Do People Who Believe in God Report More Meaning in Their Lives? The Existential Effects of Belief
Abstract
I conduct the first large-N study explicitly exploring the association between belief in God and sense of purpose in life. This relationship, while often discussed informally, has received little empirical attention. Here I use the General Social Survey to investigate how form of and confidence in belief in God is related to sense of purpose in life, as measured by a Likert item level of agreement with the statement "In my opinion, life does not serve any purpose." Using logistic regression analysis, I find that those who indicate that they are confident in God's existence report a higher sense of purpose compared to nonbelievers, believers in a higher power, and those who believe but occasionally doubt.
Cite this
Stephen Cranney (2013). Do People Who Believe in God Report More Meaning in Their Lives? The Existential Effects of Belief. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12046
@article{stephen2013do,
title = {Do People Who Believe in God Report More Meaning in Their Lives? The Existential Effects of Belief},
author = {Cranney, Stephen},
year = {2013},
journal = {Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion},
doi = {10.1111/jssr.12046}
}Citations in this library
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