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20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction

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Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction

#91

Post by squarefoot »

OrvalWintermute wrote: post #77
squarefoot wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure there are different groups also among the same exact religion. If we asked to a large group of Christians whether we, say, should help immigrants, we would probably end up with 3 types of answers: "yes, let's help them!" - "yes, but only for very basic needs, then let's kick them out" - "nope, let's build a wall and let them rot on the other side". Of course the 2nd and especially the 3rd group have a…

> I'm pretty sure there are different groups also among the same exact religion. If we asked to a large group of Christians whether we, say, should help immigrants, we would probably end up with 3 types of answers: "yes, let's help them!" - "yes, but only for very basic needs, then let's kick them out" - "nope, let's build a wall and let them rot on the other side". Of course the 2nd and especially the 3rd group have…

> Are Christians not supposed to care about US laws?

I was mainly referring to African immigrants in southern/eastern Europe. Their situation is completely different from Mexican immigrants in the US, yet there are far right politicians who will happily let them die while attempting to cross the Mediterranean sea to build consent among their far right supporters. Seriously, there's no such thing as illegal immigration when the alternative for those people is being jailed or shot in their own country.

Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction

#92

Post by recursiveturtle »

azth wrote: post #88
krapp wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_morality https://theconversation.com/religion-does-not-determine-your... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/homo-consumericus/20...

It's very straightforward to debunk the above: atheists don't believe in God. The implication is that everyone is "chemical scum", that there is no purpose to life, and that ultimately nothing matters. Therefore, it doesn't matter if we blow up the entire world, or make everyone suffer to please a handful of people, there are no consequences and nothing matters at the end of the day.

Then I suppose we're lucky the entirety of secular history and also the natural world -- godless as it is -- has not played this Two Shell Monte.

Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction

#93

Post by tim333 »

geoduck14 wrote: post #56
jkhdigital wrote: post #53

Is there any major religion which has an expressly stated purpose of increasing the “life satisfaction” of its adherents? I mean, hard to fault religion for failing to deliver something that it never really promised in the first place.

>Is there any major religion which has an expressly stated purpose of increasing the “life satisfaction” of its adherents? Christian here. Our titular hero - the very God of our universe - was beaten and hung on a cross to die (slowly). It is hard to look at that and think "following this guy is going to increase my life satisfaction".

I thought the idea was he died so we don't have to?

"Happy people, singing people, party people, happy people Jamming on the party session, oh Lord Sing Hallelujah..." etc

Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction

#94

Post by nkmnz »

azth wrote: post #89
nkmnz wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have religion without esotericism, mythicism and spirituality - then it’s called morality.

Without an ultimate authority (God), it doesn't make sense.

It doesn’t make sense _to you_. You’re welcome.

Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction

#95

Post by throwuxiytayq »

jawns wrote: post #90
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all religious experience are based so much on guilt. There are strains of Protestantism where the emphasis is much more on grace.

I'm Catholic, and although I acknowledge that many of my coreligionists have felt it, even to the point where "Catholic guilt" has its own Wikipedia entry, my experience is the opposite. It is through my faith that I have felt relieved from my guilt. Some people say that Catholicism makes them feel guilty for things they otherwise wouldn't feel guilty about, but for me, the recognition that I've sinned is apparent ap…

There is something about Christian people's writing that always activates my "wait, was this written by GPT-3?" alarm bell.

More on the topic, most Christians I know seem (and admit to being) profoundly unhappy. Perhaps they weren't dosing their sacraments correctly.

Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction

#96

Post by cercatrova »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #68
Grimm1 wrote: post #42

Honestly, and completely anecdotally, having been raised Catholic I would expect it to result in quite the opposite when so much of the doctrine is based on guilt. That said before anyone jumps on me, also anecdotally, I haven't found any greater life satisfaction by not being religious either. You do you. The article says the study suggests there's not a really strong causal relationship in either way which surprise…

Not all religious experience are based so much on guilt. There are strains of Protestantism where the emphasis is much more on grace.

What is grace in this context?

Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction

#97

Post by AnimalMuppet »

cercatrova wrote: post #96
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all religious experience are based so much on guilt. There are strains of Protestantism where the emphasis is much more on grace.

What is grace in this context?

I have done what is wrong in God's sight, according to His law. For that, I justly deserve His condemnation. That's guilt.

Grace is, even though I deserved God's justice and wrath, Jesus Christ died in my place, taking the judgment I deserved, and offering me forgiveness instead, which I totally did not deserve. That's grace.

Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction

#98

Post by zd123 »

netizen-936824 wrote: post #10
dustingetz wrote: post #6

The point of religion is to solve civilization-scale game theory coordination dilemmas. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is a mutually beneficial metastable equilibrium but is only stable to the extent that it is a universally adopted principle. A lot of modern tragedies like climate change can be tackled in this way if we can establish universal shared values that apply to all people independent of nationality, status and in p…

>"The point of religion is..." Citation please

Not everything needs a citation. Some things can be hypothesised about based on observation and common sense.

Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction

#99

Post by Darmody »

xabotage wrote: post #49
Darmody wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People didn't adopt that principle because religion told them to, they adopted it because it allowed them to outcompete the primitive societies that didn't. But the divine nature of mankind makes that commandment more powerful because, one, you're killing God's creation and, two, it directly comes from God. It is not a simple "yeah, lets agree on that".

In the end it's just falsely attributing divinity to pro-social human programming developed over millennia of natural selection. Religion came much later than pro-social behavior, and in fact it more resembles "let's agree on that": When it serves you, quote the bible verses that forbid killing, and when it serves you, quote the verses that justify killing indiscriminately.

That's what I used to think.

I'm not so sure anymore.

Re: 20Y study finds little evidence religiosity leads to greater life satisfaction

#100

Post by dash2 »

noobermin wrote: post #35
dash2 wrote: post #8

Not sure I like the easy assumption here that "panel study" = causality. Suppose I get happier. Then I go to church more. The use of some complicated-ass Granger-causality-style technique also makes me trust it less. This natural experiment looks more interesting, although it exploits just a temporary shock (variation in the length of Ramdan): https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/130/2/615/2330341?login... "We study…

Did I misread the article? They just found that it was uncorrelated for individuals who became religious during the study (that is, temporally there is no effect) but positively correlated between people, and neither of those shows causality. For the temporal result, it at least negated it being causal.

A zero correlation across time also doesn't prove that there isn't causality. Suppose that there's (e.g.) a positive relationship due to an unobserved third factor, and a negative relationship which is genuinely causal. These two could cancel out in the observed data.
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