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Maybe there are no atheists in foxholes, as the William T. Cummings famously said. But who the hell wants to live in a foxhole? Most of us would prefer a better crib. So if religion comforts the oppressed and miserable, it should follow that a lessening of human misery should lead to a drop-off in religious belief. That is, in any event, the conclusion of this paper, published recently in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. It analyzed self-reports from hundreds of thousands of people worldwide and found that there is indeed a connection between religious faith and happiness—but only in troubled societies.
