at odds with Christianity because they have a lot of secret rituals that have nothing to do with Christianity.

lol, yeah, no one else knows about Skull and Bones that besides informed Christians . And good comparison to the KKK, really appropriate and nuanced.

I was about to post this article - really, really interesting stuff.

Its just something for people to research for themselves instead of constantly bandying Bush around as the poster child for Christian stupidity.

The occult is always cropping up in our institutions and organizations. Its just most people think its harmless mumbo jumbo.

I was just pointing it out. I don't want to derail further so please no more questions on this.

Bush IS a poster child for Christian stupidity. You may think he has some weird occult connections, but that's mostly because you have no idea what you're talking about.

He's Christian enough to have God help him make decisions...

You haven't researched it. You just have a big fat political opinion.

There's stuff all over the internet by concerned Christians about his true status. If he's really a true born again Christian or not.

But I forgot research disproves cherished stereotypes. Nevermind stay in your uninformed opinion.

splendour - you completely missed my point. i wasnt trying to make any statements about christians/christianity, i was just taking a cheap potshot at george bush because i found it funny.

im not suggesting he is the 'penultimate christian', im saying he is the 'penultimate idiot', who happens to fit that quote pretty well.

ime i actually agree with the op in that christians on the whole are more balanced, less stressed, and more focussed people

Oh I agree then. I never was a Bush supporter and I've only heard about his wooing Christian voters and this strange link to the Skull and Bones recently. There are a lot of problems though between crediting Christians with Weapons of Mass Destruction political agendas and the KKK because there are a lot of secret society ties that have nothing to do with Christianity.

Now people are blaming Christians for things Bush has done. Mr. Bush is an individual not a religious group or even a representative of all Christians.

I find it strange that atheists who'd never confuse a Socialist with a Communist are willing to confuse a Christian with a Secret Society Member.

Could the Secret Societies contain a rogue Christian or a Christian illiterate: yes but that doesn't make all Christians the KKK any more than one American committing a crime makes all American criminals. I find these weird parallels running all over the place in this forum.

The chances that you know more than I do about Skull and Bones are about as close to zero as they could be.

OH NEVERMIND. I didn't realize that some Christians on the Internet were hypothesizing about this. You win!

I would study it before I claim they are hypothesizing.

Go to a bookstore and study up on free masonry. Various freemason groups go back centuries and people in power throughout many periods of history had to belong to the right club or group to be a part of the power structure. Then see if you can pick out if the group purposes were legitimate or not. Power corrupts and absolute power absolutely. Do you think the phrase "old boys network" came about because they were figureheads? Even today many corporate deals are carved out on golf course greens.

^^^

You are an absolute master at answering every challenge to one of your arguments by defending a completely different and usually totally unrelated position. It is quite impressive IMO because this way no one can finish an argument with you.

And by study it you mean "check out what conspiracy theorist far right Christians have to say about it." A 5 minute Google confirmed my rather overwhelming suspicion that these people are, in fact, ******ed.

This would all be super interesting and new to a 15 year old, but you can stop assuming that everyone is less studied than you. You told me to "do research" on Skull and Bones, and which point I stated that there is next to no chance that you know more about them than I do. I will restate this. Not only have I read a good deal about them, but I know more than one member, and considering the shady reputation, they've been less than secretive about many aspects of it. I know that you like to change the topic relentlessly and worship tangents second only to Christ. But if you want to ease up on the rambling and stick behind your original comments on Skull and Bones and how the group relates to GWB's Christianity, feel free.

You really should direct posts to someone else if you want to argue. I've already said repeatedly I'm not interested in them.

Its more fun to dismantle stereotypes.

Also whether or not you like a net site's graphics doesn't make a fact ******ed. Not everyone has the money for top graphics. But If there's a trail there's a trail and potentially a mystery that may or may not be revealed.

Oh, were you going to do that?

Net graphics? What are you prattling on about? How many clearly baseless assumptions do you aim to make per post?

Of course. Animals also are not anxious and stressed. A complex human being is meant to endure these minor afflictions in their thinking processes. Avoiding stress and anxiety by any means is a goal of the self sufficient herd members of consumerist society. And religion is one of its tools.
Letting all your responsibilities, fears, doubts and hesitations to be carried by some "God" means in fact also giving up your own freedom, creativity and personality. God is but a dark hidden place where we hide all our spiritual and moral duties. They are too tough for a spoiled little human, he prefers to invent a huge celestial Slave to do all this job. God is the slave of those suffering of moral laziness ans spiritual inertia. They are called "religious people".
Stress? Anxiety? Hit me! Better alive and suffering than dead and hæppy.

