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Wealth is also a dominate trait of less generous people.
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The wealthiest Americans donate 1.3 percent of their income; the poorest, 3.2 percent.
---some experts have speculated that the wealthy may be less generous—that the personal drive to accumulate wealth may be inconsistent with the idea of communal support. Last year, Paul Piff, a psychologist at UC Berkeley, published research that correlated wealth with an increase in unethical behavior: “While having money doesn’t necessarily make anybody anything,” Piff later told New York magazine, “the rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests above the interests of other people.” They are, he continued, “more likely to exhibit characteristics that we would stereotypically associate with, say, *******s.”
I believe when religion and money are mixed--the results are even worse. No wonder Jesus said
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"No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.
We cannot lump up all religions on this topic and end up with such a conclusion.
For this sort of topic we should differentiate between
1. Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity, Islam and others
2. Major Eastern religions - Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, and the likes.
I am familiar with all the major religions of the world.
In principle the central core of the Abrahamic religions is about the salvation of one's own self and thus tend towards self-centered-ness and selfishness.
In addition the other central core of the Abrahamic religions is the significant focus on the primal "us versus them" impulse where the 'them' is always a threat again the 'us'.
With this one can hypothesize there will be less selfishness within similar believers but more selfishness across disbelievers.
While many Christians are seemingly charitable and help others unconditionally, more often there is an intent of proselytization and hope of converting non-believers in their charity.
In Islam while there are some fringe verses relating to helping the poor, the overriding weighting it not to be friendly and helping the non-Muslims whom should be held with severe contempt. By such verses alone one can straight away infer Islam in principle is a very selfish religion and one can verify this by empirical evidence.
Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism do not have any core principles that promote and condone selfishness. Buddhism and Jainism for example do not agree with the concept of a permanent 'self,' so there is no self to be selfish.
It is too hasty to generalize atheists are less selfish based on such a limited sample.
There is no specific belief system for being an atheist. As such a correct experiment should be done on the various specific ideologies of non-theists, e.g. communism, secular beliefs, humanism, etc.
I would not take the conclusions of the OP too seriously.
We cannot lump up all religions on this topic and end up with such a conclusion.
This is factually untrue. There is nothing that prevents single-variable studies. We actually can legitimately lump up all religions together and end up with a legitimate and valid conclusion.
What you seem to be saying is that you want more detail, perhaps in the interest of shifting the negative aspects of the conclusion away from a sub-population you want to somehow protect from criticism. The nature of scientific study is to gain more insight into details with additional research, but that doesn't belie conclusions that don't provide such details. Science doesn't start at the most micro level and works sideways; it starts at the top and works down.
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Originally Posted by Continuum
For this sort of topic we should differentiate between
1. Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity, Islam and others
2. Major Eastern religions - Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, and the likes.
That's one way to divide religions up. Arguments could be made that Hinduism should be considered along with the Abrahamic, the distinction between the two groups being the existence of anthropomorphic godlike figureheads. Arguments could also be made that the division needs to be done horizontally, based on whether the adherents take the dogma literally or rather as guidance. That would tend to split each religion up into two groups, one on each side of the distinction drawn. The point is that these divisions, including yours, are arbitrary and therefore subjective.
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Originally Posted by Continuum
In principle the central core of the Abrahamic religions is about the salvation of one's own self and thus tend towards self-centered-ness and selfishness.
I bet most of the most pious adherents to the Abrahamic religions will say you're wrong about their religion, claiming it is about glorification and service to God and humanity, or some such, and the salvation of the self is simply a reward for that, and that that differs from the mechanics of Eastern religions in only superficial ways. And their subjective assessment of the theme of their religion is as valid as yours, they're both subjective.
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Originally Posted by Continuum
In Islam while there are some fringe verses relating to helping the poor, the overriding weighting it not to be friendly and helping the non-Muslims whom should be held with severe contempt.
Similar things can be said about Judaism and Christianity, by people who don't have a vested interest in trying to defend Christianity. Incidentally, I'm not sure if this was deliberate, but this comment you've posted is a really good example of Islamophobia. There are myriad ways to parse the Christian and Islamic holy texts, and there are just as many that cast a positive light on one side as cast a negative light on that side.
