Religion and Happiness
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Do you think religion can have an influence on a person's lifetime happiness? And what factors contribute to this? I've started to wonder whether having a belief in a god or larger being could possibly produce more meaning to life and how it differs to an atheists overall lifetime happiness. Please not, this is not an attack on atheists or religious people, I was just wondering.
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Massively so. The more rules you live by, the more depressed you become.
In Buddhism we treat "rules" as an attachment. The less attachments = the more happy you become. Perhaps this is over simplifying it; but to explain any further would be an attachment in itself
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This really depends on you and what religion you're interested in. If obeying some rules (like no sex before marriage, no alcohol, no this, no that) make you unhappy then you should not join a religion. I would advise you to "make your own" connection with the divine being(s) and don't try to fit in some religion you're not 100% agreed on. I believe in higher being(s), I meditate from time to time as sort of connection to it/him/them and I have my philosophy about divine forces so I'm pretty happy with my life while being spiritual. ;D
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Though I believe in God but I still appreciate the remarks of an atheist I saw on TV. It was the DW television and it was an interview of a writer who is strongly atheist. She said that although her disbelief in God makes her very lonely at the time of emotional crisis, it makes her forever strong.
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I do believe so! The existence of religion has a huge influence in my happiness. For worse.
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Although in research religious people tend to self-identify as happier
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Although in research religious people tend to self-identify as happier
I completely agree as there are many sources which support this finding. But IMO there's a problem. I think there might be a difference between the definition of happiness to a theist vs an atheist. For example, a religious person may follow a certain religious text which might deliver various ways of being happy: "If you follow this rule, whatever emotional state you land up with is happiness". But to an atheist, happiness being not defined by such preconceived norms might be a completely different entity.
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if your religion says life on earth is just a "passage" and there is a next life ( heaven or reincarnation ) then of course it greatly improves one's life. If you are an atheist, you know life right now is all there is and death is the true end of it all. That only thought makes so many people believe in god just because they are too afraid of the materialistic approach.. That's why the more knowledge you have the less happy you are because the truth of the world, is clearly not something to be happy about. Read 'the myth of sisyphus" by Camus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus, or Cioran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran or of course Shopenhauer, or Nietszche. the dumber you are the happier you are. Simple people can work 10 hours in factories and be happy about it and get very angry when it's time to close the factory because they miss their slavery job. Too much knowledge is a curse. Religion keeps you from learning too much and has simple answers to many things. That can be of a great comfort for most of humanity.
