Whether Faith Can Give You Happiness Or Not

Does faith make you happy? A CDC released a four-year, 1.3 million-person study on happiness: Apparently the happiest Americans are in Louisiana, while the Empire State (N.Y.) is leaving people least satisfied.

The CDC speculates this has to do with things like sunshine hours, congestion, cost of living, air quality and availability of public land. Not on the list of criteria: religiosity.

If you compare the ranking of happiest states to the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, is it interesting that New York has almost double the people who report “no religion” as Louisiana (14% vs. 8%)? Or not, since Florida, which ranked third in happiness, tied with New York for “Nones”?

Previous, smaller studies have found that spirituality and higher levels of religious behavior account for 5% of an adult’s happiness and 16.5% of a child’s.

DO YOU THINK religion affects happiness? If yes, can spirituality (and not organized religion) have the same effect? How much of a role does it play in your satisfaction with life?