Are religious folk in Tibet happier than the other Chinese who aren’t burdened with false beliefs the government wishes to eliminate? My guess would be no.

I believe it is the oppression of lies that the religious force upon the irreligious that could be the problem in the USA. It’s harder to be happy when you have people believing in magical creatures that fly around and that they make decisions with their souls and not their brains- and then you aren’t allowed to criticize their false beliefs. Much as it must be difficult to believe in one the various imaginary gods in a place that falsely reveres Mao or Kim Jong-Il.

Brooks’ assertion of causation is ridiculous and certainly subtracts from any assessment of the independence of his work.

As an agnostic (with sympathy for Viking paganism), I have no dog in this fight. What I like about Brooks’ work is his challenging the received opinion that people labeling themselves “conservatives” must be grumpy old men. That has nothing to do with religion, of course.

Yes, Jason raises a logical possibility, but so what? Go ahead and look at the multivariate regression.

People who actually practice their faith are happier, have less divorce, yadda, yadda… than any other groups. People who self identify with but don’t actually practice their faith are worse than atheists/agnostics.

Regardless, all “happiness” research is a joke.

And yet, I suspect that there is another factor: I suspect that European religion tends to be more gloomy than American religion. I suspect that, in Europe, preachers tell us that we could end up in Hell; in America, preachers tell you that you can go to Heaven.

OK, I’m grossly exaggerating; but please send in some missionaries!

I agree with your main point, but of course mechanism matters. For instance, happiness in marriage has stayed the same over the last 30 years but that masks the changing dynamics of that happiness: married people talk to each other less than 30 years ago which lowers marital satisfaction, but they earn more household income than 30 years ago which raises it by a similar amount. The result is a wash, but it didn’t have to be. Communication could have been more important and marital happiness would have gone down, or money could have been more important and happiness would have gone up.

Going back to the national comparisons, perhaps loss of religion does lower happiness, it’s just that money more than makes up for it. It is certainly possible that happiness could have been higher still in every one of those countries if religious belief/culture had been preserved through whatever means.

If government policy A leads to a growth rate of 1000% and government policy B leads to a growth rate of 1%, you can’t say B was a success (instead of a disaster) just because you are moving in a better direction.

You used the same fallacy thinking about immigration.

I wonder if the form of evangelism in the south is not more than coincidental vis-a-vis the high divorce rates, etc. I suppose in a place where faith healers and the like are popular, the time preference of the general population would also be conducive to getting in over one’s head in matters of love and lust.

It’s all about passion.