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Here's a discovery that could make secular parents say hallelujah: Children who grow up in non-religious homes are more generous and altruistic than children from observant families. ...
A series of experiments involving 1,170 kids from a variety of religious backgrounds found that the non-believers were more likely to share stickers with their classmates and less likely to endorse harsh punishments for people who pushed or bumped into others.
The results "contradict the common-sense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind toward others," according to a study published this week in the journal Current Biology.
Worldwide, about 5.8 billion people consider themselves religious, and religion is a primary way for cultures to express their ideas about proper moral behavior — especially behavior that involves self-sacrifice for the sake of others.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Whoever on Sunday November 08 2015, @12:21AM
I have always thought that people who need religion to be altruistic are not truly altruistic people.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 08 2015, @01:34AM
You are in good company with that thought.
See Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Argument for details.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Sunday November 08 2015, @04:25AM
It's more "God picked me to be special, so I am. And I spend my time lording it over anyone I can."
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday November 08 2015, @05:05AM
were more likely to share stickers with their classmates
Post back when they start evaluating something that matters.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Sunday November 08 2015, @05:37AM
If anyone is surprised by this finding then they simply do not understand human nature.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Sunday November 08 2015, @11:09AM
Matches my observations too. In fact I find that there's a direct correlation between religious fervor and being an asshole. Since correlation is not causation, it's unclear to me whether religion attracts assholes or religion turns you into an asshole.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday November 08 2015, @11:39AM
Matches my observations too. In fact I find that there's a direct correlation between religious fervor and being an asshole. Since correlation is not causation, it's unclear to me whether religion attracts assholes or religion turns you into an asshole.
Sounds like someone has an idea for some new research.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 08 2015, @03:01PM
It might also be that assholes are less likely to lose a religion they got as child.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DNied on Sunday November 08 2015, @01:17PM
That's pretty much religion's intended and original purpose: programming moral rules into everyone who isn't smart enough to understand why an altruistic behaviour is in mankind's best interest.
The trouble with this trick is that, once the belief system is in place, it can (and will) also be misused for literally all kinds of evil purposes.
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Sunday November 08 2015, @04:48PM
you can think of religion as a 'human rootkit'. once its installed (and installed early enough) the bad guys can insert any kind of message they want and the subject has no choice but to accept the programming.
or, maybe a better analogy is a bootloader. religion is a bootloader with the fuse blown; and once the knock-on sequence is triggered, the subject happily will accept the byte stream and 'run it' without questioning it.
oh, and the crc mechanism is broken so even corrupted byte streams still are accepted and run without question.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday November 09 2015, @01:33AM
Do you realize, though, that every guy who refused religious teachings as he grew up, probably including you, is invalidating your pretty metaphor?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Sunday November 08 2015, @05:06PM
Worse, there's a figurative get-out-of-jail free card in the form of either atonement (confess sins and be forgiven for minor ones), or "God will be the judge" when you reach the afterlife... i.e. after the world you lived in is no longer able to punish you for transgressions.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 09 2015, @12:02PM
The idea of punishment is particularly religious, actually, and it behooves us to lose it in favor of concern for optimizing human behaviors, both at individual and aggregate levels. Nothing is gained by anyone by punishing someone, in and of itself, though one may argue that it discourages others (which does not seem to be the case, going by recidivism figures by justice system and the effects of cutting sentences in Europe to reduce prison loading (zero effect on anything else)), in itself ethically dubious as it instrumentalizes humans for the purpose of "making an example", and practically dubious as it fails to correct behavioral issues, instead relying on imposing an artificial disincentive through public spending so the entrained patterns don't manifest.
Nietzsche voiced the opinion that one might imagine a society so powerful (which we may take as "well developed and wealthy") that it need not punish wrongdoing. I would argue that the Scandinavian countries offer an early example of precisely such a constructive approach, though it's not quite there yet. Studies on feedback mechanisms show positive feedback has a greater utility than negative feedback, too. In short, everything I've seen seems to support the idea that a hole in your wall cannot be removed using a chainsaw, but must rather be filled with substance; in this analogy, that punishment is a dysfunctional relic whose only remaining function is to indulge vengeful sadism, which is a rather common cause of crime in the first place and probably not something we want to collectively endorse.
Let's build better people.