@ Khandro
"The only person who has addressed your question properly? "
If you consider that the responses that have been offered miss your point, you should, i would submit, first consider whether the way your question was phrased was clear enough, rather than castigating all those that have taken the time to frame a response!
Once again, you sound like a patient teacher addressing a classroom of unruly and rather dim children - you know, pompous,judgemental and downright offensive....
Whats an abnormally high suicide rate? Is there such a thing as a normal suicide rate? Who gets to decide that? What data are they basing that upon?Because not all countries report their suicide rates; and certainly in some countries, suicides are not reported as such, because of the stigma. So how can any firm conclusions of the sort you are attempting to draw be made?
I am not sure you should apply a label such as "happy "to an entire country - it would be stereotypical, and a patronisingly sweeping generalisation. You can attempt to construct a "Happiness Index", such as Cameron is trying to promote - a means of gauging the nations well- being other than by straightforward economic indicators, but judging an entire countries mood and mental health based upon the suicide rate would be stupid.
We are getting off topic anywa - I bet your pardon, O mighty one ; I should say what I consider to be the point of your OP .
You posit the premise that faith automatically offers its adherents a greater sense of happiness and well being; And that even if that faith has no provable evidence base to support it, the benefits conferred upon that society outweigh the fact that their faith is based upon no evidence, or perhaps even a lie. So, we should encourage and/or embrace faith because of this benefit.
I do not believe you have made the case. You cannot just arbitrarily declare that faith brings a sense of happiness or well being that others without faith cannot experience, because you have no objective means or evidence to demonstrate that.
Nor can the suicide rate be used as the exclusive measure of a nations "Happiness Index", because of the complex confounding factors that surround what is such a personal and individual decision to end your life - and also because that same society that perhaps has a lower suicide rate in comparison to other, similar countries, may also have , for exanple,a comparatively high homicide rate, and/or high poverty index, or low educational standards, or high unemployment.
Faith has traditionally fostered a sense of community and a group identity and I agree that those are good for human society. For those societies where religion is on the wane, those bonds of community and identity will need to be replaced by something else - but there are plenty of alternatives available to the secular, that can ultimately be just as fulfilling, and do not come with the burden of having to believe a myth, or circumscribe your activities based upon an arbitrary code that has little relevance to modern culture.....