'RELIGIOUS CHILDREN ARE MORE MEAN'
Would you rather your daughter married a fundamentalist or a liberal?
Academics from seven universities across the world studied Christian, Muslim and non-religious children to test the connection between religion and morality.
They found that "religious children are meaner, less kind and more punitive than non-religious children."
"Overall, our findings ... contradict the commonsense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind towards others," say the authors of The Negative Association Between Religiousness and Children's Altruism Across the World, published in Current Biology.
Certainly, the people who send the nastiest comments to this blog are the fundamentalist Christians.
Of course, the term 'religious person' can cover a lot of different types.
There are cruel Conservative Moslems and cuddly Liberal Moslems.
There are sadistic Conservative Christians and loveable Liberal Christians.
And there are 'non religious' persons who don't go to church or mosque, but, who are in some sense 'spiritual'.
Let us consider the following 'religious' people:
1. Yusuf lives in the biggest Moslem country in the world.
He has only primary school education.
He and his wife are easy-going, relatively liberal Moslems.
He helps his neighbours and has concern for those in need.
He enjoys popular music and dancing.
He told me that a certain government minister in his country had a boyfriend, but it was not a problem.
He says that Indonesians do not have a word for 'gay' or 'homosexual'.
He told me in 1990 that it would be a mistake to go to war against Saddam Hussein.
He believes that the acts of terrorism in his country are carried out by the security services of one country or another.
...
2. Mario lives in Italy.
He and his wife are working class.
He is a friendly, liberal Catholic.
His wife is a Conservative Catholic and she is a fan of the strict attitudes of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
He helps his neighbours when they are in need.
He is gentle when telling off his children.
He believes that acts of terrorism in his country are carried out by the security services of one country or another.
3. John lives in the Southern States of the USA.
He is college educated.
He is a 'strict' Christian.
He is strict with his children.
He owns a gun.
He is opposed to the government providing welfare for the poor.
He believes that 9 11 was carried out solely by evil Moslems and that the USA was quite right to invade Afghanistan.
Neither of his grown up sons is married, but, they are keeping quiet about the fact that they are gay.
4. Khaled is a rich, unsmiling, well connected Saudi.
He claims to be a strict Moslem.
He is opposed to wasting money on charities for non-Moslems.
He is in favour of the war against Syria.
He has a lot of very close male friends.
I asked a headmaster which of the children in his school were the most, and least, altruistic.
He referred to Timothy, an altruistic Jewish boy, whose family believe in God, but they hardly ever go to the synagogue.
He referred to Grace, an altruistic Buddhist girl.
He referred to Paul, a psycopath from a non-religious family.
He referred to Danny, who has criminal tendencies, and whose family do attend the Catholic church from time to time.
In conclusion: it is complicated.
It depends on what you mean by 'religious' and 'non religious'.
It is the Conservative Christians and Conservative Moslems who tend to be the most mean and the most mind controlled.
Let us consider the following 'religious' people:
1. Yusuf lives in the biggest Moslem country in the world.
He has only primary school education.
He and his wife are easy-going, relatively liberal Moslems.
He helps his neighbours and has concern for those in need.
He enjoys popular music and dancing.
He told me that a certain government minister in his country had a boyfriend, but it was not a problem.
He says that Indonesians do not have a word for 'gay' or 'homosexual'.
He told me in 1990 that it would be a mistake to go to war against Saddam Hussein.
He believes that the acts of terrorism in his country are carried out by the security services of one country or another.
...
2. Mario lives in Italy.
He and his wife are working class.
He is a friendly, liberal Catholic.
His wife is a Conservative Catholic and she is a fan of the strict attitudes of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
He helps his neighbours when they are in need.
He is gentle when telling off his children.
He believes that acts of terrorism in his country are carried out by the security services of one country or another.
3. John lives in the Southern States of the USA.
He is college educated.
He is a 'strict' Christian.
He is strict with his children.
He owns a gun.
He is opposed to the government providing welfare for the poor.
He believes that 9 11 was carried out solely by evil Moslems and that the USA was quite right to invade Afghanistan.
Neither of his grown up sons is married, but, they are keeping quiet about the fact that they are gay.