So above we see three different ways subjectivity could be injected into the argument to try to deflect away from an objective conclusion that one doesn't like. I suppose you could try to tie one of your distinctions down to some objective measurement - good luck doing so. There's a reason why these arguments tend to be tied back to subjective assessments: The objective assessments don't predict the desired conclusions. Above you tried to indict the Koran, but that's pointless because the books themselves aren't really the root cause of whatever differences there may actually be between the religions.
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Originally Posted by Continuum
Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism do not have any core principles that promote and condone selfishness. Buddhism and Jainism for example do not agree with the concept of a permanent 'self,' so there is no self to be selfish.
Notice what you did here. You left Hinduism out. Interesting. This demonstrates what I was saying before about the subjective division of the population into sub-populations.
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Originally Posted by Continuum
I would not take the conclusions of the OP too seriously.
Which is precisely what someone who doesn't like the study's conclusion would say. Just sayin'.
Not really, I know 60-70 atheists. Plus all the ones on this discussion board who's sole purpose is to antagonize people of faith (its a new religion you know). Im sure the kiddos are getting it at home as well.
Oh that's a load of horse excrement. Given the relatively low number of atheists in this country, knowing 60 or 70 of them is nigh on impossible unless you're hanging out at Free Thought conventions and chatting up every person you see. Hell, most people don't know 60 or 70 people in general, much less specifically atheists who are quite rare and often don't "out" themselves to people.
And even if you DO know 60 to 70 atheists, how WELL do you know them? I call a steaming pile of more horse manure if you're going to sit there and tell me that you're close to all 60-70 of them to the point where they're telling you how they raise their kids.
Sorry, pal, but I'm not buyin' what you're sellin'. You're just trying to play a game of "One-UP-manship" by countering someone else's post with a "nuh uh!" and then over-compensating by claiming to know an anomalously high number of atheists well enough that they're telling you about their personal lives. Bull.
Plus, you really don't KNOW what our "sole" purpose is -- which is just another attempt at redefining the topic in your favor. You can't claim to know what our purpose is. And the implied fascism, the "sit down and shut up" bent of your post lies naked for all to see. Yeah, atheists aren't allowed to express our opinions on religion. Nope. Only the religious are allowed to comment on religion. That way, the world only hears the religious side of the topic. It is essentially dismissing EVERYTHING an atheist has to say about religion in one fell swoop -- that nothing we say has any value. Why? Because we're just trolls running around antagonizing people without any thought, debate, logic, or critical thinking skills. Just a band of brutes looking to beat up on people. Well, guess what ... if I, for one, really wanted to "antagonize" people of faith, believe me, this forum hasn't seen my definition of antagonizing else I'd be perma-banned.
Censorship. Fascism. The Abrahamic religions thrive on it.
Nice try, but you don't even get one of those crappy unfiltered cigarettes you have to roll yourself ... much less a cigar.
Can we get a vet or zoologist to weigh in on the actual nature of the claim made by slo1318?
Some posters earlier in the thread insisted on focusing on the fact that the data didn't include a breakdown by age or nationality. While I guessed they were trying to separate out themselves from the negative conclusion by denying the conclusion on the basis that it didn't give them exculpatory data they could use to assuage their bad feelings about the conclusion, I did note that it was worthwhile to perhaps pursue more research to refine our understanding of the conclusion. For my part, I would love to have seen this data placed in historical context. (Of course that would require the study being a repeat of an identical study done 20, 40, 60 years ago, back when the idea of increasing our understanding of the lack of moral standing for religion in general would have been more likely to have resulted in severe repercussions for those wanting to do such research.)
My curiosity stems from the idea that the (disproven) assumption that religiosity has a causal connection and a positive association with moral behaviors may have come from somewhere. Of course, Shirina could be correct - that it is nothing more than a self-ratifying conceit put forward by the religious to cast themselves in a positive light. However, maybe it was once true. Maybe the conceit we see today is a vestige of some old or ancient distinction that was actual.
