MILITANT ATHEISM ASSOCIATED WITH INCREASED SUICIDE RISK AND MENTAL ILLNESS

 

 

Ironically, we Christians are routinely charged with child-abuse? Why? Because we teach our children about sin, hell, and, as sinners, our need for the Savior! However, if this child-abuse, it should be associated with negative outcomes, but this does not seem to be so.

 

A scientific research study published in the The American Journal of Psychiatry found that:

 

·       "Religiously unaffiliated subjects had significantly more lifetime suicide attempts and more first-degree relatives who committed suicide than subjects who endorsed a religious affiliation. Unaffiliated subjects were younger, less often married, less often had children, and had less contact with family members. Furthermore, subjects with no religious affiliation perceived fewer reasons for living, particularly fewer moral objections to suicide. In terms of clinical characteristics, religiously unaffiliated subjects had more lifetime impulsivity, aggression, and past substance use disorder."

 

Reference: Religious Affiliation and Suicide Attempt

Kanita Dervic, M.D.; Maria A. Oquendo, M.D.; Michael F. Grunebaum, M.D.; Steve Ellis, Ph.D.; Ainsley K. Burke, Ph.D.; J. John Mann, M.D.

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx...

 

Moreover, a research study from the World Health Organisation revealed that "nine of ten of the nations with the highest male suicide rates are strongly irreligious nations with the highest levels of atheism, while countries with the lowest male suicide rates are highly religious nations with statistically insignificant levels of organic atheism."

Reference: A global perspective in the epidemiology of suicide; Suicidologi 2002, arg. 7, nr. 2

http://www.iasp.info/pdf/papers/Bertolote.pdf

 

Additional Information on the Psychology of Atheism available at: http://anti-matters.org/articles/91/public/91-84-1-PB.pdf

Related Media Article: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/.../are-atheists-mentally-ill/

 

SUICIDE AND SECULARISM

 More than any other indicator, suicide says, “Life isn’t worth living.” What is causing the explosion of suicides among those who have everything to live for – our 10-24 year olds:

·       Suicide rates among youth ages 10 to 24 increased by 57% between 2007 and 2018, data released Thursday from the National Center for Health Statistics shows, rising from almost 7 per 100,000 population to nearly 11. Comparing three-year averages from 2007 to 2009 to the time period between 2016 and 2018 brought the increase down to 47%...The U.S. suicide rate among all age groups was 14 per 100,000 in 2018. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/suicides-among-us-kids-young-adults-jumped-57percent-in-past-decade/ar-BB18ViMs?ocid=se

How can we explain this phenomenon? Many explanations are offered:

·       “There are many reasons to suspect that suicide rates will increase this year too, not just because of Covid-19 but because stress and anxiety seem to be permeating every aspect of our lives,” said Shannon Monnat, co-director of the Policy, Place, and Population Health Lab at Syracuse University. (Ibid.)

It does not seem that environmental factors are significant. This phenomenon is no respecter of the US States. Similar increases are found throughout the States. Instead, it seems to be associated with the growth of secularism, today’s reigning Western religion:

·       Diana Graines, in Rolling Stone, noted that prior to the 1960s, teenage suicide was virtually nonexistent among American youth. By 1980 almost four hundred thousand adolescents were attempting suicide every year. By 1987 suicide had become the second largest killer of teens, after automotive accidents. By the 1990s, suicide had slipped down to number three because young people were killing each other as often as they killed themselves. (Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book that Made your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization, 4)

Why point the accusing finger at secularism? Secularism destroys meaning and value. It claims that these do not have any independent existence. Instead, they are merely socially constructed to give life some coherence. However, our welfare depends upon believing that they are real and represent worthwhile pursuits. They impart fullness to our lives.

