RE: religion makes people happy?
January 24, 2013 at 10:23 am
(January 24, 2013 at 9:16 am)paulpablo Wrote: in that case, if you cant answer it dont answer it
I'm just confused by what your question actually is. Your topic has the title
religion makes people happy? and you then aim your question at people who follow specific religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
I found an interesting article by Susan Blackmore which suggests that happy followers of a specific religion mightn't be happy because they think that their revealed God has made the world a better place.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...virus-mind
Quote:Data from 82 countries showed almost a straight line plot of the number of children against the frequency of religious worship, with those who worship more than once a week averaging 2.5 children and those who never worship only 1.7 – again below replacement rate. In a Swiss census of 2000 the nonaffiliated had the lowest number of births at 1.1 per woman compared with over two among Hindus, Muslims and Jews
and
Quote:All this suggests that religious memes are adaptive rather than viral from the point of view of human genes, but could they still be viral from our individual or societal point of view? Apparently not, given data suggesting that religious people are happier and possibly even healthier than secularists. And at the conference, Ryan McKay presented experimental data showing that religious people can be more generous, cheat less and co-operate more in games such as the prisoner's dilemma, and that priming with religious concepts and belief in a "supernatural watcher" increase the effects.
It's possible, then, that humans as a species evolved to have religion because it can make believers feel better and produce more children than none believers. I also think that Ethan1581 made some very good points.
(January 24, 2013 at 8:09 am)Ethan1581 Wrote: Well I think would make someone happy. Look at buddhism, they are very happy people, why? Because they believe in giving,meditation to stop bad emotions over things like anger. All they want to do is be happy and help others. Christianity I guess could make someone feel happy (if they follow only good morals like helping others) they will also feel happy about helping people. I think also that some religious people will feel happy because they have god/gods to care for them(especially if they have no friends or family) .