Home › Forum Online Discussion › General › Religious children meaner than secular kids (Study)
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November 6, 2015 at 10:43 pm #45122Michael WinnKeymaster
Note: This study reveals the flaw in Big Religion, which is hierarchical and thus power-driven by top-down beliefs that leads to judgements about others. What I like about Tao – it’s a sphere-archy, everyone is equally connected to the same source/Tao. That’s why Taoists are often accused of being amoral. But that makes them “nice people”, as their innate virtue can then shine through without being filtered by dogmatic beliefs. – michael
Religious children are meaner than their secular counterparts, study finds
Religious belief appears to have negative influence on childrens altruism and judgments of others actions even as parents see them as more empathetic
School boy at door of churchChildren from religious families are less kind and more punitive than those from non-religious households, according to a new study.
Academics from seven universities across the world studied Christian, Muslim and non-religious children to test the relationship between religion and morality.
They found that religious belief is a negative influence on childrens altruism.
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 Childrens 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.
Almost 1,200 children, aged between five and 12, in the US, Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey and South Africa participated in the study. Almost 24% were Christian, 43% Muslim, and 27.6% non-religious. The numbers of Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, agnostic and other children were too small to be statistically valid.
They were asked to choose stickers and then told there were not enough to go round for all children in their school, to see if they would share. They were also shown film of children pushing and bumping one another to gauge their responses.
The findings robustly demonstrate that children from households identifying as either of the two major world religions (Christianity and Islam) were less altruistic than children from non-religious households.
Older children, usually those with a longer exposure to religion, exhibit[ed] the greatest negative relations.
The study also found that religiosity affects childrens punitive tendencies. Children from religious households frequently appear to be more judgmental of others actions, it said.
Muslim children judged interpersonal harm as more mean than children from Christian families, with non-religious children the least judgmental. Muslim children demanded harsher punishment than those from Christian or non-religious homes.
At the same time, the report said that religious parents were more likely than others to consider their children to be more empathetic and more sensitive to the plight of others.
Young Americans shifting US towards becoming less religious nation
Read moreThe report pointed out that 5.8 billion humans, representing 84% of the worldwide population, identify as religious. While it is generally accepted that religion contours peoples moral judgments and pro-social behaviour, the relation between religion and morality is a contentious one, it said.
The report was a welcome antidote to the presumption that religion is a prerequisite of morality, said Keith Porteus Wood of the UK National Secular Society.
It would be interesting to see further research in this area, but we hope this goes some way to undoing the idea that religious ethics are innately superior to the secular outlook. We suspect that people of all faiths and none share similar ethical principles in their day to day lives, albeit may express them differently depending on their worldview.
According to the respected Pew Research Center, which examines attitudes toward and practices of faith, most people around the world think it is necessary to believe in God to be a moral person. In the US, 53% of adults think that faith in God is necessary to morality, a figure which rose to seven of 10 adults in the Middle East and three-quarters of adults in six African countries surveyed by Pew.
November 7, 2015 at 2:13 pm #45123rideforeverParticipantThe goal of Christianity for instance is to push you into a stringent effort in order that you create a soul and merge with the divine. It is not easy to do that in such a chaotic world with many low influences around, and so pressure is part of their path. Pressure such as ‘sin’. It is required and the rewards are perhaps worth it.
Other paths have different goals, and different means.
Scientists get money by giving people what they want … such a report with such findings will certainly be paid for. A scientific report which reported the opposite findings … no-one would buy in this climate. (Give them what they want). This was also noted recently by the editors of The Lancet and The New England Medical Journal who both retired from editing in the last few years, and their view was that at least 50% of medical scientific research is fictitious or bent in order to make profits for corporations.
There is also the idea of spoiling the child; which is when a parent does not punish the child and gives them whatever they want. When the child is older he does not have the means to achieve his goals because he has been trained to indulge himself and make no efforts.
Different parents and cultures have different goals and means … which may perhaps all be valid, but when you mix it all together you just get brown !
For instance you may have particular goals for your child and try to raise them with particular values … but when they go to school and mix with other children they often end up being a copy of the collective corporate consumer culture, and it is difficult to prevent that … especially if you are of limited means.
Is judgement necessarily bad ? Certainly there is a need to judge the light from the darkness, the mountain from the valley.
What is the origin of judging people so as to harm them ? One thing I feel is that people are unhappy if they can’t do their life, if they can’t make progress. To make progress you have to have a plan and make efforts, but in this era with your twitter updates every 2 minutes and everyone wanting you to take a credit card and shop on Amazon, it is not easy to give yourself that discipline. And then you end up sitting on the sofa with a bag of chips.
Personally I have come to understand the importance of judging, having goals, disciminating, discipline and so on. Otherwise how can I do anything ?
November 7, 2015 at 3:50 pm #45125rideforeverParticipantThose statements by the Lancet / NEMJ editors say quite a lot. That’s corruption of medical science, heavily regulated … imagine what is occurring in other areas of science.
We can imagine many benefits of ‘secularism’ but what occurs in real life ? Well this. The corruption of science which is supposedly incorruptible.
For what would a scientist in today’s world do the right thing ? What reason would he have ? At the end ‘there is no god’, and it’s all about money … so give them what they want.
Does he have a ‘reason’ to be hard-assed about things ?
And that is secularism / atheism. We can have fine imagination about the world with these new values … but the reality has already been tested. Look at the planet – we have been secular for 100 years and it is destruction.
In the past scientists were willing to die for their ‘beliefs’ … like Socrates.
And it is also true that the greatest ever scientists were religious, at least at some level, including : #1 Newton, #2 Einstein, #3 Tesla, #4 Galileo.
#5 was Darwin, who was atheist.
Newton was a Hermetic Alchemist.
Galileo studied the bible and corresponded with the Pope.
Einstein / Tesla had an impersonal sense of a creator, or design.The other question is, is it really possible for a human to live without beliefs ?
Every human has a picture of the world, and that is a belief that comes from the culture. If you have a picture without Western Christianity, that does not make it secular.
Finally, Christ said love your neighbour as you would yourself. What is called “Western Christianity” that has been inflicted on the “West” has never had much to do with Christ.
November 7, 2015 at 7:22 pm #45127russellnParticipanton the body level the small intestine is the discrimination of good and bad, the sorting process of digestive fire, paired with heart relatively yin fire. Discrimination imbalanced can turn to bad digestion.
Public discourse muddied when start mixing up concepts of discrimination with prejudice and hate. We need good discrimination. Too much enforced tolerance, political correctness – health problems digestion and heart.
Seems running the show excessively from the socially conditioned intellect and beliefs – the predicament. Alchemical view go back to the body and the earth and celestial fire beaming into balanced cauldron. Should not lead to lack of discrimination.
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