So much has changed over the last sixty years. It seems that we've seen an unprecedented explosion of institutionalized rationalization for self-centeredness, self-absorption, and selfishness. It makes sense that the ascendancy of such personally gratifying behaviors would be most prevalent among those who dominate society, rather than among the marginalized within society.
Of course, there's the question of China. I would love to have seen the data broken up by country. However, the fact that no conclusions were made based on that variable leads me to believe that there wasn't enough significance to whatever difference there may have been. The article effectively said as much, when the study made clear that the statistically "significant predictors of sharing" were specifically age and religiousness.
Anyway, I suspect this is just the first a long line of research to come dispelling myths about religiousness, now that religion's dominant place in society is weakened.
Can we get a vet or zoologist to weigh in on the actual nature of the claim made by slo1318?
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Originally Posted by bUU
My curiosity stems from the idea that the (disproven) assumption that religiosity has a causal connection and a positive association with moral behaviors may have come from somewhere. Of course, Shirina could be correct - that it is nothing more than a self-ratifying conceit put forward by the religious to cast themselves in a positive light. However, maybe it was once true. Maybe the conceit we see today is a vestige of some old or ancient distinction that was actual.
Not that long ago, perhaps in the 20's and 30's, the powerful religious leaders were actually very liberal, progressive, and far more moral than the religious leaders of today.
Unfortunately, I can't delve into this too deeply due to the political nature of my response, but I will say this much: At some point in the past, a right-wing, conservative take on religion began to dominate here in the United States. The liberalism of religion -- which included far, far, far more human morality than religion of today -- fell by the wayside.
Even more unfortunately, even liberal believers in those days were, by today's standards, fundamentalists who often believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible (i.e. see the Scopes Monkey Trial). This made it easy for politically right-leaning conservative fundamentalists to ride the greased rails to power.
The problem now is that, since the Reagan presidency and the excess materialism of the 1980's, greed and avarice have become virtues rather than vices. Even the devoutly religious conservatives would just love to cancel our welfare programs and force everyone to rely on the meager resources of their local church to avoid starving to death. Why? So they can pay less taxes. And most of the really excessively noisy people on this issue are almost exclusively middle-middle to upper-middle class. They're not hurting (and if they are, it isn't due to lack of money but rather financial mismanagement.)
As I've often said, the liberal Christians are still liberal and they tend to follow the teachings of Christ. The conservative Christians of today are like the Pharisee of Jesus's time -- more worried about following the letter of the law (especially when it suits them), calling out people for their supposed sins, and pretending to be vaingloriously moral when, in fact, they serve the will of Mammon. Money comes before even God, though they'll never admit to that, of course. But their actions speak loudly enough.
And there I will end it lest I get caught up in a long political commentary that will get the thread locked.
Not that long ago, perhaps in the 20's and 30's, the powerful religious leaders were actually very liberal, progressive, and far more moral than the religious leaders of today.
I bet that if atheists were asked "Who is the most moral person alive today?" their answers would be many and varied, but the name of a living person atop the list would almost surely be Pope Francis. That's not the say that he must invariably be the most moral person, but there is a level of importance attached to being moral and noted. If the absolute most moral person lives a life of remarkable compassion and kindness and dies unknown, then that person's impact on humanity may be limited or greatly delayed or worse, lost in the noise. Even a less moral person, someone who stand up as the leader of a faith that, let's admit the truth, has a lot of judgement associated with it, and says, "Who am I to judge?" - that person may have a far more positive impact on humanity, just from that one statement, than the most moral person who fades into oblivion. In the end, while the downfall of dogmatic religion may stem from its own internal collapse and dissipation, some of its most negative aspects may vanish sooner than later simply due to remediation from within.
If we're lucky.
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Originally Posted by Shirina
Unfortunately, I can't delve into this too deeply due to the political nature of my response, but I will say this much: At some point in the past, a right-wing, conservative take on religion began to dominate here in the United States. The liberalism of religion -- which included far, far, far more human morality than religion of today -- fell by the wayside.
