Religious Children Meaner then Secular Counterparts??

[Red]

I probably should have my head examined for posting this. But, it's obvious some folks here like to discuss issues related to religion. And this is probably a "lead ballon" entry in that category. Pretty much blew me away. Not what I would expect, not what anyone would expect, I should think.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/06/religious-children-less-altruistic-secular-kids-study

“Overall, our findings ... contradict the commonsense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind towards others,” said the authors of The Negative Association Between Religiousness and Children’s Altruism Across the World, published this week in Current Biology.

“More generally, they call into question whether religion is vital for moral development, supporting the idea that secularisation of moral discourse will not reduce human kindness – in fact, it will do just the opposite.”

The actual published study that the brief article above describes...

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(15)01167-7.pdf

 

[Siro]

The funniest thing is that they think it is "commonsense" to assume religion just makes you a better person.

I guess I don't have any commonsense, because it is obvious to me that, for many religious people, being a good person means being in a constant battle against one's upbringing.

 

[Harambe]

The funniest thing is that they think it is "commonsense" to assume religion just makes you a better person.

I guess I don't have any commonsense, because it is obvious to me that, for many religious people, being a good person means being in a constant battle against one's upbringing.

Kinda like how Obama is a muslim born in Kenya. Widely held by some, but there's no teeth to it.

 

[Gameface]

Never in my life have I associated religious belief or upbringing with being a better, kinder, more understanding person. I would have to ignore way too much of what I've seen and experienced.

 

[Stoked]

Religion should lead to trying to be a kinder, nicer person but there is to much BS and humanness involved. To many don't even try to be better.

Sad.

 

[str8line]

Religion should lead to trying to be a kinder, nicer person but there is to much BS and humanness involved. To many don't even try to be better.

Sad.

Do. Or do not. There is no try.

 

[Siro]

Do. Or do not. There is no try.

If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

 

[franklin]

It's hard to measure the effects in a post-religious world formed by a religious world. One thing athiests tend to forget, IMO, is the benefits of religion that got us to where we are today.

 

[franklin]

If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

And if life gives you corn, make high fructose corn syrup.

 

[♪alt13]

I probably should have my head examined for posting this. But, it's obvious some folks here like to discuss issues related to religion. And this is probably a "lead ballon" entry in that category. Pretty much blew me away. Not what I would expect, not what anyone would expect, I should think.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/06/religious-children-less-altruistic-secular-kids-study

“Overall, our findings ... contradict the commonsense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind towards others,” said the authors of The Negative Association Between Religiousness and Children’s Altruism Across the World, published this week in Current Biology.

“More generally, they call into question whether religion is vital for moral development, supporting the idea that secularisation of moral discourse will not reduce human kindness – in fact, it will do just the opposite.”

The actual published study that the brief article above describes...

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(15)01167-7.pdf

Religion is a lot like race. If you believe in it it's too easy to see the other as having less value.

 

[♪alt13]

It's hard to measure the effects in a post-religious world formed by a religious world. One thing athiests tend to forget, IMO, is the benefits of religion that got us to where we are today.

example

 

[MVP]

One thing athiests tend to forget, IMO, is the benefits of religion that got us to where we are today.

No doubt. All the supernatural myths were constantly questioned through ages and eventually denied by progressive thinking and science.

 

[Siro]

example

There are COUNTLESS examples. Much of modern science and philosophy trace their roots to the Middle Ages and the support of Christianity's and, to lesser extent, Islam's elites' desire to unravel the mind of God. I noticed that you believe the silly pop-culture myth that Abrahamic religion has set us back. It is not true. If anything, the fall of the scientifically worthless Roman Empire, and the rise of the monotheists pushed scientific progress hundreds of years forward.

I recommend you read what actual historians have to say on the matter. I recommend God's Philosophers by James Hannam. Another good one is Those Terrible Middle Ages by Regine Pernoud. You can also look into Rodney Stark's work, but you have to proceed with caution with this one, as he muddles his thesis with way too much Western apologetics.