4. Khaled is a rich, unsmiling, well connected Saudi.
He claims to be a strict Moslem.
He is opposed to wasting money on charities for non-Moslems.
He is in favour of the war against Syria.
He has a lot of very close male friends.
I asked a headmaster which of the children in his school were the most, and least, altruistic.
He referred to Timothy, an altruistic Jewish boy, whose family believe in God, but they hardly ever go to the synagogue.
He referred to Grace, an altruistic Buddhist girl.
He referred to Paul, a psycopath from a non-religious family.
He referred to Danny, who has criminal tendencies, and whose family do attend the Catholic church from time to time.
In conclusion: it is complicated.
It depends on what you mean by 'religious' and 'non religious'.
It is the Conservative Christians and Conservative Moslems who tend to be the most mean and the most mind controlled.
posted by Anon @ 23:42
24 Comments
24 Comments:
The Most-Popular U.S. Presidential Candidate Blames the Poor,
by Eric Zuesse.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/11/the-most-popular-u-s-presidential-candidate-blames-the-poor.html
Extract:
"The most-liked U.S. Presidential candidate [Ben Carson, a Republican] believes that it’s okay to be born poor, but that anyone who stays poor is remaining poor because he or she is lazy. He also says that those poor people are trying to find excuses for their own laziness when they blame their adversities on other causes than themselves, such as the prejudices of others, or wrong governmental policies, or bad luck; and he is especially opposed to governmental policies that aim to provide special advantages to poor people: he believes that this liberalism only encourages the laziness of those people. He was born dirt-poor and now draws tens of millions of dollars in annual income; and he thinks that the reason he’s successful is that he’s terrific — and he wants all Americans to try to be terrific like he feels that he is; so, he’s on a campaign to make it happen by his becoming America’s President. And he’s turning out to be remarkably successful at this campaign, too.
The overwhelmingly most-popular candidate, Dr. Carson, says (8:30- here): “I hated poverty; I couldn’t stand it.” He said in that video there (at 18:00) “My role model is Jesus” and he then went into the “moral problem” of “the national debt,” and he continued, “Here’s the [Jesus] parable. A family falls on hard times” and the father in the parable says he’ll cut the allowance for some of his children but not for others. Carson concluded there: “How do you think that will go down? Not too well. Enough said.” In other words, Carson was asserting that governmental policies must not help the poor or disabled or otherwise disadvantaged, any more than they help the rich and successful and otherwise advantaged (including heirs to huge fortunes). The rich must receive as much government-assistance as the poor, he says, because otherwise it wouldn’t be “proportional,” as he sees it.
Carson thus endorses a flat-tax system that taxes billionaires at the identical, or “proportional,” rate that even the poorest person will be taxed to pay..... So, Carson, with his biblical beliefs, continued: (20:00-) “You make ten billion dollars, you put in a billion. You make ten dollars, you put in one.” (The existing U.S. system violates that biblical principle: The income-tax rate for the very poor is zero in the U.S., just as it is in every other country. Using the tithing-system as the basis for a nation’s taxation-system would be to introduce a sharp break away from the system in all modern nations, not only in the United States. It’s biblical, like the hijab is quranic.)
Carson’s basic assumption there is that everyone has the same obligation to fund the government: the homeless or disabled who sell something on the street must pay the same percentage “tithe” from that person’s meager income to the government as does a billionaire who flits from one mansion to another and who maybe inherited most of his wealth and all of the opportunities for growing it but whose stock dividends and interest-income pay for all of his or her consumption and then some.
Carson’s is a one-size-fits-all system, because “He [God] didn’t say, if your crop fails, don’t give me any tithe. He didn’t say, if you have a bumper crop, give me triple tithe.” For Carson, if your crop fails and you can’t make your mortgage-payment, and you get thrown out onto the street, it’s just God’s way of punishing you, and there is no government that ought to interfere with that. To interfere with it woudn’t be “proportional,.....'
I no mention in Ben Carson's campaign about the rich man and the eye of the needle.
http://www.activistpost.com/2015/11/bbc-journalist-comes-clean-believe-nothing-you-read-or-watch.html
Some Reasons Why Humanists Reject The Bible
by Joseph C. Sommer
Introduction
Humanists reject the claim that the Bible is the word of God. They are convinced the book was written solely by humans in an ignorant, superstitious, and cruel age. They believe that because the writers of the Bible lived in an unenlightened era, the book contains many errors and harmful teachings.
