Spin-off from this thread.
In the course of that discussion, I mentioned that
Come to think of it, I know of no studies which show that self-identified atheists tend to behave any differently from self-identified theists at all, with regards to “morality” or anything else.
Are there any such studies?
Lots of confounds involved, it seems, like if you compare some New York atheist academic to a Mississippi Baptist farmer.
Atheists go to church far less frequently.
Steven Weinberg
Blaise Pascal
thelurkinghorror’s point is quite cogent and may be put another way: what differences may be observable between the religious and the non-believers may not be religious belief or non-belief resulting in differences but rather differences that predispose to belief or non-belief.
Hence it is fairly well established that higher intelligence is negtively associated with strong religious belief. That association seems however unlikely to be based upon religiosity leading to lower intelligence and more likely, as hypothesized in that abstract:
Neither strong religiosity nor strong atheism exist in vacuums. They are part of cultural environments that individuals exist within. So the highly religious may be more likely to have particular voting habits (as one easy example) than the relatively areligious let alone the atheists (and check the cross tabs of a wide variety of poitical polls to find evidence for that) but the religious/areligious mindsets and the political behaviors/beliefs are less likely one the cause of the other than both the result of other commmon other causes that result in both.
RedSwinglineOne, nah. Stalinists, Maoists, and Nazis all were capable of cheerlully committing acts that could be held as evil as any Inquistor’s.
We humans need no God in either direction and can do both great and horrific all on our own.
But be careful, all the above were dogmatic belief systems in much the same vein as any religion.
Atheism, in and of itself, makes no such demands. It has no ethos and dogma it is merely the absence of a belief in god or gods. What a person does after that is another matter entirely.
Not quite sure what the point of that comment is, Novelty Bobble. I completely agree that there is nothing about atheism that predisposes people to evil … there is also nothing about atheism per se that protects people from doing horrible things. No more and no less so than religious belief does.
If your point is that dogmatic belief systems, be they based on a god concept or not, are what sets up people to do horrible things, then I would still debate. Some dogmatic beliefs motivate those things and some motivate great things. Some, for example, believe quite dogmatically that all humans have basic rights and are willing to make great self-sacrifices for others on the basis of that dogmatic belief. Some of those people base that dogma on a god concept; some do not …
Excuse the unfortunate expression in this context, but the devil’s in the details.
Sorry, I should have made clear that the “be careful” is not directed at you, your comment was completely correct. It was directed more at those who would make the lazy assumption that to be an atheist means you are buying in to a specific dogma or set of rules.
It doesn’t of course. “atheist” and “theist” only really have meaning when used as a suffix but what precedes that suffix gives you far more information. A natural question to someone who says “I’m a theist” would be “what kind?”. The same should hold for atheists as well.
i.e. “humanist-atheist”, “humanist theist”, “hard-line marxist atheist”, “fundamentalist shia muslim theist” etc. etc. all give you a better understanding of the values that person is likely to hold.
Of course in some cases the theist suffix is superfluous and can safely be dropped but not always. (buddhism, judaism etc.)
RedSwinglineOne, please re-read the OP.
Slowly, carefully, and with all the concentration you can muster.
Now: Did I ask for nifty quotes, or did I ask for studies?
Great question. I’ve never seen such studies, but it wasn’t an area of interest until just now.
Great question.
The numbers are not brilliant but there is an oft-reported statistic that self-identified atheists are
under represented in theUS prison system.
In the UK the figures are even muddier as the huge “no religion” section covers a multitude of sins (ha!) but even so, 0.7% of prisonersself indentify as atheist compared withperhaps 14%in the general population.
I’m not confident of those studies though the self-identified percentage of atheists in the UK certainly rings true when I consider my family, friends and colleagues.
Alas, that study seems to be behind a paywall. Do you have a .pdf of the full text, and if so - would you share it?
Thanks in advance.
Could that be a self-reinforcing statistic though, in a “there are no atheists in foxholes” kind of way ? If I had no earthly freedom or control over my existence whatsoever, I might seek it in the stars too, you know ?
Yep, could well be, though the “not religious” group in UK prison still seems to be around the right ballpark as the population at large.
No, sorry. I had found the abstract as a reference for what I read elsewhere multiple times in many forms. Another set of versions are the studies that demonstrate high rates of non-belief, among scientists especially the more accomplished scientists.
Does atheism lead them to become scientists? Does being a scientist lead them to become atheists? Or are both the result of their personality types, information processing styles, and subcultural influences?
Another interesting line of analysis is the cross impact/correlation of group membership and certainty of belief on various measures whether those group memberships and belief certainties are religious or secular.
There are also pretty clearly secondary gains to be had if you ‘get saved’ whilst imprisoned.
Wow. That seems both unnecessary, and undeservedly condescending.
Since you received a factual answer in post 2, and I was not the first (or last) to post without listing a study, I am going to assume that I have accidentally trod on some nerve of yours. For that I apologize. Please consider my post withdrawn.
I apologize for what I can now see was an unnecessarily harsh post. Sorry about that.