Stardate 20020724.1621

(On Screen): Among other results, a study finds that Americans who consider themselves "religious" are less likely to get divorced than those who do not.

I find that totally plausible. But I'm not sure I think that this really means anything important. There may be a confusion of terms here, or a misunderstanding of goals.

For many who are religious, marriage is for life. While the state may provide a means of terminating the marriage legally, their religions don't permit any way to terminate what many see as a bond sanctified by God. Even the vow they take says so: "...until death do us part." "What God has joined together, let no man put asunder."

What this study doesn't answer (and maybe there's no way to determine it) is whether happy marriages are more common among the religious, or whether as I suspect the lower rate of divorce is due to people sticking with unhappy situations and suffering in silence because they don't think divorce is an option.

As an atheist, I don't consider divorce inherently a bad thing. Some think it a sin, I just think of it as a second chance. I don't think that the goal should be for as many people to be married as possible, or to minimize the number of divorces, but rather for as many people as possible to be in happy relationships. And I'm not convinced that people who consider themselves to be religious are any more likely to form happy relationships, whether in a marriage or not, than those who do not so declare.