Humanists receive much criticism due to their position on the Bible. Some critics even accuse them of being evil. This article attempts to clarify the reasons why Humanists hold negative views about the Bible.
Continues:
http://americanhumanist.org/humanism/Some_Reasons_Why_Humanists_Reject_the_Bible
The Human Life Commandments from the "Good Book":
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-human-life-commandments.html
Jesus – The Imaginary Friend
Christianity was the ultimate product of religious syncretism in the ancient world. Its emergence owed nothing to a holy carpenter. There were many Jesuses but the fable was a cultural construct.
The nativity yarn is a concatenation of nonsense. The genealogies of Jesus, both Matthew's version and Luke's, are pious fiction. Nazareth did not exist in the 1st century AD – the area was a burial ground of rock-cut tombs.
With multiple authors behind the original gospel story it is no surprise that the figure of "Jesus" is a mess of contradictions. Yet the story is so thinly drawn that being a "good Christian" might mean almost anything.
Godman – Gestation of a Superhero
It is intuitively satisfying to think that someone was behind the towering legend. Yet like the worship of Horus or Mithras a human life was neither necessary nor helpful.
As it happens, we have an excellent witness to events in Judaea in the first half of the first century AD: Philo of Alexandria (c. 25 BC-47 AD). Yet Philo says not a word about Jesus or Christianity!
Nothing in the 'Christian message' was original. Brotherly love and compassion had been taught by the Stoics for centuries. The Christian faith was a vulgarised paganism, set to the theme of the Jewish prophets and debased by religious intolerance.
The early Christian sects attacked each other as energetically as they attacked pagans. 1st century Palestine had rabbis, radicals and rebels in abundance. But a 'life' conjured up from mystical fantasy, a mass of borrowed quotations, copied story elements and a corpus of self-serving speculation, does not constitute an historical reality.
The final defeat of militant Jewish nationalism and the eradication of the Jewish kingdom gave the incipient Christian churches the final uplift they required.
http://jesusneverexisted.com/
So I bet you all can't wait to live under Shariah law?.Right.?.Thinks..do the pepole commenting her know ANYTHING about Shariah law.
www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and.../sacred-rite-of-circumcision
A problem with that 'religion leads to cruelty' study is its focus on adherents of harsh Abrahamic religions (Chrisitiany, Islam & Judaism) which as people like Alexandria's Dr Ashraf Ezzat has brilliantly shown, all arise from MidEast desert peoples in a narrow regional area, who are typically belligerent & extremist & without deep culture.
Individual Jews, Christians & Muslims can be okay basically because they do not follow the core ideologies of their religious affiliations ... and often do not even know about the many horrid barbaric passages in the Bible & other 'holy books'
If one takes those religions seriously ... the fact is that Talmud-Bible-Qur'an create religions of slavery, 'God-ordered' massacres of women & children & genocides of entire nations, mutilation of children, 'my way only' fanatic intolerance, 'eternal hell' terrorism', 'chosen people' racism, & much other horrific barbarism.
People who adhere strongly to Abrahamic religions today, tend to affiliate with the ugly power-play dynamic at the ideological core of those religions.
Moreover, for the last 125 years, the more extreme versions of those religions (Zionism, takfiri Islamism, Jesus-is-coming-back USA Christianity, & continuingly corrupt Roman Vaticanism), have been much promoted & funded by Western oligarchs.
By contrast, people in the Daoist-Buddhist-Hindu world have much more tolerant, nature-sensitive, open-minded ideologies, with core texts that are much gentler & on top of that not so fanatically 'binding' as Abrahamic holy books.
The focus in East & South Asian religions - which, for a very helpful start, lack the 'eternall hell' & 'we are exceptionally chosen' terrorism - the focus on these religions is more on personal enlightenment and liberation ... not convering or conquering.
Abrahamic religions - Judaism Christianity & Islam - all spread by conquest & killing. Today's leading Muslim scholar Al-Qaradawi has admitted that if not for threatening death & murder to those who leave Islam, Islam would barely exist today.