There's no need to delve into politics. What you're saying is simply a matter of history: From the end of Prohibition through the 1960s, fundamentalist and similarly dogmatic religious leaders and institutions in the United States eschewed direct interactions in politics as a means of staying above the fray, saving themselves from the stain associate with such gutter pursuits as politics. Two SCOTUS cases were the "straws that broke the camels' backs" resulting in conservative Christianity deciding to enter the political arena. Most folks readily recall that one of the cases was Roe v. Wade. The other was Green v. Connally, decided soon thereafter, within which a fundamentalist Christian school failed in their effort to defend the right to practice (allegedly religiously-based) racial discrimination while still receiving the religious tax-exemption.
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Originally Posted by Shirina
Even more unfortunately, even liberal believers in those days were, by today's standards, fundamentalists who often believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible (i.e. see the Scopes Monkey Trial).
Uh, no. Charles Frances Potter was a vanguard of the liberal movement back in the mid-1920s, and he was an advisor to Darrow in his defense of Scopes, not a supporter of the prosecution's case.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shirina
The problem now is that, since the Reagan presidency and the excess materialism of the 1980's, greed and avarice have become virtues rather than vices. Even the devoutly religious conservatives would just love to cancel our welfare programs and force everyone to rely on the meager resources of their local church to avoid starving to death. Why? So they can pay less taxes.
And deprive the less fortunate of meager crumbs of dignity in order to afford to vacation in Aruba instead of Key West. Rolling back up to Pope Francis, it was nice to see him at least pay lip-service to criticizing such immorality.
Can we get a vet or zoologist to weigh in on the actual nature of the claim made by slo1318?
Some posters earlier in the thread insisted on focusing on the fact that the data didn't include a breakdown by age or nationality. While I guessed they were trying to separate out themselves from the negative conclusion by denying the conclusion on the basis that it didn't give them exculpatory data they could use to assuage their bad feelings about the conclusion, I did note that it was worthwhile to perhaps pursue more research to refine our understanding of the conclusion. For my part, I would love to have seen this data placed in historical context. (Of course that would require the study being a repeat of an identical study done 20, 40, 60 years ago, back when the idea of increasing our understanding of the lack of moral standing for religion in general would have been more likely to have resulted in severe repercussions for those wanting to do such research.)
My curiosity stems from the idea that the (disproven) assumption that religiosity has a causal connection and a positive association with moral behaviors may have come from somewhere. Of course, Shirina could be correct - that it is nothing more than a self-ratifying conceit put forward by the religious to cast themselves in a positive light. However, maybe it was once true. Maybe the conceit we see today is a vestige of some old or ancient distinction that was actual.
So much has changed over the last sixty years. It seems that we've seen an unprecedented explosion of institutionalized rationalization for self-centeredness, self-absorption, and selfishness. It makes sense that the ascendancy of such personally gratifying behaviors would be most prevalent among those who dominate society, rather than among the marginalized within society.
Of course, there's the question of China. I would love to have seen the data broken up by country. However, the fact that no conclusions were made based on that variable leads me to believe that there wasn't enough significance to whatever difference there may have been. The article effectively said as much, when the study made clear that the statistically "significant predictors of sharing" were specifically age and religiousness.
Anyway, I suspect this is just the first a long line of research to come dispelling myths about religiousness, now that religion's dominant place in society is weakened.
Keyboard psychology.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shirina
Oh that's a load of horse excrement. Given the relatively low number of atheists in this country, knowing 60 or 70 of them is nigh on impossible unless you're hanging out at Free Thought conventions and chatting up every person you see. Hell, most people don't know 60 or 70 people in general, much less specifically atheists who are quite rare and often don't "out" themselves to people.
And even if you DO know 60 to 70 atheists, how WELL do you know them? I call a steaming pile of more horse manure if you're going to sit there and tell me that you're close to all 60-70 of them to the point where they're telling you how they raise their kids.
Sorry, pal, but I'm not buyin' what you're sellin'. You're just trying to play a game of "One-UP-manship" by countering someone else's post with a "nuh uh!" and then over-compensating by claiming to know an anomalously high number of atheists well enough that they're telling you about their personal lives. Bull.
