Does Religion Make You Nice?

[MrsSmith]

Somewhat a religious topic...

Does Religion Make You Nice?
Does atheism make you mean?
By Paul Bloom
Posted Friday, Nov. 7, 2008, at 7:05 AM ET


Many Americans doubt the morality of atheists. According to a 2007 Gallup poll, a majority of Americans say that they would not vote for an otherwise qualified atheist as president, meaning a nonbeliever would have a harder time getting elected than a Muslim, a homosexual, or a Jew. Many would go further and agree with conservative commentator Laura Schlessinger that morality requires a belief in God—otherwise, all we have is our selfish desires. In The Ten Commandments, she approvingly quotes Dostoyevsky: "Where there is no God, all is permitted." The opposing view, held by a small minority of secularists, such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, is that belief in God makes us worse. As Hitchens puts it, "Religion poisons everything."

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Denmark and Sweden aren't exceptions. A 2005 study by Gregory Paul looking at 18 democracies found that the more atheist societies tended to have relatively low murder and suicide rates and relatively low incidence of abortion and teen pregnancy.

So, this is a puzzle. If you look within the United States, religion seems to make you a better person. Yet atheist societies do very well—better, in many ways, than devout ones.

The first step to solving this conundrum is to unpack the different components of religion. In my own work, I have argued that all humans, even young children, tacitly hold some supernatural beliefs, most notably the dualistic view that bodies and minds are distinct. (Most Americans who describe themselves as atheists, for instance, nonetheless believe that their souls will survive the death of their bodies.) Other aspects of religion vary across cultures and across individuals within cultures. There are factual beliefs, such as the idea that there exists a single god that performs miracles, and moral beliefs, like the conviction that abortion is murder. There are religious practices, such as the sacrament or the lighting of Sabbath candles. And there is the community that a religion brings with it—the people who are part of your church, synagogue, or mosque.

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American atheists, by contrast, are often left out of community life. The studies that Brooks cites in Gross National Happiness, which find that the religious are happier and more generous then the secular, do not define religious and secular in terms of belief. They define it in terms of religious attendance. It is not hard to see how being left out of one of the dominant modes of American togetherness can have a corrosive effect on morality. As P.Z. Myers, the biologist and prominent atheist, puts it, "Scattered individuals who are excluded from communities do not receive the benefits of community, nor do they feel willing to contribute to the communities that exclude them."

The sorry state of American atheists, then, may have nothing to do with their lack of religious belief. It may instead be the result of their outsider status within a highly religious country where many of their fellow citizens, including very vocal ones like Schlessinger, find them immoral and unpatriotic. Religion may not poison everything, but it deserves part of the blame for this one.

    Yep, you read that right.  "Religion" doesn't make people better people, going to church does...and it's OUR fault the atheists and DUmmies don't go.   
 

[franksolich]

I dunno, Mrs. Smith.

Has anybody ever thought that atheists deserve to be on the outside?

Having rejected God, they've also rejected man.

[Carl]

Comparisons like these are silly because comparing Sweden and Denmark to the US is just plain silly.

Does Sweden or Denmark have the inner city thuggary that the American left has subsidized for the last 40 + years?

Just for an exact comparison.

Sweden----Population:   9,045,389 (July 2008 est.)

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/sw.html

NYC----As of July 1, 2006, the population of the City of New York was 8,250,567

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/census/popcur.shtml

I am sure the crime rate in NYC is much larger then the crime rate in Sweden and I doubt many would consider NYC to be a religious city as far as conservative values goes.
Eliminate the leftist urban cesspools and I wonder what the stats would show.

[asdf2231]

Feeling God in your heart and doing his work makes you nice.

Religion just gives you a hook to hang your spiritual coat on.

Lotta people confuse Religion with Spirituality.

[MrsSmith]

I dunno, Mrs. Smith.

Has anybody ever thought that atheists deserve to be on the outside?

Having rejected God, they've also rejected man.

