Punitive tendencies
The Guardian reports on A New Study that finds that children from godbothering families are less altruistic than children from non-godbothering families.
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 children’s 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 Children’s Altruism Across the World, published this week in Current Biology.
I can’t say that that surprises me. I don’t think religion necessarily makes people less altruistic, or that atheism necessarily does the opposite. But I do think there are aspects of religion that pull in that direction, in particular, the focus on a god as opposed to humans (and other animals). Obedience to a god just is not the same thing as concern for humans.
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 children’s punitive tendencies”. Children from religious households “frequently appear to be more judgmental of others’ actions”, it said.
Sure. That’s the obedience to god thing. The god is by its nature a tyrant – a being vastly more powerful than we are, demanding that we obey it – so it’s going to encourage a tyrant-based morality. Obey the tyrant, and judge harshly anyone who doesn’t.
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.”
Well said; not triumphalist. It’s always a mistake to be triumphalist about one New Study.
One thing that’s always struck me about religion is the “us vs them” tribalism. I think if there really was an evolutionary adaptation for religion, that is part of it. The commitment to tribe, the ability to recognize the “other” by the different rituals or symbols, and the tendency to be suspicious of the “other”.
This fits well with other studies I’ve seen that the celebrated charity of churches tends to go mostly to members of their own faith. Mormons were the highest on this, with helping going at something like 88% to other Mormons, and the Catholics were second in their approach to help mostly other Catholics. I don’t remember how they fell out exactly after that, but it seems that the less dogmatic the church, the more prone they were to be inclusive in their help.
The study was funded by the Templeton Foundation. Own goal?
First we had the study that showed children in religious families had a harder time distinguishing fact from fantasy, and now this.
I can’t help wondering, though, how much variation occurs between denominations.
Probably quite a bit. I think the more a church pushes the idea of judgement and even Just World thinking, the more likely they are to see the less fortunate as unworthy of help. Whereas other groups may focus on things like the Sermon on the Mount, the Good Samaritan, and “Whatever you did for the least among you, you did for me.” In the God is Love version of Christianity, they really don’t care if the person they are helping broke a law or drinks too much or just hasn’t got their shit together– the more of a mess they are, the more they *need* help to be in a better place.