By contrast, South Asian & East Asian religions spread because people liked them & found them inclusive & warm & liberating ... not by conquest.
And to say a positive word for spirituality in general ... without some kind of religion or spiritual-type outlook (even if 'humanistic') ... things tend to collapse into hedonism & a submissive-to-power, general lack of bravery & dullardness.
Love, mad love and soup kitchens...
The elimination of dissent by violence
Enforcing the Faith
– Missionaries or Murderers?
Christians get a lot of mileage out of the aphorism of 'turning the other cheek', a sentiment originating at least as early as Pythagoras in the fifth century BC. Yet both in theory and in practice, Christians have honoured the principle of murdering their opponents. The word, it seems, came from the very top. Apparently Jesus himself said:
"But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me." – Luke 19.27
(Not the word of the Lord? Oh yes it is!)
The Christian Heaven may have been a vain folly but the Christian Hell was real enough. For more than a thousand years sadists in the uniform of Christ terrorised and brutalised a continent and then exported that terror to the four corners of the globe.
The Church, which, with a satanic twist of humour, claimed to be the instrument of 'Christ's loving kindness', taught a brutalised and impoverished people new meanings to the words pain and suffering...
For those who dared to be different:
Incarceration – starvation – psychological torment and terror – laceration – mutilation – strangulation – suffocation – crushing – choking– burning – garrotting – slow and agonizing death...
Read the rest (if you have the stomach for it – you've been warned!):
http://jesusneverexisted.com/murderers.htm
What is much absent from the Abrahamic religions of the mid-East deserts, but over-arching in South & East Asian religions, is:
(1) Ideas of humanity in divine union & balance with nature & animals, rather than dominating them
(2) Pathways of total, personal, even psychological & sexual, liberation - directly experiencing the divine in this life, as well as optimising our eternal life-path
Ancient India said we humans have 4 basic agendas:
(1) Seeking prosperity (partly good, excess is destructive)
(2) Fufilling desires (partly good, excess is destructive)
(3) Doing our duties for others & the world (not easy to do in itself, nor in balance & without egotism)
(4) Personal liberation of our minds & selves, meeting the divine & feeling totally free even in this world now ... leading into eternal happy union with the divine & universe (we all get there eventually, tho some take much longer)
To liberate ourselves, there is yoga, with by some accounts 6 main schools of yoga ... All are free to pick the one(s) most helpful & liberating:
(1) Hatha yoga - what Westerners most know, body postures, breathing ... becomes self-transforming at a level Westerners hesitate to approach
(2) Raja yoga - clearing the mind of past & future, meditation ... at advanced levels, this is ecstasy & a certainty of meeting & knowing the divine
(3) Karma yoga - selfless service to others & knowing the divine this way ... which can take endless forms in a troubled world
(4) Jnana yoga - knowledge & learning ... meeting the divine through devotion to the truth of all consciousness
(5) Bhakti yoga - love & devotion, meeting the divine through selflessly being 'for' another ... can be to goddesses & gods, a teacher or even one's spouse, children or animals
(6) Tantric yoga - meeting the divine through the energies of our being ... yes, sexual energies included: The great profundity behind the Kama Sutra, or the wild erotic-fantasy nude sculptures of the temples of Khajuraho, telling us that within our most 'personal' realm the gods & goddesses meet us there too
India's most beloved spiritual story, the Bhagavad Gita, in 10 min. of video drama
The superstitious savages who throw virgins into the volcano to appease the angry fire gods are very religious, but also very wrong. I guess the point is that what matters is not the degree of religious programming, but the content of said programming.
Most classical paganism consists of appeasing angry, downwardly authoritative deities with human sacrifices. If this thinking is not overcome with the theology of love, it can go on mutating into new forms of the same death worship under many names, even calling itself the way of Jesus Christ. But as long as it is founded on fear and not love it is not spiritual truth.
Only the worship of the true loving God of creation, who is eternal and co-creative Trinity, can liberate the soul from bondage to the fear of death and its consequence, sin and separation. Rationalism cannot deliver from death, nor can atheism deliver from fear of necessity. Only transcendent faith in love as the unifying power of life can bring peace and joy.
