Comment by qwertyuiop_
5 days ago
Our brains are constantly bombarded with ever growing information and noise. With mindfulness, deliberate separation from most of the daily noise we can all zero in our own purposes in life. This hard, doesn’t happen overnight but with little steps and a lot of patience we will find that eventual purpose. And you find it hang on to it. I found reading the New Testament brings me instant peace when my brain is in turmoil. Hang in there strong with spiritual closeness, removing noise and avoiding those negative thoughts.
You know, I don't think Jesus cures depression
It's ironic that the "acktually.." atheist/anti-theist crowd don't do a modicum of research when it comes to this kind of stuff. It's pretty well-established in the literature that folks plugged into a religious community live better, happier, and healthier lives[1].
Millenial cynicism is so boring.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5127763/
> folks plugged into a religious community live better, happier, and healthier lives
Could be:
> folks plugged into a community live better, happier, and healthier lives
Or even
> folks with a weekly routine in a third space live better, …
There’s nothing causational about the denomination.
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Tell that to the gay kid who lived through god hates fags. Or the trans person today.
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teensy effect size according to some
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10508619.2020.17...
> Of eight R/S predictors that were distinguished, only participation in public religious activities and importance of religion were significantly related to mental health
That study you linked does not establish a causal relationship. It may simply be that the sort of person who is able to extract well-being from church is the sort of person more likely to actually attend church with any regularity. It likewise does not address the possibility that depression itself might make one want to stop attending church.
>Millenial cynicism is so boring
Yeah, it's always Millennials who are in the wrong. Fuck us, right? It's all good, we're used to being the scapegoats for society's problems.
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What does this have to do with millennials?
In my opinion, this is a form of hatred.
To each their own. I don’t think we should judge anyone on where they find their faith, that is, the drive to keep going on. Everyone is different.
Person A might find it in nature, camping, trailing, etc. Person B might pursue a more spiritual path, giving back to the community, being of service.
Whatever floats the boat man. Live and let live.
He said something about moths and rust consuming matter and with that at the very least he pointed out quite clearly the source of our suffering in regards to the AI transformation
Not religious, but also not disputing that believers have lower rates of depression either.
Believing in a higher power has seemed to provide great comfort to a number of friends and family over the years. I went to a friend's father's funeral a while back, and I had to admit, the service, the way the community came together was moving, and it really made me question whether I should return to the church as an adult, even with my questions of faith.
I don't know about Jesus curing depression, but it's certainly true that belief in Jesus has made many people feel better.
The problem is that humans evolved to be religious, and you can't just ignore that and get rid of it in a generation or two. It is in our brains and we have to live with it somehow. So from that perspective ... maybe Jesus does cure depression.
Humans most certainly did not evolve to be religious. We evolved to look for and, if necessary (to our minds), invent meanings behind things which sometimes have truly no meaning at all, i.e. the existence of existence itself. We also evolved to be fearful of the unknown, e.g. the experience of death and afterward. It seems quite simple to see how those two things resulted in our eventual invention of religion, but we did not simply evolve to be religious per se.
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Our brains are also wired to kill for survival, rape for reproduction.
Religion is a coping mechanism for some, although its trivial to ignore. Religion is more likely than not a con-artist trick, that has lived on for centuries.
Except some of us consider ourselves to be quite evolved, not religious, AND absent of depression. Maybe depression (or the lack thereof) has nothing to do with religion at all.
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> I found reading the New Testament brings me instant peace when my brain is in turmoil
I wonder if the Old Testament gives you the same effect
Excellent advice
oh yes! a racist, misogynist and homophobic literature book... best thing ever to get out of depression
THAT is your take away from the teachings of Jesus?
should i also mention that people who funded their religion hunted jews searching for the holy grail and were present at one if not the biggest holocaust of human history (the colonization of America, between 1500 and 1600, which killed from 25 to 100 million people)
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