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Are Atheists More Depressed than Religious People?
A new study tells the tale
by Franz Buggle et al.
The following article is from Free Inquiry
magazine, Volume 20, Number 4.
In recent years, the view that religious belief and
participation in religious acts of worship has a positive effect upon the
well-being of man has repeatedly been publicized in the German-speaking sphere
by high-circulation magazines such as Der Spiegel and popular-science
periodicals like Psychologie Heute, which cite epidemiological inquiries and
quantitative research.1 These articles also suggest that religious
people are able to cope with crises in their lives, with stress and
psycho-social conflicts, more easily and develop highly effective coping
strategies; moreover, they state that faith has a positive effect upon
psychological and even physical health. A mass inquiry conducted in 1992 among
members of the two major churches in Germany (Roman Catholic and Lutheran
Protestant), for example, revealed that self-perceived satisfaction with life
was more than 10% higher among regular church-goers than among those who do not
go to church. This statement, among others, seemed to confirm the results of
previous extensive studies, all of them suggesting that devout and practicing
adherents of a religion were generally less prone to depression than persons who
were brought up in religious faith but had turned away from church later in
their lives.2 Other inquiries that were conducted among smaller
populations, too, lead to the assumption “that religion has a slight positive
sum effect on self-perceptions of happiness.” In his essay “Can Religion
Make You Happy?” (FI, Summer 1998), John F. Schumaker gives a survey of seven
quantitative studies dealing directly with the two variables, and of 20 others
that operated with components of “happiness,” all of them rendering more or
less the same results.3
These kinds of studies have repeatedly been criticized, and
rightly so, pointing out that the effects described are not the result of
religious belief but of other factors, such as social support, conformity, etc.
On no account does this mean, however, that the results of these studies can be
rejected altogether. But the question arises as to whether they were not
principally distorted by a systematic error made in designing and performing the
studies. All of the studies mentioned have a serious methodological deficiency:
none of them examines a control group of determined atheists whose psychic
condition is, for example, compared to that of groups of half-hearted wavering
atheists and groups of persons ranging from the only slightly religious to
religious fanatics. Moreover, the epidemiological studies suppress the fact that
the absolute number of determined atheists in the total population is very small
in relation to the number of more or less religious people. By no means,
however, may the unequal distribution of the two groups within the basic total
number play a part in a qualitative comparison between them. This fact has to be
given due consideration with any experimental design if it really is to meet the
methodological criteria.
A study we conducted ourselves among determined atheists is
very well suited to the purpose of putting the debate of whether there is a
statistically substantiable relation between religiousness and depression on a
more objective level, a debate that is also quite often influenced by
ideological views.4 Our study, which was conducted on the basis of a
comprehensive questionnaire, comprises a population of 174 persons of all ages
and both sexes, who, in order to be considered for our evaluation, had to
fulfill the following preconditions: all test persons must come from religious
families and must also have received the religious education of the average
citizen (as far as the imparting of religious doctrines and the performance of
certain rituals are concerned); they must also have left the church later in
their lives.5 Furthermore, they were categorized as determined
atheists only if they were also subscribers to a German anticlerical periodical.
With this latter criterion we wanted to ensure that the test persons had left
church not “only” for financial reasons but also from inner conviction and,
moreover, manifested more or less openly that they were opposed to religion. For
the measurement of the average emotional condition of our test persons, we used
Beck’s Depression Inventory (BDI), which is widely applied in psychology. We
had chosen this standardized measuring method especially for the reason that it
would enable us to compare the values obtained from our test population with
those obtained from test groups of religious persons.
In a study conducted almost at the same time as ours among
Catholic students (all of whom were, of course, church members), the assessment
of the test persons’ statements by means of the BDI scale, where higher values
also mean a higher proneness to depression, suggests that significantly fewer
(in statistical terms) signs of depressive conditions were to be noted with
strictly religious persons than with those to whom faith is of relatively little
importance.6 The authors determined an average value of 4.6 for all
church members they had questioned. Moreover, they subdivided the test groups
according to how close their emotional ties with religion and church were. The
values they determined were 3.4 for the strictly religious group, 6.0 for the
less religious group, and 4.0 for the group of moderately religious people,
which means the highest degree of depression was found in the sub-group of the
least religious persons. From this, the investigators—like the studies cited
above—draw the conclusion that “depression is the price that has to be paid
for giving up religious convictions.” This conclusion, however, is entirely
dubious, as the values determined in the group of less religious people, i.e.
the “lukewarm” Christians, are—in a suggestive manner—taken as a
comparative value for all those who have freed themselves from the religious
beliefs in which they were brought up, and the investigators are simply taking
advantage of the fact that, in statistical terms, the number of determined
atheists is small in comparison to the relatively great number of more or less
religious people, as we have already mentioned above. Our study has proved that
determined atheists actually show a significantly lower depression score: 3.2.
