Are atheists mentally ill?

That was the question posed by Telegraph blogger Sean Thomas, and he says "yes": I quote directly: "the evidence today implies that atheism is a form of mental illness."

So, what evidence is it that he speaks of?

Well, the piece was prompted by research which shows that generally, atheists are more intelligent than religious people (who from now on I'll call believers for brevity).

Before we go on I must paraphrase something I have written before:

We need to be clear that this research is not saying that atheists are smart and religious people aren't.

When talking about differences in populations, you're never far from cries of some sort of -ism, be it racism, sexism etc. This is because people tend to think of traits of populations as discrete points, and not overlapping bell curves. People misinterpret a saying like "Women are better at visual memory" as meaning that all women are good at visual memory, and all men are bad at visual memory.

Here's a simple example. Men are taller than women. Here's a graph to show this:

As you can see - men tend to be taller than women, but there is considerable overlap with their heights.

So it is with this research - atheists tend to be more intelligent than believers, according to a meta analysis of 63 studies that set out to answer that question. However, some atheists will be less intelligent than their religious counterparts, and vice versa.

Reading Thomas' article, I get the impression he is not aware of the above point.

Thomas decided to ditch measures of intelligence and instead chose to see how intelligently atheists and believers lived their lives. He says that believers:

i) have better mental health.
ii) live longer.
iii) have better immune systems and blood pressure.
iv) have better outcomes when going to hospital with broken hips.
v) have better outcomes from breast cancer, coronary disease, mental illness, AIDS and rheumatoid arthritis.
vi) have better IVF results.
vii) have lower suicide rates and ability to cope with stress.
viii) have more children.

All of which he says is true, even when smoking, drink and drugs are factored in (which, so we're told, believers do less of).

He also says that religious folk are nicer, as they give more to charity.

He hasn't linked to, or cited, his sources for all of this research, so I do not know its validity. But that is not important to my argument here, which is: even if all of that were true, it does nothing to demonstrate the truth claims of any religion. The reason I (and many other atheists) reject religion, is that there is not a jot of evidence for us to base any religious belief on. Thomas may not be aware of this concept too.

For me, assuming these data to be true, I would like to know what it is about being a believer that leads to these benefits, and can they be replicated for all (including believers - maybe some religions do better in some of the above metrics than others)? However, Thomas instead asks:

"So which is the smart party, here? Is it the atheists, who live short, selfish, stunted little lives – often childless – before they approach hopeless death in despair, and their worthless corpses are chucked in a trench (or, if they are wrong, they go to Hell)? Or is it the believers, who live longer, happier, healthier, more generous lives, and who have more kids, and who go to their quietus with ritual dignity, expecting to be greeted by a smiling and benevolent God?

Obviously, it’s the believers who are smarter. Anyone who thinks otherwise is mentally ill.

And I mean that literally: the evidence today implies that atheism is a form of mental illness."

This seems to be the "Ignorance is Bliss" argument for religion - which seems a slight twisting of Pascal's Wager. It doesn't matter if a religion is true or not, but I might as well believe in one for my health.

This argument cannot persuade me though - even if, as an atheist, I miss out on a heap of health benefits, there's not much I can do about it. There is still no evidence put forward to back up any religions claims, so it seems I shall have to stick to watching what I eat and exercising regularly.

Even if I just went through the motions and attended religious observances, I'd just be living a lie, which isn't helpful given my commitment to not lying.

Thomas follows his statement "the evidence today implies that atheism is a form of mental illness." by saying:

"And this is because science is showing that the human mind is hard-wired for faith: we have, as a species, evolved to believe, which is one crucial reason why believers are happier – religious people have all their faculties intact, they are fully functioning humans.

Therefore, being an atheist – lacking the vital faculty of faith – should be seen as an affliction, and a tragic deficiency: something akin to blindness."

This, however, is a very flawed argument. Donald E Brown has a list of "Human Universals", in which he lists all those traits that have been found in all studied human societies. Conflict, rape and weapons are all on that list. Just because our brains are hard wired for something, does not mean that that is necessarily a good thing. Which of these universals (and you can read the list here) do we need to have to be "fully functioning" humans, and which can we drop? Also, when it comes to our brains, we can do nothing to escape optical illusions like this (the green and blue in this image are in fact both the same colour):

Our brains can be easily fooled, as evidence by religious and supernatural belief also appearing on that list.

I'll just finish with some of the answers to my questions: What is it about belief that can improve ones health?

Well, some research has been done this, and I'll quote a couple of times from the excellent Epiphenom, which blogs about research to do with atheism and religion. There's plenty of research on health and religion over there, and, what's great is that every blog post links to the original journal that did the research, so you don't just have to take the author's word for it.

I'll just draw your attention to a couple:

Firstly, a meta analysis looked at what it was about being religious that led to health benefits.

"three factors that do not connect religion and health.

• If you are a man, then it seems like being religious isn't connected to being more healthy - or if it is, the effect is quite small.
• Intrinsic aspects of religion (belief in a god concept, religious/spiritual well-being, religious/spiritual experience, and religious motivation/orientation) have no effect on health.
• Although organisational activities (such as going to Church) seem to have a big effect, non-organisational activities (prayer, meditation, or sacred book study) do not."

It turns out that the community aspect - turning up to church, has the benefit, not the beliefs per se.

Secondly, there was a study into health, religion and education, it found that "for the less well educated, the risk of dying goes down as church attendance goes up. As you would expect.

Surprisingly, however, for the educated the effect is exactly opposite! Educated people who go to church often are actually more likely to die young!"

So religion isn't quite the health tonic it was made out to be.

Also, charity and religion isn't as clear cut either. It also appears that the community side of religion promotes charitable giving. Religious people who go to church more tend to give more than religious people who go to church less.

It may be that us atheists can reap some of these benefits by being actively involved in a community.

Of course, if one is to look at societies as a whole, we see that atheistic ones tend to fair better.

Not bad for populations of people who live "short, selfish, stunted little lives".