4 ms·

Not sure how you've reached the "religious" conclusion. With the glaring exception of Islam, alcohol plays a central role in most religions. Obviously drunkenn

Not sure how you've reached the "religious" conclusion. With the glaring exception of Islam, alcohol plays a central role in most religions. Obviously drunkenness is another issue altogether, but that's not what such studies examine in the first place, so that's a different discussion. As for the benefits of wine in moderate drinkers, I remember reading a study which compared consumption of wine vs equal amounts of other types of alcohol, and concluded that the antioxidants and tannins in wine were the main carriers of that benefit, and if anything alcohol still had negative effects but simply the benefit from the other substances in wine overrode the harm caused by the moderate amounts of alcohol in wine. Obviously since I don't remember the study to cite it, this makes it an anecdotal claim here, but ...

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
In the US the temperance movement that led to prohibition was motivated in no small part by evangelical Christianity.
- dionidium 5y ago
  And where did evangelicals get the idea to ban alcohol? They didn't read in the Bible that alcohol was bad. They looked around at society and blamed a lot of its ills on problematic alcohol use. Some background here: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/9-things-you-shou https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/9-things-you-shou... Everybody gets this causal arrow strangely backwards. Alcohol causes people to sin; that's why Christians opposed its use. It's the negative effects of alcohol that led people to oppose its use, not "religion" per se (or even in any kind of explicit scriptural or liturgical sense).
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Given that "sin" is a purely religious concept, and that one's culture around alcohol has a pretty big effect on whether alcohol is associated with misbehavior (there are lots of people and places for whom alcohol does not cause "sin"), it's totally fair to say that alcohol bans were at least partially religiously motivated.
    - dionidium 5y ago
      I don’t think either of your premises are true, but it’s my fault for using the word “sin.” Alcohol is implicated in something like 50% of all homicides. There’s no culture where that behavior is tolerated and prohibition of murder isn’t a religious concept. That’s all I meant by “sin.” I only used the religious term because I was speaking from the viewpoint of the religious of the time. Didn’t mean anything by it other than ordinary misbehavior.
      - nitrogen 5y ago
        Alcohol is implicated in something like 50% of all homicides. Perhaps, but P(A|B) is drastically different from P(B|A). In other words, what percentage of consumed drinks of alcohol are associated with a homicide? Beyond that, could alcohol use be prevalent enough that alcohol could be implicated in 50% of everything? It's sort of like how "excessive speed" is a factor in most car accidents, but that's because posted speed limits are too low and everybody speeds at least sometimes.
dhimes 5y ago
The New England Journal of Medicine study that came out in the early 2000s (I don't have a citation for you) concluded the opposite: It's the alcohol that kept the arteries clear. Their study was motivated by the observation that the cadavers med students work on are typically homeless or strongly disadvantaged alcoholics. The bodies were often disease-ravaged, but their blood vessels were in very good shape. I think of it as an "alcohol as a plaque solvent" model.
- pvaldes 5y ago
  Another way to see it is that if you starve and don't eat well and try to store as sugar in your liver (but you can't because the liver has exit the room) you don't have much remaining fat in any part of your body, including the blood vessels.
  - dhimes 5y ago
    They probably considered that.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lotsofpulp 5y ago
Hinduism/Buddhism/Sikhism has no role for alcohol as far as I am aware.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

In the US the temperance movement that led to prohibition was motivated in no small part by evangelical Christianity.

dionidium 5y ago
And where did evangelicals get the idea to ban alcohol? They didn't read in the Bible that alcohol was bad. They looked around at society and blamed a lot of its ills on problematic alcohol use. Some background here: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/9-things-you-shou https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/9-things-you-shou... Everybody gets this causal arrow strangely backwards. Alcohol causes people to sin; that's why Christians opposed its use. It's the negative effects of alcohol that led people to oppose its use, not "religion" per se (or even in any kind of explicit scriptural or liturgical sense).
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Given that "sin" is a purely religious concept, and that one's culture around alcohol has a pretty big effect on whether alcohol is associated with misbehavior (there are lots of people and places for whom alcohol does not cause "sin"), it's totally fair to say that alcohol bans were at least partially religiously motivated.
  - dionidium 5y ago
    I don’t think either of your premises are true, but it’s my fault for using the word “sin.” Alcohol is implicated in something like 50% of all homicides. There’s no culture where that behavior is tolerated and prohibition of murder isn’t a religious concept. That’s all I meant by “sin.” I only used the religious term because I was speaking from the viewpoint of the religious of the time. Didn’t mean anything by it other than ordinary misbehavior.
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      Alcohol is implicated in something like 50% of all homicides. Perhaps, but P(A|B) is drastically different from P(B|A). In other words, what percentage of consumed drinks of alcohol are associated with a homicide? Beyond that, could alcohol use be prevalent enough that alcohol could be implicated in 50% of everything? It's sort of like how "excessive speed" is a factor in most car accidents, but that's because posted speed limits are too low and everybody speeds at least sometimes.

dhimes 5y ago

The New England Journal of Medicine study that came out in the early 2000s (I don't have a citation for you) concluded the opposite: It's the alcohol that kept the arteries clear. Their study was motivated by the observation that the cadavers med students work on are typically homeless or strongly disadvantaged alcoholics. The bodies were often disease-ravaged, but their blood vessels were in very good shape. I think of it as an "alcohol as a plaque solvent" model.

pvaldes 5y ago
Another way to see it is that if you starve and don't eat well and try to store as sugar in your liver (but you can't because the liver has exit the room) you don't have much remaining fat in any part of your body, including the blood vessels.
- dhimes 5y ago
  They probably considered that.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

lotsofpulp 5y ago

Hinduism/Buddhism/Sikhism has no role for alcohol as far as I am aware.