"How does religiously motivated rhetoric influence health perceptions and decisions?"
Religion plays a vital role in the decision making process across cultures around the world. Religion is a social institution that involves a sense of interrelated community dynamics centered around beliefs, rituals, and practices that influence everyday life. This means that religion itself is a form of rhetoric that can influence people at their deepest level. One of the primary consequences of religious beliefs are the effects a particular set of beliefs have on the health decisions of believers. I chose this topic because often times, especially in societies were a dominant religion maintains a majority status in the society, religiously motivated health decisions can have an impact on people not affiliated with the particular majority religion. Beliefs and practices can often hinder the ability to take full advantage of medical progress in areas such as mental disorders, birth control availability, and genetic research. This hindrance can spread to various fields of health, but I chose to focus on a few select areas.
My analysis does not focus on a single artifact, but instead draws from a variety of sources to see the overall influences of religious rhetoric on the health decisions and perceptions of believers. My analysis shows the effect religiously motivated rhetoric influences the three main areas of health; mental health, physical health, and sexual health. The major findings of my analysis cover the main areas that one would expect religion to influence, but is insightful in that it goes further beyond the expected into subcategories that address religious rhetoric's influence on such areas as suicide as a mental disorder, obesity as a physical condition, and fertility in sexual health. This analysis is highly important, as many people are not fully aware of how much religious rhetoric impacts health opportunities, health research, and the general view of illnesses within their lives, despite them not sharing the belief that is influencing their own health.
My discussion questions cover broad ranges and various topics addressed:
1) How do religious convictions instilled by religious rhetoric influence one's views on mental disorders such as depression and personality disorders similar to Thornton's views on brain optimization?
2) What are the political and legal limitations that must be placed on treatment options for physical health related problems when the choice falls between following ones religious beliefs and seeking professional medical help? How does kairos play a factor in this decision?
3) How does religion perforate into the media to influence how people view their own sexual health in regards to actual religious beliefs, and is there an unequal distribution of responsibility in sexual health between men and women as a result religious beliefs?
In regards to question 3, religion has infiltrated mainstream media in the same ways that it has infiltrated every area of society. Religious talk shows, radio programs, books, and movies are created in droves, filling society with the same, outdated notions about sexuality that have filled the world for centuries. Religious television programs scream out a message of condemnation, preaching the same abstinence-only approach that our parents learned, as obsolete as the technology our parents used. Religion in the media perpetuates the concept of purity, the idea that the 'best' way to be is sexually untouched, that sex in all its forms outside of marriage is a sin. Other than that, religion hardly talks about sexual health; it does not tell you what to do if you've contracted an STD, or how to put on a condom, because it assumes that, when you finally do engage in sex, you and your spouse will be virginal. Religion, in that sense, promotes sexual ignorance through the media.
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