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Excerpt from the article: "It turns out there’s also not much evidence to support a popular theory that the increasing secularization of Western societies — where religion is seen as a traditional route for people to regularly come together — is a major factor driving modern loneliness. Counterintuitively, says Hewings, “It would seem on a number of different surveys that levels of loneliness are lower in Northern and Western Europe than they are in Southern and Eastern Europe, which are generally a bit more religious.” Turning up at your local synagogue, church, mosque or temple of choice might well help by offering a ready-made network of social connections, if worship is where you find meaning — as highlighted in a recent report from the U.K.’s Parliamentary Group on Faith and Society — but at the level of society, religion itself, it seems, is no panacea."

A relative difference between two regions in terms of loneliness and religiousness doesn't really signal anything quite frankly. There can be a negative relationship between the two with other things affecting them. Or there might not be, but that evidence is rather thin.

I grew up in a highly conservative and (according to statistics) religious society (Poland) and my observation is that it's not correlated.

People who sought company in church were often disappointed, because most of the others who went there had lives of their own and weren't that invested in the whole thing.

Hell, the loneliest people I know are consistently religious.

So, there's a difference between being superficially and wholeheartedly invested in the whole thing? Yeah, that makes sense.

From what I've experienced there are levels to it and apparently you only click with somebody who's into it on the same level.

I guess this is not restricted to religion.

Polish society was very heavily wounded by 50 years of hardcore socialism combined with the police state (at the hands of the Soviets). The levels of trust people have towards each other are still abysmally low. I wouldn't use Poland as an example, because it is (like other post-Soviet block states) still very much not normal.

I don't know about that. My parents both knew their neighbors very well(which made a lot of sense in times where you'd need a network of people to find some of the more rare goods), while I have no little to no relationship with mine - and I was born just before the previous system collapsed.

I don't deny that people are more lonely now in Poland that they were in socialism. In my opinion, it's the combination of convenience (like you said, people used to need each other for simple things, and now they can just buy everything), alienating electronics entertainment and capitalism, where everyone needs to paddle very hard to get ahead or merely stay afloat. It seemed to me that my parents were happier under socialism than they are now, even though now their material standard of living is greater by like a magnitude.

Regarding trust, I would say there was very little trust in the socialist times as well. You don't need a lot of trust to borrow some salt from a neighbor or even trade a favors (ex. you get me ahead in the queue to buy a car and in exchange I get you access to buying foreign holidays), which is what people mainly were doing in the socialism. You do however need a lot of trust to start a business together. Since in socialism all people were just cogs in the giant socialist machine, they never needed to develop trust towards each other. Now, in capitalism, it's backfiring.

And who would you use?

Countries that didn't have any major plights in the past couple of centuries? Like maybe Switzerland, Scandinavian countries, maybe the US (if we exclude the black population).

> Hell, the loneliest people I know are consistently religious.

I mean I know the exact opposite so I guess our anecdata are at an impass.

This is being down voted but I think there is merit to what you are saying. Personally, I have a strong sense of community being a member of my church. I really consider it an extension of my family. People in the church care (the best they are able) for the needs of the elderly and those in need. There is a big loneliness problem with the elderly. Churches can certainly be a type of safety net.

Of course this isn't the only issue. Modern technology allows people to exist without interacting with another humans physically. This certainly is part of the problem.

> I am not aware of any society that lasted without religion and had strong communal ties.

Take China for example, I don't think it is a country of religion, and on the other hand, I don't think the society lacks communal ties either.

Traditionally, the Chinese society is organized or bonded by ancestry roots. According to [1], people sharing the same ancestry root first formed tribes, tribes then grouped together to form states.

My last name, for example, came from a southern village in China. The village is also named by my last name. The majority people in the village share the same last name as mine, the rest are outside people who married to the village. The entire village can be traced back to a guy who settled there 1000 years ago. Not only they have a temple (or community center) to worship ancestors, they keep a Genealogy book to document the history. And this is just one example, there are many many villages like this.

It’s a bit like the houses in Game of Thrones.

Although, as modernization continues, this organization form is disappearing.

[1] https://yixi.tv/wanxiang/3/8

Take China for example, I don't think it is a country of religion...

You say this, but then go on to describe what is generally understood as a system of ancestor worship.

Religion isn’t mostly — or even necessarily — about theology or beliefs. One of the first realizations of comparative religion scholars was that codified beliefs are a relative rarity.

Just because Chinese folk religion does not line up with American ideals of monotheistic religion does not mean it is not a religion.

Religion was created as a tool to control people and explain natural disasters. It's no coincidence early hierarchies were headed by whatever the priest class was in that particular society, even going back to the first civilizations.

Modern religions (not even all) may be about the bond between practitioners, but that's only because we can explain weather patterns, and the governments of most states don't rely on things like the "mandate of heaven" to function.

>Religion was created as a tool to control people and explain natural disasters.

