Dumb people are happier than smart people -- pick your own causality.
> This replicates fairly well across many countries.
In some countries you'll likely be killed if you express your non-religiosity.
In (as far as I know) no countries would you be killed by atheists if you're non-atheist.
> This should be a fairly convincing argument all on its own.
Of what, pray tell?
> It is entirely possible to be religious without rejecting rationalism ...
This is clearly not true, even if (as you suggest) attempt to morph capital-G god into a metaphor.
> Religious people are also more charitable.
I believe this has been debunked, but in any case if the motivation is 'not spend an eternity being tortured' it suggests it's self-interest, not altruism at play.
That seems counter intuitive, and everything I'm seeing on an initial search says the opposite. Example: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-19659985.
The aggregate conclusion I'm seeing is that smarts corresponds with a small bump in happiness.
This is a half-truth, those same countries you'll be killed for expressing non-belief or belief in a different accepted religion. This is extremism and shouldn't be linked to what the vast majority of the rest of world practices.
I'm not sure what the vast majority practice, though Pew [1] has done some good research on beliefs amongst the second most popular religion. Attitudes towards the execution of apostates is especially interesting reading.
In any case, if you live in almost any of the countries listed in that section you'll definitely be happier (and probably healthier / less likely to die) if you're religious than if you're not.
https://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-relig...
Religious populations that murder irreligious people are bad, and not worth defending. That is likely a type of suffering caused by religion.
My argument is that participating in religious activity makes an individual person happier, on average, when looking at the data. That should be convincing, given the data I presented.
> It is entirely possible to be religious without rejecting rationalism ...
>This is clearly not true, even if (as you suggest) attempt to morph capital-G god into a metaphor.
I would have a tough time convincing you that it's true, especially considering that you don't appear to be trying to argue in good faith. But consider the Unitarians. They are mostly focused on personal virtue ethics through religiosity that rejects fundamentalism. I can say that looking at athiest strongholds, such as r/atheism, does not look like a more rational congregation than you might see at your local Unitarian church. The Unitarians are trying to better themselves; r/atheism is mostly focused on tearing down their oppressors.
The claim that religious people are more charitable has not been debunked in this thread, and I would be surprised to see that the evidence points that way in the literature. I've researched it a good bit. "But it's because they give to church" does not fully explain the difference.
>but in any case if the motivation is 'not spend an eternity being tortured' it suggests it's self-interest, not altruism at play.
Altruism is not incompatible with self-interest. Additionally, most Christians are not fundamentalists. You can conceptualize Hell as the suffering that you are dealt as a result of your own failures. By giving to charity, you avoid one of these failures, and in doing so also make the world a measurably better place. (Meanwhile the statistically uncharitable atheists still think of themselves as superior, for some reason...)
We have to differentiate between unintelligent and uneducated. For the latter, there are several studies showing that lack of education can mean lack of imagination of alternative. For example in The Idea of Justice Amartya Sen described the phenomenon of rural uneducated Indian women reporting less content with their own health after they received basic health education: Suddenly they were aware that there actually was an alternative to many of their miseries.
I don't accept the claim that religious activity makes everyone involved (at least on the believers' side) happier. In almost all cases there's no control to compare to - you have to compare different people, rather than the same person(s) with & without religion, and then you're back to the causality question.
The question of charity I've responded to in a sibling thread.
I know I am picking on one small part of your argument, but I really hate this line of thinking. So what? Who cares why someone is charitable? I assume most people not doing it in "self-interest" feel good when they do it - does that invalidate the charity? Nobody does anything in a vacuum.
I imagine some atheists may be frustrated to be told that they're not as nice (charitable) because of their rationality.
In any case, to your question 'who cares why someone is charitable?' I'd suggest that it's important if your definition of charity is something along the lines of a voluntary offer of assistance.
If you're coerced into providing assistance -- either by promises of eternal happiness, or threats of eternal suffering -- then it's not so much charity as taxation, or perhaps a promise of remuneration.
To be fair, Russia in 1920-1930s was pretty close to that. One surely may argue that communism is also a religion, so they were simply getting rid of the competition.
But that definition is possibly the only fully consistent and coherent one I've seen that covers everything commonly regarded as a religion; it just covers quite a bit extra, too.
Apples and oranges. You're comparing secular states with religious ones.
>In (as far as I know) no countries would you be killed by atheists if you're non-atheist.
The communist block says hi. China salutes you as well.
