Social bonding has played a key role in our survival as a species. Some of the noted benefits of friendship from an evolutionary perspective include reduced vulnerability to predators, greater access to food resources, and protection from harassment. Today, though most of us no longer worry about being mauled by a predator as we go about our daily business, a healthy network of friends is still extremely valuable, acting like a safety net in life. Bolstered by the support of good friends, we can bound to great heights and celebrate the joys of life, and know that if we fall there will be someone there to offer comfort and assistance, to share our deepest fears and disappointments, and help make the dark moments much more bearable.

Recent studies have explored the science behind friendships and discovered that there are actually measurable differences between people who have strong, healthy social networks and those who don't. In particular, people with strong friend connections were found to experience significantly better states of physical and mental health.

In a large scale study of more than 2,000 people, British boffins confirmed that thoughts DO carry on after the heart stops.

The shock research has also uncovered the most convincing evidence of an out of body experience for a patient declared dead.

It had been believed the brain stopped all activity 30 seconds after the heart had stopped pumping blood around the body, and that with that, awareness ceases too.

However, the study from the University of Southampton shows people still experience awareness for up to three minutes after they had been pronounced dead.

New research published in JAMA Internal Medicine suggests frequently attending religious services may be associated with lower mortality among women.

Study co-author Tyler J. VanderWeele, Ph.D., of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, MA, and colleagues found that women who attended religious services at least once weekly were up to a third less likely to die from all causes, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and cancer during 16 years of follow-up.

In the United States, as in many other parts of the world, religious practice is widespread.

According to the authors, around 65 percent of Americans consider religion to be an important part of life, 83 percent report praying to God within the last week, while 43 percent report having attended a religious service in the past week.

But how do religious practices impact health? This is what VanderWeele and colleagues set out to investigate, noting that there is limited information in this field.

I've been here for 8 years on reddit, and things sure have changed a lot. /r/conspiracy is one of the few remaining places on reddit for real news. This sub looks like what the front page of reddit looked like for the first 3 years of its existence. It was about exposing things, the real truth, and learning about the world. This is what Aaron Schwartz wanted, before they killed him and killed reddit.

All the uncomfortable truths are delegated to this ridiculous-sounding "/r/conspiracy" which drives people away who are on the fence. These things that are often talked about on this sub are conspiracies, but they're also news, they're speculation or facts about how the world actually works beyond the face of things as we see them. This label of "conspiracy" is a form of censorship in itself, it pushes all the big deal stories to this one small corner of reddit.

If you're newer to reddit, 4 years or less, I bet there was one day when you found this sub. I bet you went through the frontpage of this sub and couldn't believe what you were reading. You probably thought "Why aren't these things being discussed on the news subreddit or the politics subreddit, if they are true?" You may have looked in to a specific story or two, and started realizing that there is something to many of the things talked about here. So you subscribed to the sub, you started reading it regularly. Maybe you decided you don't care about this divisive label of "conspiracy theorist", that it means nothing to you. What idiot would be afraid of theorizing about potential conspiracies, given the endless lists of historical examples? What kind of sheep is so trained to be afraid of the truth that they run away from it thinking they're doing themselves a favor? You start to question things in a deeper way once the tricks of culture become more obvious

Recently, I came to realize that I have been stuck in a rut. Since the moment of my self-diagnosis, I've been wondering: why had I let my negative feelings persist?

When you get a splinter in your foot, you stop what you're doing and turn all your mental and physical resources to getting that splinter out. (I've personally tackled splinters with the dedication of a mad scientist - determined to fix the problem no matter how long it took and how gross it made my foot look.) And yet, here was this emotional pain stabbing away at me every day, and I did little more than complain about it. How can we be so accepting of our psychological splinters?

Humans are relatively adaptable beings which is why we are thriving and not dying out like other species. Horrendous disasters such as the Philippines typhoon, the Boxing Day Tsunami, the nuclear disaster in Japan, the major wars of our time, and horrific famines see great suffering, but these events also inspires survival through adaptation. It turns out we possess a strong survival mechanism in our brains directly linked to our bodies, fight, flight, freeze, flop and friend (fffff).

In fact, the survival part of our brain, which is primitive yet effective, is the first to develop in utero starting at around 7 weeks. It regulates our breathing, digestive system, heart rate and temperature, along with the 'fffff' system which operates to preserve our life.

"I've never been happier since I quit my 30-year addiction to Jesus." - Blogger and Christian Heretic, Sandra Kee

To a medical researcher, the word addiction has a specific biological meaning. But in common vernacular, it means approximately this: the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, such as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.

Based on this definition some religious experiences seem a lot like addictions—at least that's what former believers say.

Blogger Sandra Kee, a self-described "Christian Heretic," looks back at her family history and sees religion and addiction as a messy tangle: "My family for several generations was in a dysfunctional and addictive religious life, using God (or what we believed about God) as a drug. Many of the family who left religion simply traded for another addiction. The generations that entered into religion did so to escape alcoholism and other addictions (though it wasn't called addiction back then). Many who remained in religion developed additional addictions as well."

Do you fly in your dreams?

Some people dream of flying often, while others never do, and there are reasons why this experience is not shared by all.

Dreams are the result of your unconscious mind (UM) trying to communicate what it is currently processing to your conscious mind. You may be processing what happened that very day, or something that happened to you in high school or as a small child. The UM does not process in sequence, so just because you processed something about your childhood one night, it does not mean you will pick up where you left off and continue with that particular process.

Religions tend to invent ideas and concepts just like every other creative human enterprise, and they have unleashed some remarkably bad ideas onto humanity. Most of these are centered around the notion of telling people what to do and how to live their lives, with the aim of convincing people that conformity to church guidelines will bring some intangible reward in the afterlife.

One example of many is the Christian belief that the one and only way not to eternally burn in Hell is to accept Jesus Christ as the savior, as if no other deity or religious experience is valid to the human experience.

The concept of heaven and hell has been so ingrained into the human psyche that many people cannot see beyond this limiting paradigm to any other possibility. Retired Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong, however, doesn't seem to believe in the myth of Hell, and during a nationally televised interview he shared his opinions on why he thinks convincing the flock to believe in the concept of 'Hell' is absolutely critical to the Church's survival.

How is silence a source of strength? I adore the works of Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, author of the Tao Te Ching, but sometimes I don't know what he means. Does he just mean the kind of silence in meditation? Here's more:

When life is simple,
Pretenses fall away;
Our essential natures shine though.

By not wanting there is calm,
And the world will straighten itself out.
When there is silence
One finds the anchor of the universe within oneself.

This kind of silence appears to be the inner peace of living in the moment and appreciating the invaluable ordinary things around us every day. Quieting all those thoughts that color our perception day in and day out, we live in the moment and tap into a bounty of joy and gratitude for the simplest things.

We spend much of our time in the future, worrying about what will be and planning what we will do. We also spend a lot of time in the past mulling over regrets, changes, and losses. In order to slow down and live present in the moment, we have to quiet the cycle of stress and worry.

I find that stepping off the roller coaster of anxious thoughts is easiest first thing in the morning, and I think that applies to all of us. Do you want to find your silence? Then before you step into your routine and begin thinking about all the things you have to do today, step back and let your thoughts flow freely. Don't treat today like an emergency. Have faith that you can handle whatever comes because you always have. You are a capable person — capable of coping and of finding inner peace.