Oh and we should hold Abbas in high regard?

Who exactly is Abbas who is the head of the PLO:
http://focusonjerusalem.com/WhoisMahmoudAbbas.htm

I never would have suspected the KGB connection. Research is amazingly informative!

It was Nabil Shaath who made the claim.. be sure to read the post clearly before spewing your tardtalk. At any rate thanks for that moronic site link. Here's a doozie from that site you linked:

JESUS IS COMING SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!

Real cute. Shaath is an official under Abbas.

Abbas has a long line of terrorist activities back to the Munich Olympics.

Sometimes even religious tards get the history right.

And since you like samples here's part from my Abbas link in a foregoing post. Let me know how tard it is. Of course are you sure you're not biased?:

Abbas Joins up With Arafat



Abbas’s background in anti-Israel propaganda and indoctrination with Soviet Marxist geo-political strategies in the Middle East made him a likely partner for another anti-Israel client with Soviet backing, Yasser Araafat. Apparently, at the behest of the Soviet Union and the Arab League, Arafat recruited an inner band of underground Palestinian political agitators. Among those who collaborated on the formation of the Syrian based Fatah movement was Mahmoud Abbas. These two figures met for the first time while both were still in their 20’s. Abu Mazen's duties on behalf of the PLO were thus built on his abilities for securing funding for the Palestinian guerrilla movement rather than actually formulating the terrorist infrastructure of Fatah, as was the case with Arafat, who had a hands-on managerial role of the terrorism. Unlike Abbas, who was a legitimate Palestinian Arab, Yasser Arafat was an Egyptian, (Egypt was also then a Soviet-Russian client) born in Cairo, and served in the Egyptian military against Israel in the 1948 war.

Yasser Arafat was born into an Egyptian bourgeois family and was easily turned into a devoted pan-Arab Marxist by KGB foreign intelligence. The Soviet KGB trained him at its Balashikha special-ops school east of Moscow in the mid-1960s and decided to groom him for its potential use as the future PLO leader. First, the KGB destroyed the official records of Arafat's birth in Cairo, replacing them with fictitious documents saying that he had been born in Jerusalem and was therefore a Palestinian by birth. The KGB's disinformation department then went to work on Arafat's four-page tract called "Falastinuna" (Our Palestine), turning it into a anti-Semitic monthly magazine for the Palestinian terrorist organization al-Fatah. Arafat, with assistance from the Arab League, had headed al-Fatah since 1957, and was eager to gain the Russian platform. Arafat served as an important undercover operative for the KGB. Right after the 1967 Six Day Israeli-Arab War, Moscow got him appointed as chairman of the PLO. Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser, a Soviet client, proposed the appointment. In 1969 the Soviet KGB asked Arafat to declare war on American "imperial-Zionism" during the first summit of the Black Terrorist International, a neo-Fascist pro-Palestine organization financed by the KGB and Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi.

This ideology also appealed to Mahoud Abbas, as he viewed American support for Israel as the stumbling block to the liberation of Palestine. In fact, "imperial-Zionism" was a Moscow invention, and long a favorite tool of Russian intelligence to foment ethnic hatred in the Middle East against Israel and America. The KGB always regarded anti-Semitism plus anti-imperialism as a rich source of anti-Americanism, with which to inflame the Arab world, so the Soviets could displace America in the oil-rich Arab region.

Later, Arafat would use the covert technical training he received from the former Soviet Union special ops units to lead the militant wing of Fatah in guerrilla operations against Israel. These points are noteworthy because the former Soviet Union helped to facilitate the Arab wars against Israel by supplying weapons and expertise to client states such as Egypt and Syria, as a means to expel American geo-political strongholds in the Middle East, especially Israel. And so, like Arafat, Abbas’s early philosophical indoctrination was inclined towards Marxist, pan Arab Socialism as a means to liberate Palestine from Israeli possession.

http://focusonjerusalem.com/WhoisMahmoudAbbas.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabil_Shaath

Abbas denies Bush ever made the statement... Do you read the pages you link to before posting?