Comments on: Does religion make you happy?

By: Club Troppo » Missing Link Daily

Club Troppo » Missing Link Daily — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:19:49 +0000

[...] poor due to food shortages driving up prices.Andrew Norton cites some happiness research that finds church-goers are happier than those who - on Sunday - watch football, eat their patented moon waffles and find [...]

By: Alan C

Alan C — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 08:11:26 +0000

Sorry, I meant to say that DD appears to be trying to develop a case that religion is (objectively) harmful to people other than those who choose to practice it

By: Alan C

Alan C — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 08:07:01 +0000

“But from a liberal perspective, we should give a fair amount of weight to how people feel about their own lives…” — Andrew Norton
—
I agree.
An anti-paternalistic, J.S. Mill-type liberal could typically be expected to say that even if someone is engaged in a practice that is harmful to them, the only justification for interference is that it is also harmful to others.
That’s a policy maxim, and on its face it looks compatible with BOTH of the claims that
(i) religion is objectively harmful to those who practice it, and
(ii) religion makes those who practice it subjectively happier
DD, above, appears to be trying to develop a liberal, harm-to-others version of (i)

By: derrida derider

derrida derider — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 10:54:37 +0000

On (a), it’s traditionally the religious, not the irreligious, who are intolerant, with a consequent reduction in happiness amongst non-conformists.

On (b), we get crazy public policy from the devout because their religion causes them to believe things that are simply not true (eg the world was created 5400 years ago, the soul is created at the moment an egg is fertilised, a devout hindu must have a son to pray for them, we should be guided by prophecy, god likes men - and sometimes women - to be circumcised, shops should not be open Sundays and of course the ever-popular one that unbelievers are going to hell and should be despatched there as soon as possible).

On (c) it does not require everybody to be a Goethe for them to lead a richer and more enquiring life. Do you really prefer bogandom?

By: Andrew Norton

Andrew Norton — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 01:40:20 +0000

Alan - In the sense that these surveys only measure subjective assessments - how people feel in relation to their own sense of what matters in life - that’s clearly true. But from a liberal perspective, we should give a fair amount of weight to how people feel about their own lives, regardless of whether or not we personally think that someone else’s life is a good one.

By: Leon

Leon — Sat, 31 May 2008 22:13:56 +0000

“As a matter of logic” — do you mean a priori?

By: Alan C

Alan C — Sat, 31 May 2008 01:37:26 +0000

“It undermines the argument that religion is harmful…”

Not necessarily.

As it is used in contemporary English, “happiness” equivocates between at least two meanings:

(1) a person’s objective condition (i.e. what some Aristotle scholars prefer to call “human flourishing”); and

(2) a person’s subjective feelings and beliefs about their current condition and future prospects (which might include feelings like contentment, smugness and hope)

It is fallacious to infer conclusions about (1) from survey responses about (2). For example, a person living in some Third World rubbish dump might, if they neither knew nor expected any better, say they were “happy” in sense (2) without being so by any reasonable standard of measurement in sense (1).

So if Brooks has only found a link between religion and (2)happiness, there is still scope — as a matter of logic — for an argument that religion is harmful to (1)happiness.

By: Leon

Leon — Thu, 29 May 2008 23:28:03 +0000

It undermines the argument that religion is harmful and should be attacked (perhaps via funding for private schools), but that is not a policy change likely to happen anytime soon.

This came up in Q&A last night from Louise Adler. Religious private schools were then defended by Tony Abbott. Good show, I thought.

By: Andrew Norton

Andrew Norton — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:28:42 +0000

Rajat - I agree, though it is not uncommon for governments to take a while to find their identity. Rudd will have burnt out his senior staff in less time than in took Howard to appoint his. In 1996 you would not have picked Howard as a big-spending centralist. In 1983 you would not have picked the Hawke governmenta as a big economic reformer.

By: Andrew Norton

Andrew Norton — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:23:25 +0000

DD - I think we can dismiss (a) entirely, since the same argument could be used against any belief or practice. Tolerance is the solution to that particular viewpoint.

To (b) religion’s public policy implications are limited in the West, and the solution is less to attack religion than to dispute specific policy claims based on religious beliefs that cannot be defended on other grounds.

(c) has always appealed to intellectuals, from Mill onwards, but I am not sure that setting a life standard that only a tiny percentage of the population can meet makes much sense.