Location, VC/bootstrapping, marriage all provide real-world tangible trade offs. Religion is an unverifiable claim made about supernatural entities.
Which still provides tangible benefits (comfort, meaning of life, emotional support, coping mechanisms, a community) to many.
I don't subscribe to one myself, but I definitely see the benefits. In a way, I think my life would be better - or at least easier - if I wasn't so skeptical.
Religion is a major factor, that impacts your lifestyle, community, happiness and longevity. In most cases, positively. There are studies proving it.
So yes, most religions if not all are based on unscientific claims, but they make people's lives better.
These are merely correlational studies. Religion often makes people’s lives worse as well: sexual repression, homophobia, religious intolerance, fear of eternal damnation, misplaced guilt/shame, hours wasted on prayer/services/rituals, sheltered upbringings..
I think the underlying issue is whether a person views the objective appraisal of reality as a positive thing or not. For someone who doesn’t, self-deception may seem the better choice.
> These are merely correlational studies. Religion often makes people’s lives worse as well.
I'm not religious, but that doesn't make any sense: those cases would weaken the correlation (or correlate it the other way), and now you're also claiming a causative effect that's opposite to the correlation you don't refute?
I’m not denying it can have beneficial effects but only denying that it necessarily has beneficial effects. That’s why I pointed out that the studies in its favor are merely correlational and why I also list several negative effects it can have (although it won’t necessarily have).
It’s clear that social outcomes always have intertwined retroactive loop with psychological representations.
When we live in a society which publicly announce anyone doubting the dogma is a miscreant who should be tortured through long painful experiments, we will feel safer and better if we are in the camp of the true-sincere-believers™. Indeed it’s far less likely that any of these corrupted souls will come and trouble our peaceful minds. But if we have a ounce of skepticism in our veins, there’s no happy path for us in this society.
In that case, why is that the most rich and developed countries are secular and not religious?
You would expect a population with "better lives" to outperform the rest.
Not OP but perhaps you could consider Manifest Destiny and Capitalism as a religion?
Protestant Scandinavia and Calvinist Netherlands and Switzerland never really consider(ed) Manifest Destiny nor Capitalism as religions. And both regions are becoming increasingly atheist.
The effects of believing something, whether real or not, are tangible and often predictable.
The issue is whether a constraint is positive or negative. Choosing to handicap oneself, for example by wearing a blindfold, is an indeed a constraint with tangible and predictable effects, but these are negative effects. You can’t see what’s in front of you.
The parent comment advocates for adopting a religion you don’t believe in, for the sake of “constraint.” Self-deception is choosing a blindfold.
You are conflating religious belief with religion. Just the word "religion" is underspecified. Historically and reaching to the present, there have been many communities where the church was the mechanism to deliver healthcare, food distribution, some forms of non-religious education, banking, community bonding and growth, etc. They also had religious services, and the religious leader managed how all the other things were done. Does that count as religion?
Many of the "faithful" were not, in fact, faithful. Or they only applied it to very limited parts of their lives. But they still showed up to church on Sunday, and professed to believe the teachings (in general even if not in any of the particulars).
Adopting a religion you don't believe in is quite common and rational. Do you think all those people who marry into a religion or different denomination are getting brain surgery at the altar? Or if you want to run a business in a community, do you want to be the one guy who doesn't go to church? In some places, that would be both stupid and pointless.