 

[str8line]

It's hard to measure the effects in a post-religious world formed by a religious world. One thing athiests tend to forget, IMO, is the benefits of religion that got us to where we are today.

Totally. My daughter loves Christmas. And I love movies about the crusades.

 

[♪alt13]

There are COUNTLESS examples. Much of modern science and philosophy trace their roots to the Middle Ages and the support of Christianity's and, to lesser extent, Islam's elites' desire to unravel the mind of God. I noticed that you believe the silly pop-culture myth that Abrahamic religion has set us back. It is not true. If anything, the fall of the scientifically worthless Roman Empire, and the rise of the monotheists pushed scientific progress hundreds of years forward.

I recommend you read what actual historians have to say on the matter. I recommend God's Philosophers by James Hannam. Another good one is Those Terrible Middle Ages by Regine Pernoud. You can also look into Rodney Stark's work, but you have to proceed with caution with this one, as he muddles his thesis with way too much Western apologetics.

I don't need a reading list nor did I ask for one. If there are countless examples you should be able to provide one we could discuss I would think.

 

[str8line]

There are COUNTLESS examples. Much of modern science and philosophy trace their roots to the Middle Ages and the support of Christianity's and, to lesser extent, Islam's elites' desire to unravel the mind of God. I noticed that you believe the silly pop-culture myth that Abrahamic religion has set us back. It is not true. If anything, the fall of the scientifically worthless Roman Empire, and the rise of the monotheists pushed scientific progress hundreds of years forward.

I recommend you read what actual historians have to say on the matter. I recommend God's Philosophers by James Hannam. Another good one is Those Terrible Middle Ages by Regine Pernoud. You can also look into Rodney Stark's work, but you have to proceed with caution with this one, as he muddles his thesis with way too much Western apologetics.

frizzyperm | College Teacher | (Level 1) Educator
Posted on August 8, 2010 at 2:19 PM (Answer #2)

Historically the church was a great scientific powerhouse. It used to love discovering about the world. A thousand years ago all European study and progress was centered around monastic learning. During the primitive eras of the dark ages and medievalism, the church was a beacon of intellectual progress and a lover of new knowledge.

But then the church started to discover facts which made the church authorities uncomfortable. It started with Copernicus (a monk), who proved the Earth was not the centre of the universe. Then Keppler (a monk) provided the incontrovertible mathematical descriptions for the movement of the planets around the sun.

And gradually, during the last 500 years, science has uncovered more and more facts which force the bible (and the koran and torah, etc) to be wrong.

The final nail in the church's love of science was when Charles Darwin proved we are animals who evolved. We are not God's special creation. Since then the church has adopted a conservative and reactionary stance to science and no longer enjoys new knowledge. The church is very scared of science.

Nowadays religion has nothing to contribute to science. There is no scientific subject that can be improved using a religious explanation. But there are countless religious subjects which can be disproved using scientific explanations. It is a one-way street. Science erodes religious certainties and religion is powerless to defend itself. We are entering an era where religion doesn't have any relevance to society. That fact makes billions of people very paranoid and unhappy, but it doesn't change one simple truth... science casts great doubts on the existence of a literal Christian God.

The God of Moses and Abraham is dead; or, at the very least, dying... like it or not, it is the truth.

 

[Siro]

I don't need a reading list nor did I ask for one. If there are countless examples you should be able to provide one we could discuss I would think.

The Church established universities and paid to send monks and priests there, then supported them to pursue a lifetime of study of natural philosophy. They were pretty much the only consistent sponsor of such pursuits for half a millennium worldwide. And during that time, human knowledge advanced by leaps and bounds. Even basic concepts of logical thinking comes from that period. For example Occam's Razor (Occam was a friar).

But it goes far FAR deeper than that. I recommended those books because they offer a good overview of the subject, and provide you with useful level of knowledge on the issue. Read them if interested, or don't. It's nothing to me.

