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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

It's ironic that the "acktually.." atheist/anti-theist crowd don't do a modicum of research when it comes to this kind of stuff. It's pretty well-established in the literature that folks plugged into a religious community live better, happier, and healthier lives[1].

Millenial cynicism is so boring.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5127763/

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> folks plugged into a religious community live better, happier, and healthier lives

Could be:

> folks plugged into a community live better, happier, and healthier lives

Or even

> folks with a weekly routine in a third space live better, …

There’s nothing causational about the denomination.

> There’s nothing causational about the denomination.

You're right, I'm sure the people that are publishing these studies have never heard of "correlation is not causation."

Can’t wait for them to test why specific denominations have a positive causal impact on wellbeing over others. Mormons, Jehovas Witnesses, Southern Baptists, etc.

While we’re being snarky, should we talk about the people who are arbitrarily and capriciously removed from these communities during times when they need them most? Like women seeking divorce in abusive relationships while in a denomination that preaches absolute subservience to the male head of household?

... or people who attend religious services are less likely to self-report depression because of perceived weakness, shame, etc

> folks plugged into a community live better, happier, and healthier lives

It is this mainly. Community is the reason most people find happiness. Some people find it at church, some on a Sunday at a football game, some at their dnd game that’s being going on for years and some find it in their family. I am not particularly religious but I am 100% onboard the idea that community brings happiness. I find happiness in just having good neighbors.

Tell that to the gay kid who lived through god hates fags. Or the trans person today.

Speaking as a gay dude, it doesn't mean you have to follow a mainstream religion to find spirituality, especially one which tells you that you are an evil person because of who you are. Personally I've taken bits of various eastern religious beliefs which now form my 'spirituality'.

It's weird, its like there is some part of our mind that requires something spiritual to fill it, and has been that way every since recorded history. People have always looked for something higher than themselves, whether is be a god or gods, or the idea of nature or the universe, or any matter of similar ideas. And filling that part of our minds with a belief in something, seems to put the mind at ease in some ways. A lot of medical literature I've read includes 3 parts of yourself that you need to take care of: mind, body and spirit. So I really do believe there is something behind it.

Just so you know, that feeling of your brain requiring spirituality to fill it is by no means universal.

It mostly is. Just that "spiritual" doesn't automatically mean something mythical like God. It can be politics, astrology, social justice, philosophy, etc.

Something that we think is very important to us and the World and bigger than us.

That is a very odd definition of “spiritual”

How do you define spirituality such that it includes politics?

Have you not noticed the fervor with which acolytes of each 'side' preach the gospel according to their respective messiah? One can easily see similarities between sports and politics and you can't see those between religion and politics?

I see dogmatism, I don't see religion. They're not the same thing.

Otherwise, you could say my religion is BBQ because I'm always telling my friends about a smoke I just did.

We all see what we want to see I suppose. I am not buying this line of argumentation.

It's funny that exactly like those religious extremists and other extremists that associate any kind of queer person to the boogieman that tried to convert your kids and have depraved sex parades on the street, it's exactly the same attitude with people demonising any kind of religious person, as if all are the same. We all humans are the same, it's just who and what we hate and appreciate that differs.

teensy effect size according to some

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10508619.2020.17...

> Of eight R/S predictors that were distinguished, only participation in public religious activities and importance of religion were significantly related to mental health

That study you linked does not establish a causal relationship. It may simply be that the sort of person who is able to extract well-being from church is the sort of person more likely to actually attend church with any regularity. It likewise does not address the possibility that depression itself might make one want to stop attending church.

>Millenial cynicism is so boring

Yeah, it's always Millennials who are in the wrong. Fuck us, right? It's all good, we're used to being the scapegoats for society's problems.

I'm a millennial and I feel like nearly all the discourse about who is (generationally) responsible for society's problems is aimed at the boomers. And the zoomers to a lesser extent, though that seems more of a prophecy about how they're going to ruin society. Jabs aimed at us millennials tend to be that we're cringe (or boring), which I can accept.

What does this have to do with millennials?

In my opinion, this is a form of hatred.

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