Morality Study - People of Faith vs Agnostics/Atheists

I encountered an interesting study on morality. Its a comparison between responses between people who I dentify themselves as religious and those who identify themselves as atheist/agnostic. Many religious people contend that atheist/agnostic individuals are immoral due to the fact they do not believe in a god and even go so far as to insist that without religion society would become immoral and all hell would break lose.

Below I will give three situations. I would like to hear what you would choose in each situation and if you have faith or not. As well why you made those choices You can post anonymously if you feel uncomfortable about people knowing your beliefs. Tomorrow I will provide the results of the study.

Situation A

A train carrying five people is about to crash and all the people aboard will die. You are standing near a switch which would direct the train onto a side rail where a man is walking. The man's body would stop the train which would save everyone aboard but unfortunately would kill the man walking on the side rail.

What do you do?

Situation B

A child is drowning and you have the opportunity to jump in and save the child but you would get your trousers wet.

What do you do?

Situation C

Yo are a doctor and five people are dying in a hospital and organ transplants would save them. They all need different organs. There is a healthy man in the waiting room. If you took his organs five people would live but he would die.

What do you do?

I look forward to your repsonses.


UPDATE

Actual Study Results as promised.

These numbers were identical for both Religious People and Agnostics/Atheists

Situation A

Scarifice man to save 5 people - 90%
Wouldn't sacrifice man to save 5 people - 10%

Situation B

Save the child - 97%
Wouldn't do it because would make trousers wet - 3%

Situation C

Sacrifice man for organs to save 5 people - 10%
Wouldn't sacrifice him for organs to save 5 - 90%

As can be seen the reponses were the same for both religious people and agnostics/atheists.

Personal Note

I found it strange, personally, the discrepancy between Situation A & C as I found no difference between these situations. Both involved sacrificing someone for the sake of many yet there was no difference in the results between religious people and agnostics/atheists on both these. In situation A the majority found it ok but in Situation C it wasn't yet it is the same type of situation. Situation A was a religious allegory yet atheists/agnostics also would sacrifice the man for the sake of saving 5 people. Goes to show, morals are inate to human beings not religion, even in the complexity that such decisions entail. Recommend this Post

Joshua, the Jericho Genocide and the Fallacy of Religious Morality

I read about this study and was quite shocked to hear how religious moral teachings can have a negative effect on children.

The story of Joshua (a false one) seems to promote the idea that genocide is appropriate in some situations if you believe that a god of some kind gives you permission to do so, or if you believe you are chosen and entitled to the land somone else lives on.

The results of the study speak for themselves. The study was conducted by George Tamarin, an Israeli psychologist, in 1966 and 1973.

The Israelites' campaign to carry out their god's commandment to commit genocide against the native inhabitants of Canaan-cum-Palestine took several generations. It began with Joshua's massacre at Jericho. Contrary to the Christian song "Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho," according to scripture there was no battle at all. It was a siege, at the end of which all of the city's inhabitants were killed except Rahab the prostitute (she and her family were spared in exchange for helping Joshua plan his strategy, Joshua 6:16-17, 19, 21, 24, RSV):

Joshua said to the people, "Shout; for the LORD has given you the city. And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction . . . But all silver and gold, and vessels of bronze and iron, are sacred to the LORD; they shall go into the treasury of the LORD." . . . Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword . . . And they burned the city with fire, and all within it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.

The half-life and penetrance of such cultural legacies are often under-appreciated. Some 3,000 years after the fall of Jericho, Israeli psychologist George Tamarin (1966, 1973) measured the strength of residual in-group morality. He presented Joshua 6:20-21 to 1,066 school children, ages 8-14, in order to test "the effect of uncritical teaching of the Bible on the propensity for forming prejudices (particularly the notion of the 'chosen people,' the superiority of the monotheistic religion, and the study of acts of genocide by biblical heroes)." The children's answers to the question "Do you think Joshua and the Israelites acted rightly or not?," were categorized as follows: "'A' means total approval, 'B' means partial approval or disapproval, and 'C' means total disapproval." Across a broad spectrum of Israeli social and economic classes, 66% of responses were "A," 8% "B," and 26% "C." The "A" answers tended to be as straightforward as they were numerous (Tamarin, 1966):

• In my opinion Joshua and the Sons of Israel acted well, and here are the reasons: God promised them this land, and gave them permission to conquer. If they would not have acted in this manner or killed anyone, then there would be the danger that the Sons of Israel would have assimilated among the "Goyim."
• In my opinion Joshua was right when he did it, one reason being that God commanded him to exterminate the people so that the tribes of Israel will not be able to assimilate amongst them and learn their bad ways.
• Joshua did good because the people who inhabited the land were of a different religion, and when Joshua killed them he wiped their religion from the earth.

Tamarin (1973) noted that:

"C" classification [total disapproval] was accorded to all answers formally rejecting genocide, either on ethical or utilitarian grounds. This does not mean that all "C" responses reveal non-discriminatory attitudes. For example, one girl criticized Joshua's act, stating that "the Sons of Israel learned many bad things from the Goyim." . . . Another extremely racist response is that of a 10 year old girl disapproving the act, stating, "I think it is not good, since the Arabs are impure and if one enters an impure land one will also become impure and share their curse."

Other misgivings included (1966):

• I think Joshua did not act well, as they could have spared the animals for themselves.
• I think Joshua did not act well, as he should have left the property of Jericho; if he had not destroyed the property it would have belonged to the Israelites.

In contrast to the established difference between boys and girls in propensity toward violence and approval of violence in general, with regard to biblically commanded genocide Tamarin found that "Contrary to our expectation, there was no difference, concerning this most cruel form of prejudice, between male and female examinees" (1973). Less surprising, but more alarming, nearly half of the children who gave "total approval" to Joshua's behavior also gave "A" responses to the hypothetical question: "Suppose that the Israeli Army conquers an Arab village in battle. Do you think it would be good or bad to act towards the inhabitants as Joshua did towards the people of Jericho?" Tamarin (1966) received such responses as these:

• In my opinion this behavior was necessary, as the Arabs are our enemies always, and the Jews did not have a country, and it was necessary to behave like that towards the Arabs.
• It would have been good to treat the Arabs as Joshua and his soldiers did, as they are Arabs; they hate and retaliate against us all the time, and if we exterminate them as Joshua did, they won't be able to show themselves as greater heroes than we.
• I think it was good because we want our enemies to be conquered, and to widen our frontiers, and we should kill the Arabs as Joshua and the Israelites did.

Some respondents disapproved of Joshua's campaign (answer "C"), but approved of similar acts if committed by Israeli soldiers. One girl disapproved of Joshua "because it is written in the Bible, 'don't kill'," but she approved of the conjectured Israeli Army action, stating "I think it would be good, as we want our enemies to fall into our hands, enlarge our frontiers, and kill the Arabs as Joshua did."

As a control group, Tamarin tested 168 children who were read Joshua 6:20-21 with "General Lin" substituted for Joshua and a "Chinese Kingdom 3000 years ago" substituted for Israel. General Lin got a 7% approval rating, with 18% giving partial approval or disapproval, and 75% disapproving totally.

What this study shows is that morality is not tied to religion but to an inate human abilty to be moral towards others. Religion in this case actually diminished the morality that children already have.

Those who promote religious morality often take pot shots at those who are not religious or agnostic/atheist as having no morals when it is quite obviously not so.

These types of parables are taught to children at a very young age when children are impressionable and they carry it throughout there lives.

Is this acceptable material for any child to be exposed to? Recommend this Post