Secularism provides no basis for hope or faith beyond the physical world of chemical-electrical reactions. Consequently, in a valueless world, there can be no basis for meaning or morality beyond our own arbitrary decisions to create meaning out of non-meaning. Arthur Deikman, a Buddhist-like psychotherapist, writes about the poverty of secular psychotherapy:

·       Human beings need meaning. Without it they suffer boredom, depression, and despair…Western psychotherapy is hard put to meet human beings need for meaning, for it attempts to understand clinical phenomena in a framework based on scientific materialism in which meaning is arbitrary and purpose nonexistent. Consequently, Western psychotherapy interprets the search for meaning as a function of childlike dependency wishes and fears of helplessness. (The Observing Self, 4)

Secularism is incapable of affirming anything beyond the material. Many psychotherapists have noted the relationship between the absence of meaning, purpose, and moral absolutes and depression. In Speaking of Sadness, David Karp writes:

·       Cosmopolitan medicine banishes that [extra-material] knowledge by insisting that suffering is without meaning and unnecessary because pain can be technically eliminated. Symptoms are divorced from the person who has them and the situations that surround them, secularized as mechanical mishaps, and so stripped of their stories, the spiritual ramifications and missing pieces of history that make meaning. (191)

I too had experienced the barrenness of secularism. I had been referred to five highly recommended psychologists in my youth. Each had left me worse off than I had been before. I came to understand that everything that I felt, longed for, and dreamed about was merely a product of my childhood depravations. None of it had any meaning or purpose. It was one big mistake and its victim, a mere result of how I had been treated.

Secular therapy had stripped me of any sense of dignity; it laughed at my quest for honor. It reduced my life to a matter of self-fulfillment but made it almost impossible for me to find fulfillment.

Secularism is suicide, the death of the individual and even of his debauched society.

BLAME, SHAME, AND MARGINALIZATION

The California legislature has just voted in favor of a resolution (ACR 99) blaming “religious groups” who hold to Biblical understandings of sex and gender as responsible for “disproportionately high rates” of suicide among homosexuals and transgenders. Their resolution reads:

·       “The stigma associated with being LGBTQ often created by groups in society, including therapists and religious groups, has caused disproportionately high rates of suicide, attempted suicide, depression, rejection, and isolation amongst LGBTQ and questioning individuals,” it claims. It calls on “the people of California – especially its counselors, pastors, religious workers, educators, and legislators” to eschew and work against anti-LGBTQ “stigma.” https://culturewarresource.com/newly-passed-california-resolution-blames-religious-groups-for-lgbt-suicides/

Where is California’s supportive evidence for its indictment against religion, namely Christianity? It seems instead that it is Christianity that is being stigmatized and hated. However, it seems that the same negative outcomes for LGBTs are present within even more gay-friendly nations like Sweden and Scotland, where the Christian faith only exerts a minimal influence:

·       Research out of LGBT-friendly Sweden has found that homosexual and transgender residents remain more likely to attempt or commit suicide, despite having achieved the type of culture advocated by ACR 99. (Ibid.)

·       The University of Cambridge’s Stonewall report found that 96% of trans students in Scotland attempted self-harm through actions such as cutting themselves, and 40% attempted suicide. 40% in the United States have attempted suicide, as well, according to a 2016 survey from the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE). According to a 2011 study from Sweden, trans people remain 19 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population, even after “sex-change” surgery. (Ibid.)

However, the pro-LGBT lobby, which has militantly encouraged people to adopt the LGBT lifestyles, needs to blame someone apart from themselves for the dismal fate of the LGBTs. This lobby has succeeded in radically changing public and institutional opinion in favor of LGBTs. However, the death march continues unchecked.

Meanwhile, this lobby has stigmatized Christianity as “haters” and has converted Christians into the outcasts. However, they are not jumping off bridges, overdosing, or beating their sexual partners in greater numbers.

Instead, in compassion, we warn that these alternative lifestyles are disordered and oppose our God-given human nature and even God Himself. No wonder the horrific statistics! We also warn against pornography, incest, and adultery. Do these warnings make us “haters?” Hardly!