Why do intelligent People still believe in Religion? 15: Stress and Regression | GinaConspiracy
I remember growing up in the church, something they would tell us is “When times are easy, Satan finds it easy to tempt people to stray from the church, because they don't feel like they need god” I remember feeling good about myself because I was someone who stayed in the church through the good times
They were actually dead on Statistics shows that during economic lulls or emotional hardships, religious attendance spikes a lot They of course are thrilled about this but they fail to take psychology into account on how to translate this data I common phenomena in psychology which we are all prone to in times of stress is a concept called regression When under stress the mind tends to become less mature
Possibly because you are coming across an experience you never had to deal with before so your memory is trying to go back to a time when you had a similar problem, and so you keep going back to an immature state of mind I've had this many times during the downturn At my new job there are a lot of pressures to get things done in a certain way and when I would mess up, I would regress and snap at people I never do this and once I realized what was happening and it was pointed out to me what I was doing, I could be a lot more aware of my actions and realized that it was just the stress talking and I was able to compensate for that, just like if you are drunk, if you can remind yourself that it is the booze that is making you think and feel the way you are, you can function a lot better The same situation is true for church
The mind goes back to what to do in situations like the one they were in and what they remember getting good feelings off of is church and prayer Imaginary friends are useful to kids so the brain goes hey I'll try that again These people never needed an imaginary friend in the first place but they were never given the mental tools they needed to cope with new problems and understand what their brain was doing Mother Teresa along with many other sects believed, possibly because of this correlation, that suffering is more righteous and a way to get closer to god So she and many religious people used suffering as a way to keep themselves stressed
Aside for the fact that some people get orgasmic effects for masochism, stress releases the hormone cortisol, which is a fight or flight drug along with epinphrin norepinaphrin and adrenaline Nerve pathway studies have found that nerves overtime will lose their sensativity to constant stimuli Think about when you are wearing a watch, at first your brain is telling you about the new stimuli trying to make you aware of it, but over time it ignores it as the brain doesn't need that constant information, only new information, Which is why it feels so weird when you remove the watch,because now its telling you that its not there anymore The same is true for most drug interactions At first you get a rush out of them, but over time your brain registers them as normal and you need more to get the same effect also called dependence
The study was done on people who got dopamine increases from carbohydrate intake At a certain point the brain refused to give dopamine because people were overeating to try and get that drug again, but they kept eating because they were addicted to it To get it again required taking a break from carbs and allowing your receptors to become resensitized again I wonder if this isn't why and church camp and other emotional sessions people could more easily than I could get that spiritual feeling and sing and cry then go out the next day and go back to doing the same things they were I felt like I was seriously missing out because I couldn't get that rush, as my brain was now desensitized to the spiritual feelings
I remember feeling like there was something horribly wrong with me and perhaps my secret shame of lust and self stimulation that all teen in that area do, might be keeping me from expereincing what they did, which made me feel even guiltier because I couldn't stop what were very powerful natural urges I later discovered that these people were doing a hell of a lot more than I was doing in the area of lust, they just liked to say they were virgins for the sake of consensus Their spirituality was very logical as the brain will refuse to give them the same emotional drug constantly, once the rush wears off they take a break until the next emotional service when the brain was desensitized and they could get a serious rush, and look and feel spiritual and godly They of course had no idea why it worked or what they were doing With these stress drugs, overtime one gets desensitized as well which makes me wonder is mother teresa's doubts later in life weren't influenced by the fact that no matter how much she suffered she stopped feeling the same emotional reaction that she used to get
Also as she got older she probably figured out mature mental constructs for dealing with stress so she got even less of the stress drugs for the same amount of stress As the Christian right knows that a recession and stress encourages church attendance and more lockstep thinking as well as more lockstep voting, It makes me wonder if people in the political side of organized religion don't feel like its in their best interest to keep people stressed With the c-street gang, the concept isn't unlikely look them up if you don't know what I'm talking about In Europe religion isn't nearly as important as it is hear and with a 30 hr work week and many benefits I can bet I know why, less stress
In the US where getting a second or third job and still barely getting by is common, and religious belief is near 87% perhaps we can learn something from this correlation The church actually has it backwards People don't need god but stress is making them act immature and think they do Psychology and adult coping mechanisms would be much better for them and they probably wouldn't have the stress later on down the road Instead the church wants them to depend on Jesus, or they wont need him later on
This is of course not true of all churches, but those types are becoming considered less and less useful as their patrons either give up religion or switch to a more addicting one
Source: Youtube
Leave a Comment