Opiates of the Masses? Deaths of Despair and the Decline of American Religion

https://www.nber.org/papers/w30840

"In recent decades, death rates from poisonings, suicides, and alcoholic liver disease have dramatically increased in the United States. We show that these "deaths of despair" began to increase relative to trend in the early 1990s, that this increase was preceded by a decline in religious participation, and that both trends were driven by middle-aged white Americans. Using repeals of blue laws as a shock to religiosity, we confirm that religious practice has significant effects on these mortality rates. Our findings show that social factors such as organized religion can play an important role in understanding deaths of despair."

Conducting wars on traditional institutions costs lives. <Flame-bait/Replies>

 

The cited paper at over 60 pages is a bit much to invest a lot of time reading to understand your OP given the nature of this forum. So I will simply ask you to provide a basis answer to the qestion how does this paper demonstrate causality? A lot of things have happened since the 1990s. The use of the Internet, social media, cell phones, culture. diet, for example. So demonstrate the causality with respect to a decline in religion and death that you assert. Otherwise "meh."

 

“Repeals of blue laws”… like, laws requiring businesses to close on Sundays ?

 

Then don't read it, just post whatever crap you feel like that fits your personal biases.. I posted it for informational purposes.

 

I mean, fighting Nazis or Mafias can also costs lives, doesn't mean it's not worth doing. (I don't mean to say that the situations are particularly analogous, or that religious people are Nazis, I only mean that your implied judgement here is poorly developed).

I could say the lack of a traditional institution such as religion is not sufficient to cause these deaths, but that in addition, you need an idea like God/religion being necessary for independent self-worth or meaning, or you need an underdeveloped community that isn't based on religion. In this view, it's not a lack of traditional institutions that causes suicides, it's the reliance that religion has instilled that is the cause. However, again, my point isn't necessarily that that view is correct, but that your commentary has added some assumptions.

 

Rubbish. There is plenty to support my assumptions. But, as we can see, the pagans and Xian haters don't feel like reading part of the evidence, they just want to babble pseudo-intellectual rebuttals.

As I said, the link is for informational purposes, and I could care less about knee jerk whining from the assorted Xian bashers that infest this forum with non-responses to the info posted. Slow readers can ignore these threads, but for some reason they can't, they have some neurotic compulsion to spam them.

 

It's all going according to plan. God's plan. It's called "the Apocalypse". Jesus said "There will be abomination that will lead to desolation. Only after that I will come". You don't to make of Jesus a false prophet, do you?

How is the world supposed to end if all people are righteous, model citizens, eh?

 

I personally wouldn’t want to live in a country where religious laws like being forced to not do business on Sunday are allowed to exist.

I would rather live in a free country. If your religion doesn’t attract people based on its merits and people need to have laws imposed on them to get them to participate then your religion is probably not worth the effort.

 

I suggest you study and learn the differences among and between non-sequitur, coincidence, correlation and causation.

 

One doesn't have to be a believer to appreciate the vast positive affect Christianity has had wherever it had at least some influence on culture, mostly in the West. Intelligent atheists acknowledge this fact; see F. A. Hayek's excellent little book, The Fatal Conceit, on the positive results of the Christian traditions on societies compared to the current disasters produced by 'rational constructivism' and its left wing fantasies.

A sort of intro to Hayek's deconstructions, not all of which I agree with but it is a decent overview:

https://isi.org/intercollegiate-review/hayek-on-the-role-of-reason-in-human-affairs/

Warning; link has more than one sentence,s o you trolls with the short attention spans won't read this one either, so go ahead and snivel to your mod buddies again.

 

lol you suggest, do you?

 

That is correct. My point was that Jesus himself prophesied the decline of religion, wars and rumors of wars, and "the abomination of desolation" before his "second coming". He also said:

The same was predicted by Jesus' disciples :

So are we gonna anticipate the "Second coming" or postpone it forever?

 

now we learn that fructose also causes fatty liver, not just Alcohol

and we give kids high fructose soda, juice drinks, sugary treats... fructose is processed by the liver the same as alcohol without the buzz

not sure why so many Christians turn to alcohol and fructose, though to be fair, seems to effect the non-religious too

do you really think blue laws that ban the sale of alcohol on Sundays would solve this?

 

blue laws just cause people to have more alcohol in the home, so they don't need to go out and buy in on Sunday

the more alcohol in the home, the more likely for some to drink more

 

HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) and increased supply of sugar (sugar is about half fructose) really caused the increase of fatty liver in this country - thus the law fat movement was the spark, not the lack of blue laws

 

My understanding is that these prophecies don't have to come true, people can make choices and steer away from those paths, people have free wills; whether they change their ways or not is the key. The Prophets are predicting what will happen if their people continue down the same paths. William Safire has an excellent exegesis of the book of Job that has some commentary on this, re prophecies regarding Tyre that didn't come true. That wouldn't make them 'false' ones if people were to change. The best bet is they won't change, of course.

 

But Jesus said : Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
Jesus is considered God in Christianity, isn't he?
Or are you implying Jesus has prepared the old "carrot & stick" for the sheeple and His words (predictions) don't have to come true? And if they don't come true doesn't that make Jesus a "false prophet"?

 

A war? What war?

<Flame-bait/Replies>

If you want to portray yourself as some kind of defender of the Christian faith, then why do you speak like you never heard the Gospel?

