Player1x3 said:
pearljammer said:
The major problem with these studies is that they're often only done in the United States where the religious are a majority and the non-religious are a minority. This of course satifies another criteria for happiness.
In fact, a study done in the Netherlands and Denmark, where the non-religious are the majority, resulted in much, much lower differences between the two. As the study concludes:
| "the question in further research should not be whether religiousness boosts happiness, but in what conditions for what people." |
There are just so many variables involved here, namely geographical, that a blanket conclusion that 'religious people are more likely to be happy' is a gross oversimplification.
A sense of community is what I would attribute as being the strongest factor for that argument. Of course, I'm talking purely out of my ass on that thought.
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Well, there are almost no countries in the world where the majority is non religious, the only ones coming to my mind are Czech Republic and Estonia, all other countries have a religious majority in the.n. If its gonna help, a similar research was done in my country and in Bosnia, and same results came up like in this OP. I have a link, only, you wouldnt be able to understand anything
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Actually, there are plenty of countries that are mostly non-religious. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Germany, Italy, Greece, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Russia, France and plenty others. The problem is that when doing statistics, people count everyone who is a member of a church, for instance anyone who is baptised, as religious. This is false, of course. In Norway for instance, roughly 75% of the population are members of the state church with the rest being divided between other religions (predominantly Islam), humanitarian societies and plain lack of membership. Does that mean that 75% (plus devout muslims) are religious? No, the actual number today is between 10-12%, including muslims and other faiths. When people say there are two billion christians in the world, that simply means there are two billion people living in countries that christianity as the state religion, the actual number of believers can probably be shaved down to one fifth or so.
