Are there any substitutes for having inner peace?

wow.Where to start on this one.A minor point perhaps, but the links are to subscription only articles, except Zephyr and Watchtower, so it makes it a little difficult to check out the collection techniques, question types, FULL conclusions and other salient data pertaining to the quoted extracts.A few remarks on one of the studies. The Health and Quality of Life Outcomes study is based on questionnaires completed by sufferers of cancer, MS, chronic and acute diseases. Healthy folk not included. In my (albeit limited) experience, people not suffering from the above list of ailments form the majority of society. All respondents were within the 40 to 65 age group. Again narrowing the focus for study. The notes also state that some parts of the questionnaire require a positive attitude towards spirituality and religion. So putting it baldly the survey states that a minority of people who are already predisposed towards sprituality and religion have the potential to prevent, heal or cope with illness.(The last bit not supported in the article details open to me. Also with no success in prevention as they are all ill. Further, the background notes the number of studies examining the connection between spirituality and prevention, healing or coping with illness, without conclusion.) The notes also state that direct reference to institutional religion were avoided, that is God, Jesus, praying, church etc were not mentioned in the questionnaire. So a pretty tentative possible link here between inner peace, not mentioned in the articles, and god, again not mentioned in the article. A further read gleans the quote "In the post-treatment orientation phase of cancer patients, more existentialistic issues in the patients' attempt to manage the implications of their disease in daily life are of outstanding importance". I'm not really being convinced here of the connection between religion and inner peace.I cannot give much more feedback on the other articles as full access is denied to me so the quotes in the OP could be genuine, empirically based conclusions. I have my doubts though, as one study mentions questions related to "prayer activities and experiences". So I sense a slight bias to institutional religion.With regard to the rest of the content of the OP, I agree with Jar's reservations. Too many bald assertions of fact without any supporting evidence, with the possible exception of the Jehovah's Witness testimony. Peer review that if you can! Other problems to consider are definition and phraseology. Peace is referred to as true and inner and real. Which? All? Inner peace equals knowing the meaning of life and having a purpose in life. Most atheists have a very good appreciation of purpose in life (survival, procreation) and meaning (same thing along with acceptance of your own mortality). Does that equal inner peace without reference to a god? For me it does. No god required or religion or a spiritual dimension.The OP is just too arguable and contentious to begin with and I probably should not rise up to the bait, but I have. Oh well.

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Apophenia:seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.
Pareidolia:vague or random stimulus being perceived (mistakenly) as recognisable.Ramsey Theoryatterns may exist.Whoops!