If we transfer these values into a coordinate system and take the inverse value
for depression as the ordinate and the degree of (ir-)religiousness as the
abscissa, we obtain an asymmetrical U-shaped curve. This means that fanatical
Christians and militant atheists are least prone to depression, whereas wavering
atheists and the half-heartedly religious are literally “washed out”—or,
to illustrate it by a quotation from the Bible: “But the half-hearted I shall
spew.” The asymmetry is due to the fact that, on the average, even with devout
Christians depressions occur more frequently than with determined atheists. The
most distinct contrast, however, is to be noted between the group of determined
atheists and the group of slightly religious people.
Degrees of Depression
An inquiry among church members that we had used for the
purpose of comparison also revealed that, with the Christians questioned, a
correlation existed between their basic psychological condition at the present
time and the contents that were imparted to them by religious education, that
is, the more positive the notion imparted to them of the “qualities” of
their god and of the traits in the human character was, the better they feel
today; the more sinful man and the more malicious their god appeared to them
from what they had been told, the worse they feel today on the average. As
mentioned above, we had, for reasons of comparability of the various studies,
only evaluated the data obtained from those atheists who, just like the church
members already mentioned, had been brought up in religious faith, then turned
away from the religion that had been inculcated in them and finally left the
church.
In the case of the church opponents who were questioned,
our study revealed that, in contrast to church members, their psychological
condition at the present time does not depend on the specific contents of
religious socialization. For this purpose, we compared—among other data—the
statements relating to the image of God that was imparted to our test persons in
their childhood to their emotional condition at the present time. The test
persons were subdivided into three groups, i.e. groups that had either a
positive, negative, or a neutral notion of God during their childhood. The
F-value of a variance analysis was not significant at the 5% level. In contrast
to the aforementioned study we used for the purpose of comparison, we could not
find any statistically proven correlation between the variables mentioned. We
conclude that the participants in our study had been able to free their minds
and emotions to a great extent from the restraints imposed by religion.
From the first comparison of the results of the studies
examining church members on the one hand and atheists on the other hand, we can
therefore draw the following conclusions:
1. The psychological condition of persons who have kept
religious beliefs in some form or other depends on the form of their religious
education and on their adherence to religious rules, independently of how
closely they feel themselves connected with church and religion
subjectively—in this regard, the statements of the psychologists of religion
cited above are correct, insofar as they speak exclusively of religious persons.
2. They were wrong, however, if they put forth speculative
statements—and that in a quite tendentious manner—with regard to the psychic
condition of atheists. For, as our study proves, a person who underwent
religious socialization and then had the courage and clear mind to break with
religion and church later on has the best chance to live a happier life than any
Christian under statistically comparable conditions. Apart from an atheist
attitude that is based on reason, this requires a clear analysis and
understanding of one’s own past in regard to religion.
In the following, we shall present our findings regarding
the way the church opponents questioned were able to free themselves from their
religious beliefs of the past and describe the correlation between the
determination the test persons had shown in this conflict and their psychic
condition and thinking today.
The Courage to Become
As is to be expected, science plays a central role on the
way from religion by upbringing to atheism. Knowledge gained by means of
observation and logical conclusion is best suited to question the fundamentals
of any religion, that is, the existence of any supernatural being. Ninety-two
percent of our test persons therefore answered the question of whether a gain in
scientific knowledge had played a part in the process of detachment from
religion positively, natural sciences taking first place with 76% of those
questioned. In comparison, only 59% stated that unpleasant experiences with
church institutions had been a decisive factor for them.
Consequently, gaining knowledge seems to be of greater
importance in the process of detachment from religion than unpleasant
occurrences and experiences, which, in turn, can only be evaluated adequately
when, after being judged as to their consequences for the individual, they are
also assessed within overall categories. The first doubts raised by the persons
we questioned were, in 74% of the cases, raised by so-called religious doctrines
(such as the existence of God) and not, as could also be supposed, on the
behavior of religious parents or teachers. We may conclude from this that it is
the breach of the taboo on thinking (that is, of the prohibition of examining
the degree of probability of religious statements) in connection with the gain
in knowledge that is most detrimental to faith and is the most effective form of
protection against mysticism and irrationalism. This is impressively confirmed
by the answers to the question of whether belief in God had come up again at any
time, perhaps in desperate situations, after those questioned had left the
church: 79% of the atheists answered “no,”—that means after their
abandonment they never again showed any inclination to fall back upon the
consolation promised by their former religious faith. Ninety-seven percent of
the atheists we questioned were of the opinion that scientific thinking is
incompatible with religious thinking; moreover, they reject speculation and
irrationalism in not openly religious manifestations as well: 81% reject
astrology, in which God’s influence is replaced by that of the stars; 79%
agree with the statement that “soul and spirit” only exist on the basis of
physiological, e.g. material processes. Consequently, 83% were of the conviction
that there is no life after death whatsoever. Eighty-four percent reject with
reference to the evolution theory any worldly versions of the creation myth,
suggesting a fixed pre-existing plan behind the origin of the vegetable and
animal kingdoms.
