The God Hypothesis according to New Scientist

[Rum]

Seth, re: the religion makes people happy bit. It's not quite true. On average religious people are more happy than non-religious people, but only in countries where religion is dominant. The opposite is true where it is not. Also, a person with few friends in a religious community is less happy than an average atheist from the same country. Basically, it's not religion that makes people happy, but feeling they belong to a community. There was an excellent article in the Scientific American Psychology supplement about it a month or so ago which drilled down through a huge set of data on the subject.

This is the article I was referring to:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... skepticism

And one of the main positive points of religion is that it creates community quite effectively. That's one of the main reasons it endures as a social meme.

Quite. Humans love building their lives on lies. Always have and always will?

[Blind groper]

To Svartalf,

Not where I live, thank Finagle.
A few. But the charm of my coastline is it is away from the masses of idiots.