To be or not to be ... religious

For several years, studies have been produced that show the advantages of religious belief. According to some of the studies, people of faith live longer or are happier or have healthier lives or something along those lines. It was almost enough to convince people to have religious faith whether they believed in God or not.

In a story posted online today by the Boston Globe, Nathan Schneider has written about a new trend in sociological and psychological studies - the study of those without religious faith. Interestingly, some early research suggests that the same benefits which have been attributed to religious belief are also enjoyed by the non-religious.

Schneider concludes his article with these words,
But soon, more scholars of religion may be forced to pay attention [to the non-religious]. Wulff has been developing survey tools that will help psychologists look beyond binary oppositions like religiosity and secularity, or belief and unbelief. Phil Zuckerman's study in Scandinavia, in fact, suggests that these distinctions aren't as clear as one might expect. His interviews show the extent to which, even in the absence of traditional supernatural beliefs, the subjects' religious heritage provides them with moral guideposts and cultural habits. Not believing in God doesn't stop most Danes and Swedes from considering themselves Christians.

Religions, we are beginning to learn, can be better understood by paying attention to what irreligion looks like. Probe irreligion, and you encounter not only new insights about how it works in people's lives, but also echoes of the very religions it defines itself against.

If you are non-religious, do you know people of faith and do you talk to them? If you are religious, do you know people who have no faith and do you talk to them? Do you see those folks who are so different from you in this regard similar to you in most other ways?