title: What's God Got to Do with It? How Religiosity Predicts Atheists' Health.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Science Building, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, NL, A1B 3X9, Canada. d.t.a.speed@mun.ca.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Speed
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Science Building, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, NL, A1B 3X9, Canada.
authors.forename: Ken
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Fowler
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States
keywords: Atheism; General Social Survey; Health; Homoscedasticity; Statistical moderation