Even weirder...churches welcome atheists.     Where else would we get new members? 

I found the article somewhat amusing...it's rather like me trying to write an article comparing building aircraft to building rockets...both subjects about which I am profoundly ignorant.  (Though probably not as ignorant as Paul Bloom is about religion.) 

[Vagabond]

It kind of depends.  Though I will say the most odious sort of person I have ever met called himself an objectivist.  Even Paul Hill wasn't that bad.

[Wretched Excess]

well, considering the fact that "Godless" societies like the former soviet empire and china torture their citizens and rule as thugs, I would say that the answer is "yes".

[Woody]

The author needs to redefine his terms; he's getting wrapped around the axle on the whole thing. 

I'm not a regular churchgoer, but I do have a strong sense of spirituality.  And I'd help almost anyone out of a bind (as long as it's not a recurring thing). 

Those with some kind of 'touchstone' or 'signpost' are generally better people than those who go with the flow and justify themselves to nobody but themselves. 

[Sam Adams]

Religion does not make you nice--or good, or loving, or wise. God does. At  least, the God of the Bible does. False gods (the god of Islam, for example) can certainly make you surly and mean. And lost.

[Splashdown]

I dunno; I can think of lots of saints who could be called lots of things--"nice" isn't one of them. Also, I'm wondering if you could really call Jesus "nice." He wasn't playing very nice with the hypocrites, pharasees, and power base of his time. He himself came to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

I think looking for Christians to be "nice" is missing the point a bit.

[MrsSmith]

I dunno; I can think of lots of saints who could be called lots of things--"nice" isn't one of them. Also, I'm wondering if you could really call Jesus "nice." He wasn't playing very nice with the hypocrites, pharasees, and power base of his time. He himself came to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

I think looking for Christians to be "nice" is missing the point a bit.

Good thought...we're called to be "salt and light," but salt isn't always "nice."  It can be very abrasive, and it burns.  Come to think of it, light isn't always nice, either...

[Chris_]

Good thought...we're called to be "salt and light," but salt isn't always "nice."  It can be very abrasive, and it burns.  Come to think of it, light isn't always nice, either...

Cockroaches don't much care for it.

[Chris_]

I dunno, Mrs. Smith.

Has anybody ever thought that atheists deserve to be on the outside?

Having rejected God, they've also rejected man.

Feeling a little critical, Coach?

I have my faith, they can have theirs.

The most interesting things I find about atheists is that 1) they generally hate God (which makes them anti-theists, not atheists); 2) they deride people who have faith,which just makes them fascists.

[djones520]

I dunno, Mrs. Smith.

Has anybody ever thought that atheists deserve to be on the outside?

Having rejected God, they've also rejected man.

Excuse me?

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

I hate stories like this. They try to quantify the immeasurable and use it as an indictment.

My favorite religious parable.

A bible study group pondered the meaning of God's utterance, "I shall refine you like silver". They had the gist of it but they weren't familiar with the exact science behind silver refinement so one of them said she would ask a family friend who was a jeweler.

The next business day the young lady went to the firnd and made her inquiry, "How do you refine silver?" The process was simple enough: you hold it over a flame. Unsettling, but it made sense of tribulations bettering a person.

"But," the silversmith interjected before the young lady's uneasy acceptance could set in. "I have to be very precise and exact as to how I do it.

"If I set the unrefined silver too far from the flame the impurities will not leave it entirely giving a tarnished product. But if I set it too close the sample will curdle and spoil."

"So too if I fail to leave it in the fire long enough or hold it there too long."

"Then how do you know when the silver is finally ready?" the young lady asked.

"Oh, that's the easiest part," the jeweler answered smiling.

"I can see myself in it."



I cannot imagine man can make himself anything but a sinner. The are sinners in pews and saints in gutters. Only God knows which is which but no saint ever slipped through his fingers. Nice? Mean? Stop asking about the other guy and worry about yourself. What would God see if he looked at you?