Do christians really have lower moral standards than others

[adawgj]

I don’t think Christians have lower moral standards. I think it’s because those standards take discipline and concentration. Take for example what Christ teaches. Jesus teaches to turn the other cheek, love your enemies, judge not so that you may not be judged. Each example sounds simple, but in reality they are impossible to absolutely master. Which shows our imperfection as humans.

 

[adawgj]

It really depends on the population. For example in Afghanistan there is one Jew out of the majority Muslims in the population. So if the one Jew was in prison, basically one can say that all Jews living in Afghanistan are in Afghan prisons.

 

[_Abyssinia]

A Barna study that compared atheists to Evangelicals views on behaviour found:

Examining people’s faith perspectives revealed that evangelicals were the group most likely to follow traditional morality while atheists and agnostics were the faith segment most likely to reject those ways.

Among evangelicals, profanity (16%) and pornography (12%) were the most common transgressions. Fewer than 5% of evangelicals had engaged in gossip (4%), inappropriate sex (3%), gambling (2%), lying (1%) or drunkenness (less than one-half of one percent).

In contrast, among skeptics (atheists and agnostics) participation in the eight behaviors ranged from a low of 11% (retaliating) up to a high of 60% (using profanity). While evangelicals averaged 6% participation in each of the eight behaviors mentioned, skeptics averaged five times that level (29%). Other common acts among skeptics included exposure to pornography (50%), gossip (34%) and drunkenness (33%).

barna.org/barna-update/article/16-teensnext-gen/25-young-adults-and-liberals-struggle-with-moralit

Arthur C Brooks cited data regarding charity in America:

While 68 percent of the total population gives (and 51 percent volunteers) to nonreligious causes each year, religious people are 10 points more likely to give to these causes than secularists (71 percent to 61 percent) and 21 points more likely to volunteer (60 percent to 39 percent). For example, religious people are 7 points more likely than secularists to volunteer for neighborhood and civic groups, 20 points more likely to volunteer to help the poor or elderly, and 26 points more likely to volunteer for school or youth programs. It seems fair to say that religion engenders charity in general — including nonreligious charity.

hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6577

 

[_Abyssinia]

Having read an interesting yet worrying report by Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology.
I’m trying to get to grips with the evidence that shows a higher intellectual & moral standard of non religious people.
The conclusions his data provides are quite Compelling & im having a great deal of trouble finding ways to challenge it.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

DaddyGirl cites an excerpt from the study that compares Sweden to other places.

Sweden and other Nordic countries are sometimes held up by atheists as examples. There are various polls on belief in God with sometimes varying numbers but according to a report on Gallup poll from 2011:

People who don’t believe in God or a Supreme Being(s) are most likely to live in France (39 percent), Sweden (37 percent), Belgium (36 percent), Great Britain (34 percent), Japan (33 percent) and Germany (31 percent).

christianpost.com/news/global-poll-most-believe-in-god-afterlife-49994

Apart from Sweden, do you hear of atheists as frequently as they hold up Sweden, hold up those other countries as examples?

Check out the following article on Sweden. There are many parts of life in Sweden that no country should want to emulate:

zenit.org/en/articles/secularism-in-sweden

This article looks a different study:

Do Atheists Really Have Higher IQs than Believers?

A Barna study that compared atheists to Evangelicals views on behaviour found:

Examining people’s faith perspectives revealed that evangelicals were the group most likely to follow traditional morality while atheists and agnostics were the faith segment most likely to reject those ways.

Among evangelicals, profanity (16%) and pornography (12%) were the most common transgressions. Fewer than 5% of evangelicals had engaged in gossip (4%), inappropriate sex (3%), gambling (2%), lying (1%) or drunkenness (less than one-half of one percent).

In contrast, among skeptics (atheists and agnostics) participation in the eight behaviors ranged from a low of 11% (retaliating) up to a high of 60% (using profanity). While evangelicals averaged 6% participation in each of the eight behaviors mentioned, skeptics averaged five times that level (29%). Other common acts among skeptics included exposure to pornography (50%), gossip (34%) and drunkenness (33%).

barna.org/barna-update/article/16-teensnext-gen/25-young-adults-and-liberals-struggle-with-moralit

Arthur C Brooks cited data regarding charity in America:

While 68 percent of the total population gives (and 51 percent volunteers) to nonreligious causes each year, religious people are 10 points more likely to give to these causes than secularists (71 percent to 61 percent) and 21 points more likely to volunteer (60 percent to 39 percent). For example, religious people are 7 points more likely than secularists to volunteer for neighborhood and civic groups, 20 points more likely to volunteer to help the poor or elderly, and 26 points more likely to volunteer for school or youth programs. It seems fair to say that religion engenders charity in general — including nonreligious charity.

hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6577

 

[HappyCatholic01]

As pointed out already, correlation does not equal causation.

More than that, who cares? It appears to be an attempt by Zuckerman to either make himself feel better, or denigrate religious groups. Why would I care? Religious groups are so diverse as to render such a study pointless. How much in common does the Pope have with Osama Bin Laden? They are in the same group - “religious.”

In the end, the entire world is intended to part of the Roman Catholic Church, and follow Christ as such. Do that, and keep your own standards high. Anything short of that isn’t part of God’s plan for mankind. I don’t care how good a secularist you think you are, you aren’t doing as God intended in His ideal for us. Neither are we Catholics who sin frankly, but being Catholic would certainly be a better place to start from.

