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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: 1) by Francis on Sunday November 08 2015, @04:13PM
People object to murder mainly because of the way it's defined. Very, very few people think that it's never OK to kill somebody on purpose. Where people differ is under what circumstances it's permissible or whether there should be any rules at all.
For example, the Israeli government has no problem killing thousands of innocent Palestinians, but has a huge problem with killing a small number of Israelis. The US government was OK with tens of thousands of largely innocent Iraqis being killed in the sectarian violence that followed the Iraqi military being shut down, and little problem with thousands of service members being killed because there weren't sufficient troop levels to do the job. But were appalled by the smaller number of people killed in 9/11.
Serial killers and mobsters have little or no problem killing people for little or no reason.
The Black Lives Matter movement automatically considers shootings by the police to be immoral, regardless of what the evidence eventually shows.
Most people consider those to be unacceptable, but they still happen because there's enough people that don't consider those killings to be immoral. Or worse, consider the killings to be justified or necessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 08 2015, @05:22PM
No, people object to murder because it violates another's self-sovereignty. Its the old "your rights end where mine begin" - their life is not yours to take. And the right to self-defense is also a basic human right, if somebody tries to take your life, you have a right to defend yourself, using up to and including deadly force if necessary, thats why self-defense doesn't fall under "murder".