Happiness // Current

Mexico gives Viagra to men 70 and older

Mexico City is giving out free Viagra and other impotence drugs to men 70 and older. Mayor Marcelo Ebrard says the city is... more

Moopak
added this

New 30-year study shows unhappy people watch more TV

Are happy or unhappy people more attracted to television? This question is addressed by a new 30-year analysis1 of US national... more

majmok
added this

Top 10 Happiest Jobs In America

Career isn't the only factor in determining someone's overall happiness, but it's certainly a major contributor.... more

thedismembermentplan
added this

TechnoRebel

Filmmaker Stuart Kershaw rebels against the notion of being contactable 24hrs a day by going cold turkey from his insidious... more

stuxwing
added this

Are Obama supporters happier than McCain's?

More John McCain supporters feel glum about the presidential campaign while more of Obama's are charged up over it, according... more

lifestudentno83
added this

Uke & Teapot Bass - Daydream Believer

A little ray of sunshine.

cwhite
added this

"As I believe in freedom of opinion – as well as God – I have no problem with London's buses carrying the slogan "There is probably no God"; although I would admire the bravery of the advertisers more if they added "or Allah". But, if people want to contribute £100,000 to an advertising slogan – great. It shows that capitalism (and its adjunct, marketing) works in the cause of freedom of opinion. The best guarantee of freedom of expression is not a charter of rights or a bill of free speech, but diversity in media and communications.

I don't agree with the slogan in question, but then I don't agree with a lot of advertised opinions. I know them to be bunkum, like the beauty creams that offer to "turn back time". I disbelieve such claims because they do not accord with my experience: such lotions have been employed for years, and time has marched relentlessly on. The coda in the London bus secularist message "so relax and enjoy life" strikes me as bunkum rather on a par with beauty cream claims, and for the same reasons: it does not accord with my experience.

Far from relaxing and enjoying life, most atheists I have encountered are gloomy blighters with a depressing and nihilistic message that there is no purpose to life so where's the point of anything? They so often fall into the category defined by GK Chesterton: "Those that do not have the faith/Will not have the fun." You only have to attend one of their dreary humanist funerals to see that – I am never going to another of those, just to be made miserable.

I'm not against people having different opinions; what I'm against is people in influential positions never having their opinions challenged. Far more nauseating than the open slogans on the London buses, subscribed to and paid for, are such phenomena as art installations by the likes of Gilbert and George consisting of the words "Ban religion", over and over again. They are then fawningly interviewed by a deferential Evan Davis on BBC Radio 4, when they should be subjected to the same kind of rigour as John Humphrys doing over the chancellor of the exchequer. Incidentally, if Gilbert and George had lived in a country which banned religion – Enver Hoxha's Albania – they would have been dispatched to perform menial agricultural work, if not to a gulag.

In short, let us have discourse and debate about these matters of faith and non-faith. Does it not say in St Paul: "Come, let us reason together"? Advertising is discourse: it is a form of communication which people are free to accept or reject. It probably further stimulates debate. It may even stimulate someone to write a book called "The Tolerant Atheist", in which the author affirms that while he is not a believer himself, he accepts the evidence that for countless numbers, religious faith gets them through the night: and its beauty, language, optimism, music and architecture helps them relax and enjoy life."

I posted this because I completely disagree with it. Most of the atheists I know (myself included) are not "miserable blighters", but fall somewhere in line with the rest of us as far as their happiness level is concerned.
Certainly no atheists I know has ever said anything like "there is no purpose to life so where's the point of anything?" - Not believing in god does not mean you find no purpose in life, and honestly I find it hard to believe that MOST of the atheists this woman has talked to felt this way.

Atheists can come off as aggressive and offensive sometimes (again, myself included) because the idea of not believing in god is so taboo to some people that it's immediately taken as a bad or pessimisic world view.

So my questions are- if you are an atheists, are you a miserable blighter? If you have met atheists, have they been such?
"As I believe in freedom of opinion – as well as God – I have no problem with London's buses carrying the... more

DeliaTheArtist
added this

67 responses

25 days ago

Treatin' Yur Pumpkin Right

Hi Folks, it’s that time again, hold on to your hats for this week’s Topic of the Week! This week’s topic... more

dcuisinot
added this

2 responses

25 days ago

US researchers find strong link between physical warmth and happiness

It may seem unlikely, but simply clutching a warm cup of coffee can bring on a flood of warm feelings, U.S. researchers said... more

thedismembermentplan
added this

52 responses

26 days ago

New 'Five a day' for mental health

While five pieces of fruit and veg a day can keep our bodies in form, new research has found five simple actions a day that can... more

purplefox
added this

0 responses

27 days ago

How to live to be 114

A Harvard University study that monitored 600 people for 60 years shows that seven lifestyle factors are key to determining how... more

pstoddard
added this

11 responses

28 days ago

Dr Dean Ornish: healing and other natural wonders

Check this out!

pokesmot
added this

0 responses

1 month ago

Semen makes you happy?

Interesting article Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition....not sure if I believe it. ......

Semen makes you happy. That's the remarkable conclusion of a study comparing women whose partners wear condoms with those whose partners don't.

The study, which is bound to provoke controversy, showed that the women who were directly exposed to semen were less depressed. The researchers think this is because mood-altering hormones in semen are absorbed through the vagina. They say they have ruled out other explanations.

"I want to make it clear that we are not advocating that people abstain from using condoms," says Gordon Gallup, the psychologist at the State University of New York who led the team. "Clearly an unwanted pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease would more than offset any advantageous psychological effects of semen."

His team divided 293 female students into groups depending on how often their partners wore condoms, and assessed their happiness using the Beck Depression Inventory, a standard questionnaire for assessing mood. People who score over 17 are considered moderately depressed.

The team found that women whose partners never used condoms scored 8 on average, those who sometimes used them scored 10.5, those who usually used them scored 15 and those who always used them scored 11.3. Women who weren't having sex at all scored 13.5.

What's more, the longer the interval since they last had sex, the more depressed the women who never or sometimes used condoms got. But the time since the last sexual encounter made no difference to the mood of women who usually or always used condoms.

The team also found that depressive symptoms and suicide attempts were more common among women who used condoms regularly compared with those who didn't. The results will appear in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

And Gallup told New Scientist that his team already has unpublished data from a larger group of 700 women confirming these findings. In this study, the always-use-condoms group were more depressed than the usually-use-condoms group, suggesting the discrepancy in the smaller study was a sampling error, he says.
Interesting article Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition....not sure if I believe it. ...... Semen makes you happy.... more