Mythology and religion also orignally served the role of upholding a unified value system and conception of reality which is critical for social cohesion and survival.

"Since in 2019, you can't say: religion, race, nationality and nation without being labeled one way or another."

I think this implies this has not always been the case, which I don't think is true, at least in my country in USA. People came to America partially to avoid religious persecution. And of course, slaves were also brought to America and a whole field of pseudoscience was created to explore how black people deserved their enslavement.

>think this implies this has not always been the case,

This was the case at least through most of the 20th century. Even in the 50s and 60s when "white flight" was cleaning out the predominantly ethnic urban neighborhoods those people were moving to suburbs where they had a lot in common with most of the people there and the people left in the city had a lot in common with each other.

>People came to America partially to avoid religious persecution

It's worth noting that a lot of those groups were being persecuted for being too hard-line and once in the new world they formed their own little groups and kicked out or hanged anyone who didn't agree perfectly with them. While I think we'd all be better off had certain ships sank, members of fundamentalist cults tend to get to know each other, especially when they're trying to not starve and not get scalped by the natives they started a war with.

>And of course, slaves were also brought to America and a whole field of pseudoscience was created to explore how black people deserved their enslavement.

Shared adversity is arguably the best way to bring people together. Now, before anyone misrepresents me as saying slaves anywhere at any time had it good, I'm not. I'm just saying that chronic loneliness was not a problem they had.

To conclude, having stuff in common brings people together and because of the way society tended to work in the past race, religion, nationality, nation, and other things we pretend don't matter today were strong indicators as to how much you had in common with someone and commonality tends to lead to meaningful interaction and/or friendship which solves loneliness.

Please note explicitly what I had highlighted- in fact, this point validates my claim that it has always been the case that people put each other in buckets and segregated based on identity politics.

Very true. People think of verses like Leviticus 20:13 (homosexuals condemned to death) but forget verses like John 8:7, "Let he who is without sin throw the first stone."

Perhaps one of the most relevant teachings of Jesus is from his Discourse on the Church when he says: "For where two or three gather together in My name, there am I with them." (Matthew 18:20)

Yeah, as someone who was raised in the church but never considered myself very religious, it's a little sad to see people misunderstand that there are two types of churchgoers: those who are dogmatic and superficially faithful and those who take scripture as a dialogue on how to live a good life.

I've got to be honest here, it's infuriating to see the extremely basic moral/social principles from the Bible held up on some kind of pedestal like they're a unique or difficult to come by idea. As an atheist I try to be a good person because it is something I innately want to do, not because it was a revelation I had in Bible study. The Bible did not invent "being nice to other people"

Your idea of what's a good person is based on what the world tells you is a good person. I, too, am tempted to think of myself as being inherently good, but if I were born hundreds of years ago, would I really have been so inherently good as to realize how wrong it is to (say) suppress women, when the culture all around me normalized doing so? My temptation is to think "I'm better than that, I wouldn't suppress women", but statistically speaking, almost no-one actually was better-than-that! Trying to be a good person without the guidance of the Holy Spirit is futile. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23)

"Not suppressing women" is a really odd issue to bring into the conversation when Christianity is involved.

Are you suggesting I should do a better job of cherry-picking things? I'm not trying to "trick" people with fake cherry-picked Christianity, we're all smarter than that here. It was an example that what's deemed "good" by the world changes from decade to decade.

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the torrents raged, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because its foundation was on the rock." (Matthew 7:24-25)

I was raised Catholic though I have intentionally distanced myself from the church as an adult. There are active aspects to the church’s teachings that our larger society would likely see as negative, if not outright wrong. Your suggestion of female suppression is a good example.

while you could not have changed the social order, you could have treated women with more respect than was the norm, especially your own wife. allowed your daughters to learn what they were interested in instead of forcing them into their assigned roles. these exceptions existed, and you could have been one of them.

Judeo-Christian values are the basis of the west's moral code. It's so ingrained you may think it's innate. But it's not hard to impress a different set of values if you preach them from birth. People years ago who believed in racial prejudice were not born bad. They believe what they were taught by society. Some were able to overcome this teaching but for the vast majority they just considered these beliefs as facts. That's why its ridiculous to judge a historic figure based on our current moral code.

You're conflating your viewpoint and choice to be nice to people with atheistic philosophy in general. Imagine the following scenario: alien visitors show up and show the human race that they can cure malaria, cancer, heart disease, and addiction, and that all we have to do in return is sacrifice 100 people worldwide to supply the aliens with subjects for (lethal) medical experimentation to enable this to happen. Atheist philosophy would naturally have to consider the offer, whereas Christian philosophy would immediately reject it.

I think if you really sat down and thought about it you would come up with other moral/ethical scenarios that would land in your personal gray area that would be soundly rejected by Christianity.