Plus, you really don't KNOW what our "sole" purpose is -- which is just another attempt at redefining the topic in your favor. You can't claim to know what our purpose is. And the implied fascism, the "sit down and shut up" bent of your post lies naked for all to see. Yeah, atheists aren't allowed to express our opinions on religion. Nope. Only the religious are allowed to comment on religion. That way, the world only hears the religious side of the topic. It is essentially dismissing EVERYTHING an atheist has to say about religion in one fell swoop -- that nothing we say has any value. Why? Because we're just trolls running around antagonizing people without any thought, debate, logic, or critical thinking skills. Just a band of brutes looking to beat up on people. Well, guess what ... if I, for one, really wanted to "antagonize" people of faith, believe me, this forum hasn't seen my definition of antagonizing else I'd be perma-banned.
Censorship. Fascism. The Abrahamic religions thrive on it.
Nice try, but you don't even get one of those crappy unfiltered cigarettes you have to roll yourself ... much less a cigar.
Seriously? You don't know 60-70 people in general? Anyone who has gone to school, work and belonged to even one or two organizations knows that many people. I don't know if I know 60-70 atheists, but I, as an older, suburban woman who is a practicing Christian know probably a dozen. Many have no clue about religion, including those who became atheist after being involved in religion as a child. And herein lies my point about this study. Kids, especially in the lower ages of this study, don't know what they are, religiously.
As adults, there is no doubt that the religious give more to charity, and not just to religious charities, than the non-religious. Here are a few articles to support that position. It’s Social Ties "Not surprisingly, the most highly religious Americans contribute their time and treasure to religious causes. But they also give to secular causes—at a higher rate than do the most secular Americans.. . .The rates for charitable giving according to the Jumpstart survey are: 61 percent of Black Protestants; 64 % of Evangelical Protestants; 67 % of Mainline Protestants, 68 % of Roman Catholics, and 76 % of Jews. By contrast, only 46 % of the not religiously affiliated made any charitable giving."
(Emphasis mine)
Even some atheist groups acknowledge this: 10 Things Christians Do Better than Atheists - #1 Charity Work - Minnesota Atheists ~ Positive Atheism in Action Since 1991 "For all of the faults in theology, Christians have a lock on charity work. When someone thinks of Christian kindness, I doubt that they imagine brainwashing children to fear a non existent Hell and a deity who watches every move and knows your thoughts. Instead, images ofsoup kitchens, food shelves, homeless shelters, Habitat for Humanity,even sandbagging ahead of a flood are all things churches are known for. Why aren't the same things associated with atheist kindness?"
Trying to make some kind of rational logic out of the seemingly random nonsense posted to try to deny the results of scientific research.
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Originally Posted by Katarina Witt
Seriously? You don't know 60-70 people in general? Anyone who has gone to school, work and belonged to even one or two organizations knows that many people.
I can read a page in the White Pages and "know" more than 60-70 people, I suppose, if you want to trivialize the discussion to that extent. slo1318 defined what people "knowing" other people means in the context of this thread, i.e., having enough knowledge of their internal motivations ("me oriented") and enough knowledge of what precisely they teach their children ("kids are taught to have disdain"). But perhaps it serves your preferred narrative better to have forgotten and to ignore what the thread was actually talking about.
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Originally Posted by Katarina Witt
Kids, especially in the lower ages of this study, don't know what they are, religiously.
So what you're saying (probably without realizing it) is that the study is revealing what they're learning from example (the aforementioned "internal motivations") and what they're being taught explicitly (the aforementioned "teach their children").
It is important to keep in mind that we're talking about altruism - the giving of one's self or of what one has without any expectation of reward, either in this life or another. One of the things that could explain the difference between what the highly religious think of themselves and the results of the scientific research is that the highly religious exhibit a very high level of compliance with externally-imposed expectations. If so, that's a good thing. It would mean that religious requirements may be a small buffer against the innate self-motivation that religion evokes.
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