Religion, happiness, and Bayes

fortyeridania

Religion apparently makes people happier. Is that evidence for the truth of religion, or against it?

(Of course, it matters which religion we're talking about, but let's just stick with theism generally.)

My initial inclination was to interpret this as evidence against theism, in the sense that it weakens the evidence for theism. Here's why:

As all Bayesians know, a piece of information F is evidence for an hypothesis H to the degree that F depends on H. If F can happen just as easily without H as with it, then F is not evidence for H. The more likely we are to find F in a world without H, the weaker F is as evidence for H.
Here, F is "Theism makes people happier." H is "Theism is true."
The fact of widespread theism is evidence for H. The strength of this evidence depends on how likely such belief would be if H were false.
As people are more likely to do something if it makes them happy, people are more likely to be theists given F.
Thus F opens up a way for people to be theists even if H is false.
It therefore weakens the evidence of widespread theism for the truth of H.
Therefore, F should decrease one's confidence in H, i.e., it is evidence against H.

We could also put this in mathematical terms, where F represents an increase in the prior probability of our encountering the evidence. Since that prior is a denominator in Bayes' equation, a bigger one means a smaller posterior probability--in other words, weaker evidence.

OK, so that was my first thought.

But then I had second thoughts: Perhaps the evidence points the other way? If we reframe the finding as "Atheism causes unhappiness," or posit that contrarians (such as atheists) are dispositionally unhappy, does that change the sign of the evidence?

Obviously, I am confused. What's going on here?

Religion apparently makes people happier. Is that evidence for the truth of religion, or against it?

(Of course, it matters which religion we're talking about, but let's just stick with theism generally.)

My initial inclination was to interpret this as evidence against theism, in the sense that it weakens the evidence for theism. Here's why:

As all Bayesians know, a piece of information F is evidence for an hypothesis H to the degree that F depends on H. If F can happen just as easily without H as with it, then F is not evidence for H. The more likely we are to find F in a world without H, the weaker F is as evidence for H.
Here, F is "Theism makes people happier." H is "Theism is true."
The fact of widespread theism is evidence for H. The strength of this evidence depends on how likely such belief would be if H were false.
As people are more likely to do something if it makes them happy, people are more likely to be theists given F.
Thus F opens up a way for people to be theists even if H is false.
It therefore weakens the evidence of widespread theism for the truth of H.
Therefore, F should decrease one's confidence in H, i.e., it is evidence against H.

OK, so that was my first thought.

Obviously, I am confused. What's going on here?

For some reason, the bibliography of the linked VoxEU article omits this study which did not find the link between religion and happiness to be statistically significant in the Netherlands or Denmark.

I have not had a chance to check the average article quality, so I haven't yet decided whether I think that it's awesome that there is a Journal of Happiness Studies.

I tend to think the general thrust of the top post is a bit odd. Surely it matters why the religious are happier if that is the case. I attribute it to some mix of stronger social ties (this would more tend to explain the result in the study I linked, since social ties in the majority nonreligious Western Europe are less correlated with religious practice) and belief in the just world fallacy (either in the belief that people actually get what they deserve, or the belief in a compensating afterlife). The first explanation has no bearing on the truthfulness of religion; the second weakens its case (Ockham's razor -- the world is unjust is a much simpler explanation than any of the rationalizations presented to make the case for a just world).

5

Religion, happiness, and Bayes

5

5

5

Religion, happiness, and Bayes

5

5