A recent study (reported on in "Why going to church is good for you" , T. M. Luhrmann, NYT) shows that going to a religious service even an average of only once a month is apparently good for you. It lowers blood pressure, boosts the immune system and apparently can add as much as two or three years to your life. Nobody really knows why.
T. M. Luhrmann, in the linked article, suggests that it is likely at least partly because of the increased social interaction that members of any religious community will have; since there are lots of studies showing that more social contact is good for us in all kinds of ways. We aren't born to live a solitary life.
(Not even hermits, according to folklore. One of my mother's friends used to tell the story of the hermit who lived 20 miles from the nearest village. He had no contact with them; never visited, never got offerings from them, had no interaction at all. But one day the entire village burned down, and the inhabitants packed up and left, all going to families in other towns. So the hermit packed up and found another village to live 20 miles away from.)
There is also the point that church-goers tend to live healthier lives - on average we drink less, smoke less, use fewer drugs, and so on, than non-church-goers. And of course that doesn't hurt.
But Luhrmann suggests, and I think she's right, that there's more going on than simply having friends to hang out with, and cutting down on our bad habits. She suggests that one thing people who go to church - or mosque, or synagogue - get from the experience is regular training in seeing the world as more than a material place. We are encouraged, in every service, to experience as real something that we cannot see or hear or touch; and moreover, to experience it as good. And somehow, by some mechanism she doesn't understand, this seems to be good for our health. Somehow this positive thinking isn't just good for us psychologically; it's good for our bodies, too.
She is right about what goes on in a church service. We are encouraged to believe that a loving God we can't see or hear directly nevertheless exists, and loves us, and is present in our every moment. We are encouraged to believe that when we least think there is help for us, that is when we should reach out, because help is present for all of us, all the time. And of course believing this is a comfort to us, and perhaps it relieves our stress and that, in turn, makes us healthier.
But here is where I would go farther than Luhrmann; and it's one of the reasons - and I keep compiling more of these reasons as I go through life - that I do believe that God exists, independent of our faith or lack of it. Because it makes no sense to me that believing something would be good for us, if what we believed weren't true.
In every other area of our lives, believing something that isn't true is never helpful. It is at best neutral, and frequently it's disastrous. Why would belief in a loving God who didn't actually exist be somehow good for us, when false belief doesn't help us in any other area of our lives?
I'm aware that this doesn't prove the existence of God. Nothing does that. But still, for me, it's at least persuasive. There might be a hundred reasons that a belief that a loving God exists would be good for us. But one of those reasons is surely because maybe we're right: God does exist, and loves us, and knowing that helps us through our day.
