Quote:
Originally Posted by Agent 488
religious people generally score happier than their non-religious peers and give more of their time and money to charity.
in the grand scheme of things their positive contributions probably make up for the odd pope diddler.
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Just some food for thought on this...
"Some researchers suggest there are happiness benefits to being in the majority when it comes to religious belief. Many studies finding correlations between happiness and religiosity come from measuring Religion in the United States - a predominantly Christian country (making the nonreligious a minority).
According to a 2007 paper by Liesbeth Snoep, published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, there is no significant correlation between religiosity and individual happiness when researchers measure Religion in the Netherlands and Denmark. These countries have lower rates of religious affiliation than the United States, meaning the non-religious are not the vast minority - a fact that Snoep thinks might help explain the different correlations.
According to the Gallup World Poll survey conducted between 2005 and 2009 Denmark is the happiest country in the world, and the Netherlands rank fourth."
Source
Charity is another area where I think it is important to look deeper into the explanations and correlations when comparing religious / non-religious.