Its God's plan, so they will come to pass.

 

This is my 2,000th post and I am glad it is about the crypto-fascist von Hayek. Your post claims Hayek was a Christian. He was nothing of the sort, but only a "Name Christian."

I’m sure that was wrong, and yet I have done it. It was just an inner need to do it.”
—von Hayek in "Keynes Hayek:The Clash that Defined Modern Economics,"
by Nicholas, 2011 by Wapshott, p. 215 (pdf.)​

And then one day in 1949, the self professed Catholic, von Hayek, walked out of his house abandoning his wife, Hella, and their two children Christine (17 year old), and Laurence (12) to marry his cousin Helena; then keeping true to his economic and political theories promptly signed up for Social Security benefits after Charles Koch sent him in a letter with a SSI brochure (Charles Koch to Friedrich Hayek: Use Social Security! by Yasha Levine and Mark Ames). Ribbon was so disgusted with von Hayek that he resigned from the Neo-liberal think tank formed in 1947 known as the “Mont Pelerin Society” in which von Hayek decided to impose their Neoliberal revolution covertly wherever they could. Philosopher G.E. Moore was a much better moral person than von Hayek. Nevertheless, von Hayek’s junk economics is taught uncritically in nearly all United States University economic departments that now require two economics departments Professor Michael Hudson has noted: one department teaches Austrian economic hokum that does not describe economic reality, and the other department is called the “business school” of economics to actually teach graduates how to manage a business that is in some cases structured never to earn a profit to avoid tax laws. Hayek’s Austrian Neoliberalism has resulted in a 40-year crime wave emanating all across America from the Wall Street Corporate Socialists. Von Hayek’s economic version of “Theranos-babble” has led to a violent revival of fascist movements all over the globe, and infiltrating every level of American institutions.

My original essay: Friedrich Hayek and Karl Popper on Historicism

 

A couple of things….humans are social animals, they do best and thrive under the right social conditions and interpersonal connections. Being a member of a religious group can do that. It is not the religious philosophy itself, if it is healthy, that provides the interpersonal relationships, so any religion or any fraternal organization will work.

The driving force behind the upswing in irreligiosity is the young, but the upswing in death by suicide, alcohol, ODs has a wider age range. Men with high school educations lost manufacturing jobs and middle class livelihoods and had to take poor paying jobs. Alcoholism and handgun purchasing went up. Older white men became the most successful suicide demographic due to handguns and probably most good Christians. Then of course there was the opioid epidemic and related ODs which again has no proven correlation to religiosity. The studies own chart shows no correlation between the repeal of blue laws and suicide.
Also the comment, if it costs "white lives, then it's great as far as leftists are concerned" is a sick and ignorant statement, so I know where your heads at.

 

My post claims nothing of the sort. You clearly know exactly nothing about Hayek. He was an open atheist and states he is in the very book I cited, which you haven't read and can't comment on. The rest of your post is typical rubbish put out by morally bankrupt commies and deviants and not worth responding to, and about the dame level as those whinging on about 'blue laws n stuff'. Try parroting something accurate and intelligent next time instead of silliness fashionable with your peer group.

 

More rubbish;obviously you didn't read the link either. And yes, the principles and content of the theology obviously matters a whole lot, as demonstrated by the widely different outcomes of the various religions and cults. Your assertions are merely nonsense driven by your own racism and bigotry.

 

Thank you for your reasoned reply.

 

<Mod Edit>

Hayek's god is MONEY! He posed as an economic genius, and upstanding church going Christian until he wasn't.

Even the London School of Economics couldn't understand Hayek and he eventually fled to the U.S. (leaving his wife and children behind) and immediately signed up for Social Security. And he got a bargain price from a Louisiana judge for a legal divorce! Smart shopper!

Economist Milton Friedman tried reading Hayek's economic theory, but couldn't understand him either. Like professor Friedman, I don't admire Hayek's economics, but nor do I admire his theology.

QUOTE:
"Samuelson recalled that “Hayek’s The Pure Theory of Capital was not stillborn. But it was a pebble thrown into the pool of economic science that seemingly left nary a ripple.”27 The diagram-laden convolutions of Prices and Production seemed like a beach read in comparison. As Milton Friedman,28 a disciple of Hayekian thinking, put it, “I am an enormous admirer of Hayek, but not for his economics. I think Prices and Production was a very flawed book. I think his capital theory book is unreadable.”29

Hayek acknowledges at the start of The Pure Theory of Capital that he approached his subject with a heavy heart. He writes of his “great reluctance” to embark on the task and expresses sympathy with those, like Keynes, who had tired of abstractions and turned to addressing how economics works in the real world. The very scale of the subject daunted and depressed him. “My reluctance to undertake this work would have been even greater if from the beginning I had been aware of the magnitude of the task,”30 he wrote. The whole tone of the book is one of apology and despair. “The present book with all its shortcomings is the outcome of work over a period so prolonged that I doubt whether further effort on my part would be repaid by the results.”31 Later he was to confess “it very gradually dawned on me”32 that “the thing’s become so damned complicated it’s almost impossible to follow it 33 (Wapshott, Nicholas, Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics , Norton. Kindle Edition. p. 183)." ( pdf. )

 

Matthew 15:24 (ERV) = "Jesus answered, “God sent me only to the lost people of Israel.”