Not laughing. Really. Not.

Another Thomas enters the fray, this being one Sean of that ilk, travel writer, crime novelist and newspaper columnist at Britain's Telegraph. Not exactly your latter day Aquinas, our Sean, but an interesting read, nevertheless.

His thought for today is that atheism is, well, not to put too fine a point on it, unnatural. Human beings have evolved not to be atheists.

(Is it just me, or is that screamingly funny, given the background of...? No, I'll be nice and resist the temptation.)

A vast body of research, amassed over recent decades, shows that religious belief is physically and psychologically beneficial – to a remarkable degree. 

In 2004, scholars at UCLA revealed that college students involved in religious activities are likely to have better mental health. In 2006, population researchers at the University of Texas discovered that the more often you go to church, the longer you live. In the same year researchers at Duke University in America discovered that religious people have stronger immune systems than the irreligious. They also established that churchgoers have lower blood pressure. 

Meanwhile in 2009 a team of Harvard psychologists discovered that believers who checked into hospital with broken hips reported less depression, had shorter hospital stays, and could hobble further when they left hospital – as compared to their similarly crippled but heathen fellow-sufferers. 

The list goes on. In the last few years scientists have revealed that believers, compared to non-believers, have better outcomes from breast cancer, coronary disease, mental illness, Aids, and rheumatoid arthritis. [...] Likewise, believers also report greater levels of happiness, are less likely to commit suicide, and cope with stressful events much better. Believers also have more kids. 

What’s more, these benefits are visible even if you adjust for the fact that believers are less likely to smoke, drink or take drugs. And let’s not forget that religious people are nicer. They certainly give more money to charity than atheists, who are, according to the very latest survey, the meanest of all.

That's from here. Worth a read and, if you have a bit more time, the full report he refers to is here.

Of course, none of the above is new to your 'umble servant nor to any faithful visitors to this blog but apparently it has all escaped the notice of the Dear Leader of the doomed little army of atheists. Odd, that, as I believe he used to be a scientist. You'd think an eminent Darwinian would take note of a large body of evidence for any factor contributing so strongly to Darwinian fitness to survive, no?

But seriously, from all the accumulated research you'd almost think that some sort of... oh, I dunno... personal, Supreme Being?...  created humankind and equipped them to both intuit his existence and acknowledge their contingency and dependence. It's almost as though humanity's very nature includes some sort of religious functionality.

It'll dawn on them eventually, of course, that they're promoting a hopeless cause. Not only are they vastly outnumbered (and let us leave aside the little matter of, um, having God against them - not an argument they would accept for a mo' - and please, no laughing at the back) but it now seems that Nature itself and Nature's handmaid, science (anthropology, sociology, psychology, medicine, evolutionary biology, mathematics), are opposed to them. Loudly. In the very scientific terms by which they live and breathe.

Poor old Dawks, doomed to lose the argument. His lot just haven't got any winning cards. We've got 'em. Us religious nuts whom they so despise and so earnestly wish would do the decent thing and fold our tents and steal away from 'their' public square.

Tsk. Not going to happen, Prof. Nature has fitted us to out-survive you. Turns out you're the dinosaurs. Who'd have thought it, eh?

Oh, irony, thy name is...