Mean People Tend to be Fundamantalists
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How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion (2021) hits one of my favorite themes: postmodern society is discovering through science and statistics that the Catholic Church is right.
According to this article at Wired by the author, the book is a weigh station on what I think will be the ultimate conclusion: Catholicism works because Catholicism is true. If scientific conclusions are true and Catholicism is true, they must eventually meet up and can’t oppose one another (this was the debate Aquinas won against Siger de Brabant).
This book appears to show the process of uniting science to Catholicism is well underway, albeit at a young age of development. It looks at the scientific validation of all types of religious practices, so I’d say we’re in the “Ecumenic Stage” of the Catholic-Science courtship, roughly analogous to the kindergarten stage of human development.
Based on the article, the author focuses on all the ways religious practices help our health. I doubt he takes the next step: they help us because they correspond to truth. If they didn’t correspond to truth, they wouldn’t help us.
Regularly taking part in religious practices lessens anxiety and depression, increases physical health, and even reduces the risk of early death. These benefits don’t come simply from general social contact. There’s something specific to spiritual practices themselves.
Eric Scheske is a freelance writer whose works have appeared in dozens of publications, including Our Sunday Visitor, Touchstone, Columbia, and the Detroit Free Press. He was formerly a columnist for National Catholic Register, Busted Halo, and Catholic Exchange. He owns and operates The Daily Eudemon, which is one of the Internet's oldest continuously running blogs (est. 2004).
