My post on Dr Wendy Walsh — “Atheists die first”: CNN’s “expert” fights back — has been experiencing a spike in hits over the past day or so. It deals with the research evidence surrounding claims that religious belief (and non-belief) influence a person’s physical health prospects. The task of conducting scientific research into such matters is actually incredibly complicated, given the morass of statistical inter-associations among highly pertinent variables (such as socio-economic status, education levels, age, gender, and access to healthcare), as well as the small matter of direction of cause-and-effect.

However, contrary to the views of Dr Walsh, the evidence does not appear to support the assertion that atheists die first. You can find the post here.

As it happens, I recently touched on this issue again when discussing scientific research relating to Christmas. You can find that discussion here (check out #2 on the list).

Enjoy!