It does show that people who are lonely tend to talk to/pray to/think more about "God" than those who are not lonely. Much like a child left on his own with no friends will invent an imaginary one to talk to - we're social creatures.
I notice that so long as one affixes the touted word "study" to any given particular, that people don't generally care how it is they've come to the conclusions. They take it on total faith through the assumption that the people conducting such a test have logically and systematically configured it, whether it is so or not.
You could socialize all day long and still feel the pang of loneliness for the simple fact that our minds, as capable as they are, are still fragile instruments capable of fracturing under some grand questions.
Any Christian could be just as lonely as any atheist, and any atheist could be just as satisfied as any Christian. It isn't so simple a question of compartmentalizing people in to preconceived notions.
Hell, when I was still a Christian and lonely, I prayed and talked to God all the time. Yes, you could make the correlation that I was lonely and I'm an Atheist now, but I would say the correlation of loneliness to talking to God makes perfect sense to me. Maybe the realization that I wasn't getting any answers and that "talking to God" was pretty similar to "talking to myself" helped drive me away from faith, but that doesn't discount the fact that loneliness did drive me to pray more than when I was not lonely.
I think what happens to most people when they pray and they as though they haven't received an answer, I find that it was either not the answer they hoped for, was so subtle they didn't pick it up, or were not answered immediately. Suddenly the walls goes up and receptibility fades.
Then there worldview begins to find more parity with the easier notion of just succumbing to the trappings of the world. Its far easier to just give in. And while giving in to any given temptation may be gratifying in the beginning, there is something that takes place within the human heart, where they realize it has left a vacuum.
As a result, they become angrier with the notion of God, and even when they outwardly say they no longer believe in Him, they still rail against Him. Its amazing how many people speak about it in terms of abandonment. They become angry because they feel duped. They feel He left them, when in fact it was they that weren't willing to listen or to heed the instruction.
It has been my understanding that God comes to us in a soft, still voice, not booming voices from the Heavens. We want booming voices from the Heaven so that there is no ambiguity. And if there is any doubt in our mind, it will fester in to a further pulling away.
I have gone through many hills and valleys during my walk. I know how this works.
It may be easier for people to dismiss me as being "crazy" or "lonely" or anything that might justify why a person believes in God, but I know the drill. Often times this is their justification for their own abandonment issues.
“There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the 'wisdom' of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious" -C.S. Lewis
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