Are Christians meaner? It depends on which Christians. I fell in with a particular band of them in college in the '80s, and they turned out to be narrow-minded and mean. Do I think that group represents all Christians? No.
I just saw a study somewhere that the more people go to church, the 'nicer' they tend to be ... this study wasn't just looking at Christianity, but all religions.
The results might be related to a self-segregating principle ... people that are social or outgoing might tend to go to religious meetings more often. But I think that there could more to it - being around people that give time and money to charity and who interact with each other nicely can make a person more altruistic. Spending more time thinking about goodness, which many religionists do, can also change the mind and the brain.
Another study showed that the more 'Christian' a person in the US is, the more likely they are to support torture! Looking at the details, it seemed that this was due mostly to the born-again/fundamentalist wing of Christianity, which has grown over past decades. People in mainstream Christian groups were not any more likely than non-religious people to support torture.
Quote:
A firestorm erupted this week over an analysis from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life showing that white evangelical Protestants are far more likely than those in other faith traditions to support the use of torture against suspected terrorists.
It showed that just over six in 10 white evangelical Protestants say that the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can be "often" or "sometimes" justified. That is much higher than the number of white Catholics, 51 percent; mainline Protestants, 46 percent; and religiously unaffiliated, 40 percent, who say the technique should be an option in interrogations.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03590.html
11 May 2009, 3:25 am
