The Benefits Of Practiced Religion And Ancient South American Immigrants To Polynesia

Lake Zurich, etc. — Aerial view of Zürich and its suburbs (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Dr. Lynn Johnson kindly alerted me to this 2014 article from Frontiers in Psychology. It was written by Anne Berthold and Willibald Ruch of the Department of Psychology (Personality and Assessment) at the University of Zürich, in Switzerland — which I can testify (having served as a young missionary in the Switzerland Zürich Mission and visited Switzerland thereafter on numerous occasions) is not precisely a hotbed of Christian apologetics:

“Satisfaction with life and character strengths of non-religious and religious people: it’s practicing one’s religion that makes the difference”

According to systematic reviews, religious beliefs and practices are related to higher life satisfaction, happiness, and positive affect (Koenig and Larson, 2001). The present research extends previous ﬁndings by comparing satisfaction with life and character strengths of nonreligious people, religious people, who practice their religion and people that have a religious afﬁliation but do not practice their religion. We assessed life satisfaction (SWLS), character strengths (VIA-IS) and the orientations to happiness (OTH) in a sample of N = 20538 participants. People with a religious afﬁliation that also practice their religion were found to be more satisﬁed with their life and scored higher on life of meaning than those who do not practice their religion and than non-religious people. Also religious people who practice their religion differed signiﬁcantly from those who do not practice their religion and non-religious people regarding several character strengths; they scored higher on kindness, love, gratitude, hope, forgiveness, and on spirituality.There were no substantial differences between people who had no religious afﬁliation and those with a religious afﬁliation that do not practice their religion (all η2/ps < 0.009). Altogether, the present ﬁndings suggest that people proﬁt from a religious afﬁliation if they also actively practice their religion.

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And I’m grateful to Trevor Luke for bringing this interesting item to my notice:

“Native South Americans were early inhabitants of Polynesia: DNA analysis of Polynesians and Native South Americans has revealed an ancient genetic signature that resolves a long-running debate over Polynesian origins and early contacts between the two populations.”

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“More young adults are abstaining from alcohol”

However, it seems that more of them are using marijuana. So there’s that.

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And, finally,

“BYU software predicts the rise and fall of every river on earth; agencies like NASA are using it to save lives worldwide”