[Jedd]

> Religious people are happier than non-religious people.

Dumb people are happier than smart people -- pick your own causality.

> This replicates fairly well across many countries.

In some countries you'll likely be killed if you express your non-religiosity.

In (as far as I know) no countries would you be killed by atheists if you're non-atheist.

> This should be a fairly convincing argument all on its own.

Of what, pray tell?

> It is entirely possible to be religious without rejecting rationalism ...

This is clearly not true, even if (as you suggest) attempt to morph capital-G god into a metaphor.

> Religious people are also more charitable.

I believe this has been debunked, but in any case if the motivation is 'not spend an eternity being tortured' it suggests it's self-interest, not altruism at play.

[lostphilosopher]

> "Dumb people are happier than smart people"

That seems counter intuitive, and everything I'm seeing on an initial search says the opposite. Example: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-19659985.

The aggregate conclusion I'm seeing is that smarts corresponds with a small bump in happiness.

[Jedd]

Yes. I did some subsequent research and couldn't find terribly much that I felt was conclusive. I could argue that it doesn't matter hugely, as the absence of conclusive evidence, and the question of which way causality lies, was the parallel I was drawing to the 'religious people are happier' claim.

[kcmastrpc]

> In some countries you'll likely be killed if you express your non-religiosity.

This is a half-truth, those same countries you'll be killed for expressing non-belief or belief in a different accepted religion. This is extremism and shouldn't be linked to what the vast majority of the rest of world practices.

[Jedd]

Absolutely. If we agree that everyone believes in either 0 or 1 religion, then we'd agree that everyone disbelieves in n or (n-1) religions, where n is several thousand (depending how you slice and dice the various sects and cults).

I'm not sure what the vast majority practice, though Pew [1] has done some good research on beliefs amongst the second most popular religion. Attitudes towards the execution of apostates is especially interesting reading.

In any case, if you live in almost any of the countries listed in that section you'll definitely be happier (and probably healthier / less likely to die) if you're religious than if you're not.

https://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-relig...

[challenger22]

Dumb people are not happier. (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/significant-results/...). That would also do nothing to disprove anything I said if it were true.

Religious populations that murder irreligious people are bad, and not worth defending. That is likely a type of suffering caused by religion.

My argument is that participating in religious activity makes an individual person happier, on average, when looking at the data. That should be convincing, given the data I presented.

> It is entirely possible to be religious without rejecting rationalism ...

>This is clearly not true, even if (as you suggest) attempt to morph capital-G god into a metaphor.

I would have a tough time convincing you that it's true, especially considering that you don't appear to be trying to argue in good faith. But consider the Unitarians. They are mostly focused on personal virtue ethics through religiosity that rejects fundamentalism. I can say that looking at athiest strongholds, such as r/atheism, does not look like a more rational congregation than you might see at your local Unitarian church. The Unitarians are trying to better themselves; r/atheism is mostly focused on tearing down their oppressors.

The claim that religious people are more charitable has not been debunked in this thread, and I would be surprised to see that the evidence points that way in the literature. I've researched it a good bit. "But it's because they give to church" does not fully explain the difference.

>but in any case if the motivation is 'not spend an eternity being tortured' it suggests it's self-interest, not altruism at play.

Altruism is not incompatible with self-interest. Additionally, most Christians are not fundamentalists. You can conceptualize Hell as the suffering that you are dealt as a result of your own failures. By giving to charity, you avoid one of these failures, and in doing so also make the world a measurably better place. (Meanwhile the statistically uncharitable atheists still think of themselves as superior, for some reason...)

[bildung]

> Dumb people are not happier.

We have to differentiate between unintelligent and uneducated. For the latter, there are several studies showing that lack of education can mean lack of imagination of alternative. For example in The Idea of Justice Amartya Sen described the phenomenon of rural uneducated Indian women reporting less content with their own health after they received basic health education: Suddenly they were aware that there actually was an alternative to many of their miseries.

[Jedd]

FWIW I am trying to interpret, and presenting my case, in good faith.

I don't accept the claim that religious activity makes everyone involved (at least on the believers' side) happier. In almost all cases there's no control to compare to - you have to compare different people, rather than the same person(s) with & without religion, and then you're back to the causality question.

The question of charity I've responded to in a sibling thread.

[lghh]

> it suggests it's self-interest, not altruism at play.

I know I am picking on one small part of your argument, but I really hate this line of thinking. So what? Who cares why someone is charitable? I assume most people not doing it in "self-interest" feel good when they do it - does that invalidate the charity? Nobody does anything in a vacuum.

[Jedd]

I can appreciate the frustration.

I imagine some atheists may be frustrated to be told that they're not as nice (charitable) because of their rationality.

In any case, to your question 'who cares why someone is charitable?' I'd suggest that it's important if your definition of charity is something along the lines of a voluntary offer of assistance.

If you're coerced into providing assistance -- either by promises of eternal happiness, or threats of eternal suffering -- then it's not so much charity as taxation, or perhaps a promise of remuneration.

[AlexTWithBeard]

In (as far as I know) no countries would you be killed by atheists if you're non-atheist.

To be fair, Russia in 1920-1930s was pretty close to that. One surely may argue that communism is also a religion, so they were simply getting rid of the competition.

[holografix]

Yuval Noah Harari argues in “Sapiens” pretty convincingly that communism and capitalism are religions.

[dghf]

I think it's not so much that he argues they are religions, but that he uses a definition of religion that encompasses them: viz., the belief in an order that is not of human invention but that imposes human moral norms.

But that definition is possibly the only fully consistent and coherent one I've seen that covers everything commonly regarded as a religion; it just covers quite a bit extra, too.

[Shaddox]

>In some countries you'll likely be killed if you express your non-religiosity.

Apples and oranges. You're comparing secular states with religious ones.

>In (as far as I know) no countries would you be killed by atheists if you're non-atheist.

The communist block says hi. China salutes you as well.

[Jedd]

Yup, fair point. While weakening the points made by rational people is certainly not the worst thing they've done, the administration there is definitely making us all look bad.