Religion and Happiness

[Jimmy]

An article by Sandra Upson, entitled "Healthy Skepticism-Who is better off: the religious or atheists? Cultural values determine the answer."(1) touched upon the complicated relationship between religion, or lack thereof, and one's happiness.  It has been culturally accepted for quite sometime that someone who is religiously affiliated tends to report more positively about their lives than their nonreligious counterparts, but that view is being altered by some recent findings. "A 2011 study by Daniel Mochon, Michael I. Norton, and Dan Ariely"(Who Benefits from Religion?)" found that people who were less committed to their religious creed were actually less happy than avowed atheists." The article " Who Benefits from Religion?"  was certainly interesting and well worth a read.(2) 
Furthermore,  Sandra Upson, touched upon research on data from a worldwide Gallup poll that found that religious people tend to be happier if their respective societies hold religion in high esteem, but not so much when the reverse was true. A reference wasn't given, so I'm not sure about the validity of the research, but that makes a lot of sense. It probably goes without saying that many of the most religious countries tend to be quite poor,
(3)
which makes perfect sense. If I was poor and needed to rely on a community, what better way to connect with other members of the community than through religious activities, assuming a lack of a well-organized welfare state.   
Also, a study about why religion makes them happy(4) found that people were more happy when they frequently or regularly went to their services, but not necessarily when thinking about or connecting with God frequently. It seems that people are happiest when they attend services with like minded people, but even that isn't so simple. The data also found that "the happiest people are those who belong to religious groups, have more close friends in their congregation, and believe that religion is very important to their sense of self. Without a strong religious identity, congregational friendship mattered less. Even more telling, people who atteded regularly but had no friends in their place of worship were worse off than those who did not go to services at all." So it appears that having close friends in a social gathering that one truely values, can be a large contribution to one's happiness. This sounds very hopeful to me because this means that nonbelievers should be able to mimic the benefits a religion setting can provide while maintaining a distinct culture and contributing to the well-being of the individual and hence the society at large.
References:
1.http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=healthy-skepticism
2. http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/mochon%20norton%20ariely%202011.pdf
3. http://dailyatheist.blogspot.com/2009/02/most-and-least-religious-countries-in.html
4. Religion, Social Networks, and Life Satisfaction. Lim and Putnam in American Sociological Review. Vol. 75, No. 6, pages 914-933; December 2010.

[xSilverPhinx]

So it appears that having close friends in a social gathering that one truely values, can be a large contribution to one's happiness.

This certainly seems true, the community sense is way more relavent and important than whether the creed is true or not, though obviously every single group believes there's something special about their creed over others.

I'm all for having freethinker/skeptic/atheist (along those lines) communities. It'll not only help with those who feel isolated but having a community can actually be a driving force for change, in the case of lobbying governments to keep some creeds in the private sphere.

But...how do you herd cats?