firedragon
Veteran Member
No, I have no study to cite and that is why I said 'it is my contention' rather than 'studies show'...
However, if I looked for studies to support my contention I think I could find some.
Do you think you could find studies that show that believers are happier than atheists?
I didnt claim anything. Especially not that theists are happier.
Nevertheless you should know that happiness indices around the world have been predominantly surrounded by financial strength which is a false correlation to happiness.
But I can tell you that suicide rate is a better correlation and most studies have shown that religions is a protective factor against religion. Proven by research. Unless you dismiss this as having any correlation to happiness. Fine with me.
Also you should note that Religion has a so called "significant" impact on depression. The research statement is "Religiosity has a significant effect on the psychopathology of the depressed patient, especially on hopelessness and suicidal intent. This implies that the incorporation of religious elements in the treatment of the depressed is likely to have a useful positive impact."
Relationship between religiosity and psychopathology in patients with depression
I am no expert in this field. All I can do is doing some meta analysis, or read up on some meta analysis. And in all analysis, there have been a lot of discussion on the subject of morality, suicide and religion. What you have to pick is causation vs outcome in quantitative research. 800,000 suicides a year apparently, so one could actually take a quantitative study of outcome. That means how many of them were religious. This type of study will have to take third party information because the true respondent is already dead and that type of research is there for you to read. Try "Religion and Completed Suicide: a Meta- Analysis" by Andrew Wu and some two others. Then this study in the above link is based on living subjects. That shows quantitatively though the study is qualitative, that the lower religiosity in a person, the higher the depression levels are. There is a huge number of studies TB.
Cheers.