Faith Goes Viral: Religious beliefs can shape key behaviors when it comes to dealing with disease, says David Hughes, an evolutionary biologist at Pennsylvania State University. In a presentation in August at the 13th Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology in Germany, Hughes and colleagues reported that some of today’s major religions emerged at the same time as widespread infectious diseases, and they propose that the two helped shape one another.
President George W. Bush made it legal for government-funded religious organizations like World Vision to hire and fire employees based on their faith. Six years later, presidential hopeful Barack Obama campaigned against this idea, saying it’s discriminatory to hire people using federal money based on their religious beliefs. And yet, now that he’s president, the legislation hasn’t been overturned, even though President Obama could issue an executive order.
Researchers know that religious people tend to live longer, healthier lives (tough luck, atheists), but knowledge of exactly how belief translates into vitality has proved to be as elusive as the nature of faith itself. Fresh research offers a tantalizing clue. It appears that people with faith simply don’t get as stressed out as people without it.
Not right, not left, but forward thinking, Utne Reader combs the alternative, independent, and digital press for thoughtful journalism, artful storytelling, and emerging ideas.
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