My country (Denmark) is supposedly the most happy country in the world (according to some ~2009 researches at least), and more or less everyone are atheists. Figures.

Even if it makes you happy it doesn't make it true.

so its bad to be christian to?

A pie in the sky makes everything worth it, thus you're happy.

Who doesn't like pie in the sky?

If the bible said there was a literal pie in the sky that you ate forever, I'd have to be christian...

That's probably before unemployment turned to shit

That's not the point. In the few where it is the case, the results were drastically reduced suggesting that religiosity is not as a significant factor as what is suggesting in the study from the OP. The better question to ask would be "In what conditions can religiosity be attributed to greater happiness?"

The Bosnian study that you may have is neglible here as it has the same conditions of that of the Americas - the religious far outnumber the non-religious. The studies fail to account for other factors - those that are also attributtal to happiness like social ties (support and contact) and culture.

Though, as Rath mentioned, even if it this were to be true, it doesn't validate their belief in any way. It speaks nothing to the merits of either stance.

Ooooh, another religious thread! This could be loads of fun!

Personally, I'm a pretty aggressive atheist, so naturally I'm agreeing with the "ignorance is bliss" comments. The funny thing is that I tried being religious, but the more I learned the more I understood just how nonsensical a belief system it is. It doesn't matter what religion you follow, how spiritual you are, or what faith you believe in. Faith is at it's definition a willful acceptance of something without adequate proof, and religion has absolutely no proof. In fact, if it wasn't for history and how incredibly aggressive the religious types are in perpetuating their belief systems, we'd have long deemed religion just another mental disease alongside schizophrenia.

When you get to pick and chose what's real and what isn't, perpetually deluding yourself into thinking "it just gets better from here", of course you're going to be happier. Religion has convinced people worldwide (with varying styles) that this life is just a test, and that eternal happiness awaits you after you die. Hell, it's also how they got so many people to kill and to die for their god.

I'll stop here, I suppose. It's only a matter of time before someone takes grave offense to this, which would only further prove my point.

For some reason the quote didn't work and I can't edit it z.z

Anyway, that may or may not be the case (almost every country are having troubles because of the financial crisis right), but my point was that we're quite happy even though we're atheists.

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.