 

[Siro]

frizzyperm | College Teacher | (Level 1) Educator
Posted on August 8, 2010 at 2:19 PM (Answer #2)

Historically the church was a great scientific powerhouse. It used to love discovering about the world. A thousand years ago all European study and progress was centered around monastic learning. During the primitive eras of the dark ages and medievalism, the church was a beacon of intellectual progress and a lover of new knowledge.

But then the church started to discover facts which made the church authorities uncomfortable. It started with Copernicus (a monk), who proved the Earth was not the centre of the universe. Then Keppler (a monk) provided the incontrovertible mathematical descriptions for the movement of the planets around the sun.

And gradually, during the last 500 years, science has uncovered more and more facts which force the bible (and the koran and torah, etc) to be wrong.

The final nail in the church's love of science was when Charles Darwin proved we are animals who evolved. We are not God's special creation. Since then the church has adopted a conservative and reactionary stance to science and no longer enjoys new knowledge. The church is very scared of science.

Nowadays religion has nothing to contribute to science. There is no scientific subject that can be improved using a religious explanation. But there are countless religious subjects which can be disproved using scientific explanations. It is a one-way street. Science erodes religious certainties and religion is powerless to defend itself. We are entering an era where religion doesn't have any relevance to society. That fact makes billions of people very paranoid and unhappy, but it doesn't change one simple truth... science casts great doubts on the existence of a literal Christian God.

The God of Moses and Abraham is dead; or, at the very least, dying... like it or not, it is the truth.

Right. We're talking historically. Once technology became powerful enough that science established itself as a self-supporting structure of the modern world, religion started lashing out in order to maintain relevance. Science and religion has an overlapping role of providing explanations, and the scientific worldview won out. Like franklin said, we live in a post-religion society in the developed world. But religion helped us get there.

 

[Joe Bagadonuts]

example

While I am firmly in the camp that believes religion has no correlation (or even a negative correlation) to kindness, it would be impossible to overlook religion's role in the development of human society. Church and State were one and the same for centuries. Many books have been written on the subject. The Ascent of Man, by Bronkowski is an excellent one which I last read a few decades ago. It illustrates religions role in creating and organizing societies. Yes, this led to war and other negatives on many occasions. It enabled leaders to subjugate others by creating the threat of afterlife punishment which, in turn, was responsible for the creation of empires. Maybe human society could have developed another way, but it's difficult to imagine what it would have been. If something else had taken religions place we would undoubtedly live in a very different world today than we do now.

 

[Siro]

While I am firmly in the camp that believes religion has no correlation (or even a negative correlation) to kindness, it would be impossible to overlook religion's role in the development of human society. Church and State were one and the same for centuries. Many books have been written on the subject. The Ascent of Man, by Bronkowski is an excellent one which I last read a few decades ago. It illustrates religions role in creating and organizing societies. Yes, this led to war and other negatives on many occasions. It enabled leaders to subjugate others by creating the threat of afterlife punishment which, in turn, was responsible for the creation of empires. Maybe human society could have developed another way, but it's difficult to imagine what it would have been. If something else had taken religions place we would undoubtedly live in a very different world today than we do now.

There is really nothing to "replace" religion in early human societies. It is a natural product of how humans think, and it arose in every human society without exception. When you look at it from that angle, then yes, the question becomes nonsensical because religion was a constant of society that cannot be disentangled from the rest. But if you look at the role of modern monotheism, it becomes a lot clearer. Compared to previous systems, God was a very powerful invention. The level of advancement attained because of it was unprecedented in human history. It even enabled vast progress in morality, compared to earlier societies. Take the Greeks for example. They were able to undergo a mini-Enlightenment within just a few hundred years. But it was eventually all lost because they lived in a perpetual state of war. As bloody as Christian Europe was, it was considerably less bloodthirsty than classical civilizations.

I can explore this a lot further, but I really got to go back to work.