Tom Rees reports on data which suggests that people with firmer convictions, atheists and theists, tend to be happier. The methodological issue is that since sample sizes are small for those who are not religious in the United States those who admit to being atheists or agnostics (1-4% of the population depending on how you define it) are generally lumped with the larger religiously unaffiliated population (~15% of Americans). This seems to gel well with what I have seen on the anecdotal level. Sometimes what you believe is less important than the fact that you have beliefs which are established and so can make appropriate life decisions.
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Meta
“The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.” – George Bernard Shaw
well, i personally like alcohol….
Me too.
Having strong beliefs makes decision making easier. Whether you make the right decision is still based on the quality of your belief rather than the quantity. If belief had as much effect on reality as it does on happiness, we’d all fly to work Peter Pan style.
Convictions give the world structure and it doesn’t really matter what context they appear in (political, moral, religious ,etc.). Seeing the world through a strong perspective and being able to interpret facts against that system grounds people.
The world is chaotic. I’ve always thought mitigating this chaos is a great incentive for religious belief.
The mitigating of chaos through united faith only serves to create armies. How is the world chaotic? The only chaos I see is created by people with more balls than brains. You don’t see atheists and scientists going to war, because they base their beliefs on measurement rather than feelings of inadequacy.
It has more to do with my own happiness than my convictions, I reckon.
Rigid dogmatism will ultimately lead to trouble. World-outlooks should always be held lightly, tentatively, and subject to correction by incoming data and arguments.
“The only chaos I see is created by people with more balls than brains.”
The randomness of nature? Some people are healthy, others are sick, some people are ugly, some are pretty, some people are lucky, others aren’t. For some, that’s hard to deal with.
I still don’t think it justifies religious belief. I was offering an explanation of the results which David Hume seems to agreee with.
Firm convictions merely feed the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and thereby hurt life on the planet, not help. Sigh.
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt.”
– Bertrand Russell
@Don McArthur
I’m so pleased that the Dunning-Kruger effect is making its way into the popular lexicon. I read their research when it came out in 1999, and realized how closely it matched my experience in doing technical interviews.
@RickRussellTX
It’s a bot factoid on the #mysql irc channel on freenode, called when a poster is a tad too full of himself and his ‘knowledge.’ A useful reminder…
Data on “happiness” is notoriously tricky. Among many other problems with self-reporting, there is, as RickRussell points out, the Dunning-Kruger effect and its close cousin, Pollyannaism, the tendency for people to overestimate their own awesomeness and underestimate their neighbors. A person with strong convictions might not be any happier than the next guy, he just believes it more strongly.
Pingback: If You’re a Confidence Atheist or a Confidence Theist, You’re More Likely to Be Happier Than a Confused Agnostic Like Me « Prometheus Unbound
Pingback: Chasing the Norm » Blog Archive » The joy of ignorance
@David Hume
And I like pot, but that doesn’t mean I should be stoned all the time—a light buzz, every week or two, is beneficial and lends perspective, but more than that would feel a way of avoiding life rather than living better.
One of the problems with strong convictions is that they produce violent convicts: when you’re deficient in rational argument based on evidence, and frustrated by your opposite number’s stupidity or willful evil in not agreeing with you, you are much more likely than decent folk to resort to shouting and propaganda-of-the-deed.