Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Can religion lead to happiness?

This post has permanantly moved to this address: Can religion lead to happiness?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think religion has the possibility to "lead" to happiness, but I don't think it actually creates it. When you get involved with something that brings you positive feelings along with a healthy coping mechanism for troubles, I would think that your level of happiness, or at least peace would improve.

By the same token, I know *plenty* of people who consider themselves religious and go to church most Sundays but are miserable folks.

An interesting question for me is this: would these types of people be even worse if not for the positive mental benefits of belonging to their religious organization, or is it simply that their natural disposition remains unchagned?

Serg said...

The first point to argue here is what happiness is, but leaving that aside, and taking it as general state of contentment, in my opinion religion is just one out of many ways to pursuit that state.

One of the main problems of basing the pursuit uf happiness on religion, is that people tend to give mystical reasons to their problems and their solutions, making them wait for the happiness to be given to them, (GOd has already a plan for everybody) instead of going out to get it.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Serg. People tend to attribute undesireable times to the devil or some unseen negative force instead of recognizing their own responsibility for their own state of affairs.

I hear comments like "the devil is busy!" and "all I can do is pray," when the situation clearly is a result of that person's own actions.