Incidentally, one of our results may shed light on how far
the atheists questioned had, during their detachment from religion, moved away
from the “intellectual atmosphere” prevailing in their families. The
families of all of our test persons were, as far as the observation of rituals
is concerned, religious on an average level, but were, compared to the total
population in terms of social statistics, of a more than average academic type;
as was to be expected, in these families, famous personalities, such as Goethe
and King Frederick the Great of Prussia, who, in the eyes of the German educated
bourgeoisie, stand for tolerance in religious matters and a moderately critical
distance towards organized Christianity, enjoyed a mainly positive reputation
(for instance Goethe in 73% of cases, Frederick in 53%). On the other hand, the
“intellectual” attitude in the families towards famous representatives of
the Enlightenment and of sciences probably, in its tendency, corresponded more
to that of the average population. Before they reached the age of ten, 59% of
our test persons did not know
Galileo, 72% did not know anything about Voltaire, and 59% knew nothing about
Darwin, and a determined atheist
such as Marx was judged negatively by 46%. As was also to be expected, all of
these personalities were known to the test persons at the time of the study and
were also judged mainly positively: Galileo by 95%, Voltaire by 86%, Darwin by
93%, Marx by 91%.
Apart from science, sexuality has a central importance in
the detachment from religion. Sixty-six percent of those questioned noted, as
the main point of criticism of religion, “the
suppression of sexual and general self-determination
and of a happy life.” Sixty-six percent also reported that during their
childhood and youth they were imparted the notion that sexuality was sinful,
dirty, and bad, and as a consequence more than 50% of the test persons suffered
from heavy feelings of guilt because of sexual fantasies and activities. While
overcoming religious convictions, 46% succeeded completely, 32% partly in
overcoming those religion-based feelings of guilt (both according to their own
statements). This certainly contributes decisively to the fact that 90% of the
atheists were able to note an increase in their opportunities to enjoy life and
experience happiness compared to the times when they were still religious. The
increase in sexual self-determination is reflected in the increase in general
independence (noted by 87%) and self-confidence (also noted by 87%).
In this context some data from social statistics are also
relevant. The level of education is unusually high among atheists: 39% are
university graduates and another 37% are high school graduates. Their striving
for individual independence is also shown by the fact, for instance, that 60% of
the test persons are not married (compared to only 40% of the total population
of the Federal Republic of Germany) and a further 13% are divorced.
Moreover, the study also revealed differences regarding the
degree of self-determination and the proneness to depression among the atheist
population. In the course of the evaluation of the data we were able to
determine some reasons for statistically interpretable deviations between the test
persons. For example, we should, on the one hand, point out that the statistical
comparison between the depression values of men and women did not render any
differences. This result is especially noteworthy because in the average
population women suffer far more frequently from depression than men. The
evaluation of our questionnaires led to the result that women, compared to men,
had suffered additional disadvantages in the course of their religious
education. Thirty-one percent of the men and none of the women noted advantages;
67% of the women noted disadvantages due to their sex in religious education.
This sex-linked difference in religious education is statistically highly
significant (x2 = 31.94; a = .000). We are able to prove that most of our test
persons who—compared to others—have been victims of greater impairment were
able to make up for it by greater efforts during the detachment from religion
and that this is why they did not show any higher depression values than men at
the time of the study. There was no significant F-value with respect to sex
using variance analysis. A small group of women, however, reported that they did
not fight against the sex-linked specific role they were expected to adopt, as
was imparted to them during their religious education. These women showed
significantly higher depression values, which confirms our basic hypothesis that
the extent of the individual analysis and assessment of one’s religious past
will decide to a considerable degree the extent of the present capability of
enjoying happiness.
The overwhelming majority of the test persons referred to
themselves as militant atheists (74%); only a few of them were rather hesitant
and undetermined in their opposition to the church. We examined the possibility
of a statistical correlation between this rather placid attitude towards the
church and the tendency of these test persons to fall back upon so-called
religious coping strategies, e.g. consolation promised by the church. While 74%
of the militant atheists do not remember situations when they would have wished
to pray again, this is only the case with 61% of the nonmilitant atheists. This
is a statistically significant result (x2 = 10.66; a = .03). Thus we
found—apart from the extent of the assessment of one’s own religious
past—a second criterion for the statistical prediction of the psychic
condition of atheists: resoluteness in their opposition to religion and church.
