Religion = Happiness?

Being religious could mean you’re a happier person, according to a study. It seems that religion could provide you with a “buffer” against life’s disappointments and problems.

Obviously I have a tendency to be a little biased here – my religious beliefs have got me through a lot of problems with my sanity (more or less) intact. Of course, I have no way of knowing if I would have got through them in exactly the same way without having religious beliefs – it is an unrepeatable experiment!
However, I would agree that generally, religious people seem to have a more positive outlook on life - a way of smoothing out life’s little ups and downs. I’m not saying that everyone with a religious belief can do that, or even that those without one can’t. And of course, people who believe that the world is damned and that the apocalypse is coming probably are less affected by the minor bumps in the road of life. After all, so long as they’re saved...

Back to my point. I think religion does provide a comfort factor, although I think this varies from religion to religion. Nevertheless, I’m grateful for it.

However, a ‘scientific’ study seems to me to be impossible. How can we quantify happiness? How can we identify what causes it? As people find different things make them happy, how can a study like this ever come out with a sensible answer?!
Equally, religion can be the cause of so much misery. How can religion improve our happiness if it is sometimes the cause of war or persecution?

What do you think?

Hello! (in a very Boris-esque way) - by Llyando

So this is me...

..

There we go, that's it, well not really but I'm new to this sort of thing. I'm an Engineer by personality as well as by profession so tend to have a very literal view on most things, including typing to myself on a computer. However, as this has been proposed to me by Mylissa I have little choice (besides, at the very least I'm typing to one person... right!?).

Engineering is a funny way of life, as I said I tend to see things a lot more logically than most people, and a lot more straight forward. If something is broken or wrong, fix it; if it isn't, don't. However, not all engineers think like this - engineering attracts polarities of common sense, they either have lots of it or none at all. I hope to be one of the former, although tend to end up in the latter camp...

Anyway, with such an orthogonal view (some of the time) to Mylissa maybe I can add a bit of a different spin to some issues (and still end up with a bed to sleep in at night!).

Llyando