 

[Publisher]

I came into this late, but I have some comment and observations.

Non-theists base their morality on what most benefits society and themselves to foster a just society…many, if not most religious people base their morals, whether they agree or not with them, on avoiding retribution from their deity. How many times have you heard someone say…“I can’t do XYZ because its against what my church or religion teaches.” Rarely have I heard. “I don’t do XYZ because I do not believe it is the right and good thing to do.”

Which statement would a non-theist most likely to make?

To the poster who stated the larger number of Catholics in prison might be due to protests of abortion clinics or some such. I dare say that if the threat of incarceration in our brutal penal system were a threat…I doubt one would see too many abortion clinic protests by religious people. Come on!!! Surly the large amount of convicts who happen to be Catholics in prison is NOT due to “Righteous protests”.

I read often the largest religious group in the world is Catholic…yet I would think being Catholic and not living ones faith is to no avail…is being Catholic reduced to having ones name on a religious organizations roster?

The study seems very unpopular among religious people…interesting indeed.

 

[HappyCatholic01]

I came into this late, but I have some comment and observations.

Non-theists base their morality on what most benefits society and themselves to foster a just society…many, if not most religious people base their morals, whether they agree or not with them, on avoiding retribution from their deity. How many times have you heard someone say…“I can’t do XYZ because its against what my church or religion teaches.” Rarely have I heard. “I don’t do XYZ because I do not believe it is the right and good thing to do.”

Which statement would a non-theist most likely to make?

To the poster who stated the larger number of Catholics in prison might be due to protests of abortion clinics or some such. I dare say that if the threat of incarceration in our brutal penal system were a threat…I doubt one would see too many abortion clinic protests by religious people. Come on!!! Surly the large amount of convicts who happen to be Catholics in prison is NOT due to “Righteous protests”.

I read often the largest religious group in the world is Catholic…yet I would think being Catholic and not living ones faith is to no avail…is being Catholic reduced to having ones name on a religious organizations roster?

The study seems very unpopular among religious people…interesting indeed.

That’s because as pointed out, the study is flawed in so many ways. It has nothing to do with taking offense. Why would I take offense at what some random dude name Zuckerman thinks about anything?

The fact that his study puts Jesus Christ and Osama Bin Laden in the same category (two religious people) should tell you all you need to know about how legitimate this is.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

To the poster who stated the larger number of Catholics in prison might be due to protests of abortion clinics or some such. I dare say that if the threat of incarceration in our brutal penal system were a threat…I doubt one would see too many abortion clinic protests by religious people. Come on!!! Surly the large amount of convicts who happen to be Catholics in prison is NOT due to “Righteous protests”…

See post #48 for what I believe is a more rational explanation of the statistics.

 

[Contarini]

The longer version really needs a thread to itself, but in short:

The ‘true scotsman’ version of an atheist (i.e. one who agrees with me in everything) would get his morals from the laws of logic
​

How do you get ethics from the laws of logic?

the concept of benefit and harm

Fine. But the idea that one should not harm another even if it is in one’s interest to do so is is a “religious” concept in the sense that it is a transcendent principle that cannot be reduced to any purely empirical or scientific basis. That is to say, no principle of rational self-interest can possibly explain why people sacrifice their lives, for instance. You can explain it in terms of an evolutionary drive to preserve related genes or something of the sort, but that isn’t a rational reason why I should act this way, just an explanation of why I feel the irrational impulse to act this way.

Indeed, I can’t really see that rationality itself can be explained in purely “secular” terms. If it isn’t participation in the mind of God, I don’t see what it is. It’s just neurons firing.

I think that we talk past each other a lot on this because secular folks have the understandable misconception (understandable because a lot of poorly catechized and simplistic Christians do think this way) that Christian ethics are based on “divine command.” Catholic ethics, at least, are based on the divine nature. Commands are important, but only because they flow from the divine nature in which we participate.

Contrast that with morality based on God, solely on God with no acceptance of the secular framework. What can a christian then say to dissuade a muslim suicide bomber ? Quoting the catechism won’t work, as he doesn’t value it.

Only shared (i.e. secular) moral framework allows for dialogue.

Clearly we are defining secular very differently. I’m defining it as something that doesn’t require an appeal to any transcendent standard of value. To say that if people of different cultures share something it’s “secular” is simply to cherry-pick your definition so as to ensure the result you want.

I’m not really that interested in arguing over the word “secular.” I’m interested in the question of whether the existence of ethical impulses transcending rational self-interest, and of the conviction that those impulses are nonetheless rational, implies a transcendent standard of value which is also the source of our physical being and our ability to reason at all (i.e., “what all call God”). I think it does.​

 

[Ender]

How do you get ethics from the laws of logic?

Logic will allow you to build a system of ethics from a sufficiently robust set of initial principles. Logic is useless, however, in specifying what those principles should be. We can choose this or that rule (e.g. Do unto others…) that we think will lead to the most favorable results for a society, but there is no rebuttal to the person who responds that he is concerned only with himself and the law of the jungle works just fine for him.

We may reasonably consider him to be dangerous but we cannot logically call him immoral simply because he has chosen a different set of fundamental doctrines. If we choose our set based on the outcome we wish to achieve we can hardly deny him the right to make a different choice based on the same principle.

Ender