• PizzaMan@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Well, a web search turned up this as the first result:

    That’s a meta study, and the only study they cite which mentions any control group only controls for depression. None of that controls for community engagement/health/connections, which is what I argue is the true problem. I would need better evidence than this.

    Not only that, but it seems that this study at best only establishes correlation, not causation, nor the direction of causation.

    Personally I arrive at 100% by deduction

    The study you cited only lists a 33% change in drug use:

    “In their study, Chen and VanderWeele (2018) found that people who attended religious services at least weekly in childhood and adolescence were 33% less likely to use illegal drugs.”

    Additionally your study cites this graph:

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6759672/bin/10943_2019_876_Fig4_HTML.jpg

    Now it has been a while since my last statistics class, so I don’t recall the exact methodology to determine likelyhood of causality between these two lines, however just from a quick glance these two rates seem to have a low/medium correlation. They wander closer and farther apart over the 20 years of this graph, and it seems that the drug death rate precedes the religious affiliation rate, which is the reverse of what we would expect if religious affiliation was causing drug deaths.

    This all has made me curious enough to do some napkin math myself. Now this is incredibly terrible methodology, but if what you say is true then it should be apparent. I charted countries by irreligiosity, christianity, and drug use, and it doesn’t look like there is any correlation:

    https://i.imgur.com/VR58Byw.png

    This is a graph of irreligiosity vs drug use. There isn’t much of a correlation here if any. If being an atheist/agnostic/none/etc made you more likely to be a drug user, we should expect a nice smooth rise in drug use correlated with atheism. But that’s not what happens here in this chart.

    https://i.imgur.com/V9HHLBl.png

    This chart is basically the same thing, but ordered by how christian each country is. If christianity/Jesus/god was anywhere close to 100% efficicacy against drug use, we should expect to see a similarly nice smooth graph, correlating drug use inversely with christianity. But that’s also not what happens here.

    So if you’re right, that it is a 100% rate, if your deduction is correct, then why don’t we see trends that support that?

    Here is where I pulled the data from:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_by_country
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_irreligion
    https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/drug-use-by-country

    Whatever the methodology, though, claiming that “their success rate is no better than chance” is a lie based on a downright anti-Christian bias.

    I definitely have an anti-christian bias, and I will readily admit that. However it isn’t a lie, nor is it based on my bias. If I recall there was a leaked report from AA floating around somewhere online from AA, they did a study to see how effective their program was, and discovered it was no better than chance. I’ll see if I can find it another time when I get the chance. For now this has already been a lot to compile, especially the two charts I made.

    • 10A@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      None of that controls for community engagement/health/connections, which is what I argue is the true problem. I would need better evidence than this.

      Not only that, but it seems that this study at best only establishes correlation, not causation, nor the direction of causation.

      The study you cited only lists a 33% change in drug use:

      “In their study, Chen and VanderWeele (2018) found that people who attended religious services at least weekly in childhood and adolescence were 33% less likely to use illegal drugs.”

      Once again, we seem to be talking past each other. That 33% does not apply to what I meant.

      I’ll try to explain more clearly.

      • A drug abuser is someone who does not understand that their body is meant to be the temple of the Holy Spirit.
      • The attendance of religious services is not a condition of salvation.
      • To be saved, one must accept Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior, and repent.
      • Once saved, and born again, one’s behavior exhibits noticeable changes.
      • One such change resulting from salvation is usually a desire to attend religious services.
      • Another such change resulting from salvation is the view of one’s body as the temple of the Holy Spirit, not to be polluted with drugs.
      • Another such change resulting from salvation is the ability to pray to Jesus that we may be shielded from temptation, so if one is tempted to sin with drug abuse, that temptation may be overcome through prayer.

      So if you’re right, that it is a 100% rate, if your deduction is correct, then why don’t we see trends that support that?

      Thank you for your charts and your deductions. I appreciate your effort to communicate those ideas.

      The point that I was trying to make, though, when I claimed 100% efficacy, is that self-reported religious affiliation is not important, but rather what is important is salvation. 100% of those saved are able to successfully pray to be shielded from temptation to sin, and are thereby able to overcome their drug addictions. Anyone who claims a religious affiliation but is unable to kick their nasty drug habit has clearly not yet been saved. This is how we can deduce 100% as a priori knowledge.

      I definitely have an anti-christian bias, and I will readily admit that.

      Thank you for admitting bias! I wish that was commonplace. I might just go update my profile with a list of self-admitted biases, if I can manage to produce a list of them all.

      However it isn’t a lie, nor is it based on my bias. If I recall there was a leaked report from AA floating around somewhere online from AA, they did a study to see how effective their program was, and discovered it was no better than chance.

      I’ll read it if you find it, but I don’t think it could convince me that legitimate salvation has anything less than 100% efficacy. Their methodology must have been testing for something else.

      • PizzaMan@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        The point that I was trying to make, though, when I claimed 100% efficacy, is that self-reported religious affiliation is not important, but rather what is important is salvation.

        And salvation rates would presumably be tied to religious affiliation rates. A country with 0 christians will have 0 saved people, and a country with n christians will have n * (unknown multiplier) saved people. Does that make sense?

        If so you can understand that these charts should still show the effect.

        I might just go update my profile with a list of self-admitted biases, if I can manage to produce a list of them all.

        I could help you with that if you like lol.

        I’ll read it if you find it, but I don’t think it could convince me that legitimate salvation has anything less than 100% efficacy. Their methodology must have been testing for something else.

        If I recall, it was simply looking at recidivism rates for members of AA.

        • 10A@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          And salvation rates would presumably be tied to religious affiliation rates.

          Not necessarily. Churches have struggled to retain members for various reasons. A Christian may feel disaffected of his local denominational institution, while maintaining absolute loyalty to God. The two rates are loosely related for sure, but it’s a Venn diagram.

          A country with 0 christians will have 0 saved people, and a country with n christians will have n * (unknown multiplier) saved people. Does that make sense?

          I suppose it depends on how you define “Christian”, but the standard definition is equivalent to “one who has been saved”, so the multiplier is 1. But religious affiliation is a separate issue.

          • PizzaMan@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            The two rates are loosely related for sure, but it’s a Venn diagram.

            I’m not stating that they should be directly tied to one another, but surely it would be related enough to see an effect on drug rates, but we do not.

            I suppose it depends on how you define “Christian”, but the standard definition is equivalent to “one who has been saved”, so the multiplier is 1. But religious affiliation is a separate issue.

            Even with your definition of “Christian” the same math should apply.

            (0) = (0)

            (n) “christians” = (n * x) true christians

            I’m sure X would vary from country to country, but you simply cannot have many “true christians”, whatever they may be that fit your definition, without lots of other “superficial” christians.


            I would reply to the other two messages you sent to my lemmy.world account, but that instance is down at the moment due to the ddos attacks, so I’ll respond to those at another time.

            • 10A@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Maybe, but I’m not sure why that matters. The essence of our dispute here is over whether salvation works reliably for kicking a drug addiction.

              • PizzaMan@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                It matters because if “true christian” population is correlated with self reported christian population, which it should be, then self reported christian population should also be inversely correlated with drug addicition.

                To break it down a little further:

                1. (n) “christians” = (n * x) true christians

                2. (n) “christians” = inverse (drug addicition)

                Therefore:

                1. “true christians” = inverse (drug addicition)

                Does that make sense?

                • 10A@kbin.social
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                  1 year ago

                  Yes, that does make sense. If the two are really uncorrelated, then it would appear some people are lying about their faith.