Churches have sacrificed people for much less. Given up their principles for not much in return. This is true in the present day. This has been true for the past 2000 years.

In your hypothetical, the Christians would be just as eager for the benefits as anyone else. Let's not pretend Christians, as a group, are somehow more moral than atheists or anyone else. History does not support that contention.

> The Bible did not invent "being nice to other people"

Yes, it kinda did, at least in Europe. But honestly, as someone coming from a Christian family from India, and seeing that christianity in India plays an outsized role (as in Indian Christians, not foreigners) in social services despite its status as a minority religion, I think it's safe to say that Christianity is uniquely into helping others. A few of our relatives were even jailed for 'marxism' for daring to think the poor ought to be treated with dignity.

In the 1950's my dad, and his brothers, were constantly assaulted by classmates because they were protestant living in a Catholic town. World War II had just ended, a horrific edifice to nationalism and the Cold War was ramping up. Blacks in the US couldn't even eat at many restauants. How is even close to being more of a problem in 2019?

Maybe being part of a religious organisation helps to ward off loneliness, and maybe being religious helps instill values that help people trust and communicate.

But you still have to believe in some magical being(s), and so do all your mates.

Religion has nothing to do with the loneliness epidemic.

All my young friends are burdened by inflation that has never been addressed by increasing wages to match it.

People cannot see themselves saving for homes and specifically if they have a huge debt from student loans; being conditioned to go to university before the brain has developed. People are under a lot of stress as a result of these problems and loneliness is becoming the product.

Even my Christian friends that go to church are feeling the loneliness epidemic.

People in poverty have had robust social structures and communities since the dawn of civilization

Monotheism was popularized to transcend kinship, in order to raise large armies. Prior, people were fragmented into close-knit tribes up from 100-200 people. They had their own lore and beliefs. Loneliness was not the issue they had, and not what monotheism addressed.

In order to wage warfare and conquer a region with large numbers, you have to convince others to fight for you. This was difficult. It led to the agricultural revolution and bureaucracy through centralization (to pump out more bodies), thus civilization, and the use of religion as a means to bring a larger society together under one banner.

All of which to say, loneliness as the epidemic we understand today is a modern problem. On one hand, the family unit has been decimated, and on the other we're more disconnected from larger society. The nature of work has changed, the way we operate in society has changed. More than just the Church has slipped away.

> Monotheism was popularized to transcend kinship, in order to raise large armies.

When you say that, what are you thinking of? Rome wasn't monotheistic, before it Judaism wasn't really a military powerhouse, and Christianity only really came of power due to it's growing popularity in the Roman Empire. I can't think of an example of an ancient monotheistic empire, and post-classical it's really only Islam and Christianity, and for Christianity at least, that seems to be largely secondary, based upon institutions of a polytheistic past.

I'm jumping ahead on the timeline, yes. Early Roman Empire had a polytheistic religions in common. It expanded its power after monotheism.

Obviously it's possible to have a large, shared polytheistic religion. We still have those today. The religion being a common denominator is more in the spirit of the point I was trying to make. Using a single God as a means to unite people was more palpable to some leaders. Muhammad understood this. The Arabs hadn't scriptures, nor institutions, and he saw the unifying power of Judaism and Christianity. When you have pagans worshiping separate sets of gods, it's less effective to try to politicize "all these are valid", "some of these are valid" and have them follow along.

From the wikipedia entry on religion in ancient Rome - "Even the most skeptical among Rome's intellectual elite such as Cicero, who was an augur, saw religion as a source of social order. As the Roman Empire expanded, migrants to the capital brought their local cults, many of which became popular among Italians. Christianity was in the end the most successful of these, and in 380 became the official state religion. "

> Early Roman Empire had a polytheistic religions in common. It expanded its power after monotheism.

No, it didn’t “expand its power after monotheism”. The Roman Empire didn’t even begin its official flirtation with Christianity until well into the 4th century CE. However, most historians consider the Roman Empire to have been in its waning days then, as it never fully recovered from all the shocks of the 3rd century. The full extent of Rome’s power happened under paganism and well before Christianity was anything more than a small, persecuted sect.

I suppose you could possibly argue for the Eastern Empire? Maybe? But then that's still built upon the core of the original polytheistic structure, and I don't think it's a strong argument that Christianity played into it.

If anything Christianity seems to cause a problem for organized military - after Rome we don't see an organized, professional military for another thousand years. People may think of "the crusades", but let's be honest, the majority of that was really more a rag-tag rabble causing trouble, rather than any sort of organized and united fighting force.

For the Eastern it was arguably 1000 AD. I guess I misspoke. It's religion and not monotheism.

The Origins of Political Order does a better job of conveying what I was attempting to convey.

>it was always about the values and the bond it created between each member of that religion.

Sometimes people formed bonds they shouldn't have and then the religion starts a crusade or two

Are you saying that the modern loneliness epidemic has been deliberately created to prevent this?