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What’s God Got to Do with It? How Religiosity Predicts Atheists’ Health

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Abstract

The relationship between atheism and health is poorly understood within the Religion/Spirituality–health literature. While the extant literature promotes the idea that Attendance, Prayer, and Religiosity are connected to positive health outcomes, these relationships have not been established when controlling for whether a person is an atheist. Data from the 2008–2012 American General Social Survey (n = 3210) were used to investigate this relationship. Results indicated that atheists experienced Religiosity more negatively than non-atheists. Additionally, results demonstrated that non-belief in God was not related to better or worse perceived global health, suggesting that belief in God is not inherently linked to better reported health.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Science Building, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, A1B 3X9, Canada

    David Speed & Ken Fowler

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  1. David Speed
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  2. Ken Fowler
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Correspondence to David Speed.

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Speed, D., Fowler, K. What’s God Got to Do with It? How Religiosity Predicts Atheists’ Health. J Relig Health 55, 296–308 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-015-0083-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-015-0083-9

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