Tentatively Christian; looking for a reasonable discussion

[watchamadoodle]

Religious attendance/participation is a positive determinant of health (categorised by happiness and longevity), recognised by psychiatry and by W.H.O. It doesn't have to be true to be helpful...

I'd be curious to know what element religion actually plays. If it is the case that people who bond over a common ideal and have a safeguard against confronting their fears generally benefit in some way, then we should expect the results to hold across all religious cultures... which kind of discredits the supposed effectiveness of religion itself.

Another issue is proving that religious attendance is the cause and not just a correlation. The statisticians would probably need to use factor analysis (?), because I don't think most religious people would be willing to stop attending religious services to be the control group.