Right here on HN, I've been seeing over and over that climate change is going to wreck everything physically, that AI is going to wreck everything politically, and that everything is wrecked politically. (Hard to argue with the last one.) And so we see discussion of deaths from alcohol, drugs, and suicide, and how they are "deaths of despair". We've talked about this a whole bunch of times over the last few years.<p>Now imagine believing that there was Someone there - not just the impersonal universe. And that Someone knew who you were, and cared about you, and wanted to be in relationship with you instead of just at a distance. And that Someone was in control of what happened, and could be trusted with the future.<p>Yeah, you don't believe it. You think it's brain-dead. You think it's against all the evidence. But can't you see that, if you did believe it, it would change <i>everything</i> about how you viewed the world, and your place in it, and your situation? Can't you see how you wouldn't be in despair any more, even in the same circumstances?<p><i>That's</i> why religious teens are happier than their secular peers.<p>(And, as spamizbad pointed out, the community aspects help too.)