From Times Online
March 18, 2008
Religious people more likely to be happy
Joanna Sugden
The more religious you are the happier you are likely to be according to
new research.
A study of the effect of religion on quality of life claims that
religious people are happier the more often they go to church and pray.
The research, presented to the Royal Economic Society, gathered data
from thousands across Europe including the UK and found that religious
people have better “life satisfaction” than their non-religious
counterparts.
But the author of the study, Professor Andrew Clark, admitted that other
factors could be at work. He said benefits of a religious upbringing
unrelated to belief such as a stable family home, could have influenced
the outcome.
The re****t found that religious people suffer less psychologically if
they become unemployed. But believers are lazier when it comes to
looking for work when they are out of a job, say researchers Professor
Clark and Dr Orsolya Lelkes.
Other traumas, such as divorce, have less of an impact on the state of
mind of believers according to researchers, who say that religion acts
as a type of “insurance” against personal disaster.
This is not the first study showing a positive correlation between
religious belief and perceived quality of life, but this one began as an
investigation into why there were different levels of unemployment
benefits across Europe.
Professor Clark said: "We originally started the research to work out
why some European countries had more generous unemployment benefits than
others, but our analysis suggested that religious people suffered less
psychological harm from unemployment than the non-religious.
"They had higher levels of life satisfaction".
Terry Sanderson, director of the National Secular Society, dismissed the
findings. “Non-believers can’t just turn on a faith in order to be
happy,” he said. “If you find religious claims incredible, then you
won’t believe them, whatever the supposed rewards in terms of personal
fulfilment.”
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Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher
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