Perception vs. Reality
In public, the image of an unhappy and dismal atheist who
is haunted by inner doubts and fears and is already paying dearly for his
opposition to religion in this life is often conveyed. This image is not
necessarily—and not always—wrong, but it is certainly wrong when, as we were
able to prove in our study, atheists who have gone through a religious
upbringing later on succeed in reconquering all spheres of life we described
above, which had previously been occupied by the church.
In order to conclude this short summary of the evaluation
of the questionnaires (the original study comprises more than 500
pages—further details can be furnished on request) we should like, once again,
to point out the most important results: contrary to the tendentious assertions
put up by numerous studies on the psychology of religion, simply taking
advantage of the statistically small number of atheists compared to the
relatively great number of strictly religious persons, atheists are less prone
to depression than religious persons. Their psychic condition differs most
impressively from those who, though quite obviously with a guilty conscience, do
not keep the church’s rules, but never seriously analyzed their own religious
education and their obviously persistent secret, religion-based convictions.
There is a less distinct difference between atheists and strictly religious
persons who unbrokenly stick to religious prescriptions and therefore are less
depressed by feelings of guilt than “lukewarm” Christians. But atheists also
have an advantage over the hard core of believers with respect to their
depression values—although the difference is not so great.
The study we have presented here in short summary is, to
our knowledge, the only one worldwide to examine, with due scientific scrutiny,
a population of resolute atheists, allowing a comparison of this group with
believers by means of a standardized measure. Doubtlessly there is considerable
need for further investigation in this field, especially regarding the process
of detachment from religion, but such a project—at least in Germany—will not
meet with much support from public institutions, quite contrary to inquiries
conducted among believers. Further in-depth analysis and verification of our
results in international and transcultural comparisons would also be very
desirable. We do hope to have given an impulse in this direction with our
study.
Notes
1. “Was glauben die Deutschen?”
(“What Do Germans Believe In?”), Spiegel 46, no. 25 (1992), 36-52, based on
an inquiry by the EMNID Institute, and “Sind Gläubige gesunder? Die positiven
Wirkungen der Religion” (“Are the Religious Healthier? The Positive Effects
of Religion”), Psychologie Heute 24, no. 6 (1997) based on the aforementioned
inquiry.
2. W. Harenberg, “Was glauben die
Deutschen? Die EMNID-Umfrage” (“What Do Germans Believe In? The EMNID
Poll”), Munchen 1968; G. I Schmidtchen, “Zwischen Kirche und Gesellschaft”
(“Between Church and Society”), Freiburg 1972; H. Hild (ed.), “Wie stabil
ist die Kirche?” (“How Stable Is the Church?,’’Berlin 1974; A. Feige,
Kirchenaustritte, Berlin 1977; H. Mynarek, “Religiös ohne Gott?”
(“Religious without God?”) Düsseldorf 1983.
3. John F. Schumaker, “Can Religion Make
You Happy?,” Free Inquiry 18 (1981): 28–31.
4. W. Schneider et al., “Einstellung und
emotionales Befinden von Atheisten” (“Attitudes and Emotional State Among
Atheists”), Diplomarbeit/Psychologisches Institut der Universität Freiburg
1985.
5. As in Germany the state collects the
membership fees for the church in the form of tax payment. All church members
are registered by the public authorities from the date they were baptized as
infants. Therefore, people who want to leave church first have to submit an
official declaration to the public authorities before they are exempted from
these tax payments and their names are deleted from the church registers.
6. C. Nowak and H. Toboll, ҬUber die
Vermittiung depressions-spezifischer Inhalte im Rahmen der religiösen
Sozialisation” (“On the communication of depression-specific content within
the framework of religious socialisation”), Diplomarbeit /Psychologisches
Institut der Universität Freiburg 1983.
Dr. Franz Buggle is professor emeritus of the Department of
Clinical Psychology of Albert-Ludwigs-University at Freiberg/Breisgau, Germany.
He is the author of many books including Empirische Untersuchung über die
weltanschaulichce Einstellung heutiger deutscher Universitäts-studenten (Meisenheim
1962) and Denn sie wissen nicht, was sie glauben. Oder warum man redlicherweise
nicht mehr Christ sein kann. Eine Streitschrift (Reinbek 2nd ed. 1997). He
conducted his study with Dorothee Bister, Gisela Nohe, Wolfgang Schneider, and
Karl Uhmann.
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