This may help interpret statistics: http://liturgy.co.nz/religious-children-are-meaner-than-secular-ones
Good article.
- Aangirfan.
Bob Altemeyer is a Dr of psychology who wrote the book, The Authoritarians. You can get it for free as a PDF from his site below.
Although Bob Altimeter studied authoritarian people all his academic life he never got to like them much. Bob Altimeter say's he's a moderate rather than a liberal and his wife and her friends will often leave the room when he starts. But I only differed from him about the Afghan war, and I realised that I must be a moderate too, rather a liberal.
He said that authoritarian people can be hypocrites and have all sorts of conflicting views, and just like a filing cabinet can store all sorts of conflicting data without any conceren, they will never lose a moments sleep at night.
He prefers to call authoritarian people right wing authoritarians, RWA, because authoritarians are seldom found on the left. Authoritarianism is just one step removed from racism. Lefties in the Free West tend to be liberals, social democrats, and anti establishment / anti authority socialists.
One thing that is interesting, or diabolical, about authoritarian Christians is that because they believe God will forgive them when they sin, then when they do bad things they feel far less guilty about it because all they have to do is pray for forgiveness and then it doesn't matter anymore.
Authoritarians will always blindly follow the authorities, i.e., the ruling establishment in their societies, so in communist societies they are fiercely communist, in theocratic societies they are religious zealots, in fascist countries they are right wing hard nuts and boots on the ground, and in conservative capitalist societies they free right wing nuts. They believe that the authorities are always right, like the teachers were always right, and the father figures of families were always right, and everyone else who does not tow the line is bad and needs to be punished, sometimes severely. RWA's are true patriots and will blindly go to war for their leaders to get what they think are the bad guys.
Right wing authoritarians have a very high morality, a strong sense of right and wrong with very little grey areas and ambiguity. They are highly compartmentalised and can have conflicting viewpoints without concern.
The leaders of RW authoritarians are of two types. One type are close to being psychopathic, narcissistic personalities and form religious leaders, or leaders of other organisations, and exploit their followers to make lots of money. They have no morality, although the pretend to have. They exploit their gullible followers.
The other type of leader is much rarer and is considered a mixed type, I.e., they have authoritarian traits mixed with the lax morality of the narcissistic people . A contradiction, but like authoritarians they are highly compartmentalised. These people become our political leaders and are driven by conviction, while at the same time have no empathy and can make life miserable for millions of ordinary people with their harsh conservative policies, or communist policies, and can cause endless wars which authoritarians will readily fight in.
Bob Altemeyer's - The Authoritarians blog, with fee book.
https://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Free Calibre software to convert PDF's to other readable forms, like Kindle. It is quite safe to download and has no third party software. It's really nice software.
http://calibre-ebook.com/download
I'm a liberal socialist and I joined an evangelical Christian church once. I didn't like the Bible much but I had always prayed to God when I was in a tight spot. And in thought Jesus was a nice guy.
The evangelicals were mad, spoke in tongues, and would try to get demons out of people. A lot of hollering and shouting would occur at religious meetings. Some claimed to have seen demons, they were short things that hung around people's neck, they said. One day I found a reference to this in the Bible.
Eventually I starting reading the Old Testament and it turned my guts inside out, and then I lost my faith in God. I prefer eastern religions nowadays.
Apparently Afghanistan was Buddhist once. The Taliban tore down the ancient Buddhist statues, an archaic treasure was lost. What a shame that Afghanistan hadn't remained Buddhist.
Ordinary Buddhist people would donate treasures to the Buddhist monasteries because it was believed it would help them get to Nirvana. The Buddhists monks had no interest in wealth, but when the Islamic crusaders discovered the treasures hidden in the Indian Buddhist monasteries they destroyed Buddhism in India, and elsewhere, raiding the monasteries.
That was meant to say, 'Authoritarianism is just one step removed from FASCISM', not racism. .
Great contribution. It provides some levity to the proposition that many of us survivors of child abuse have always been harshly criticized for, and it is no wonder why. I have found that most people in positions of 'authority' nary deserve such a title and abuse it at every chance they get. I find that the overwhelming trend with people in authority are little more than children in grown up bodies, worse than children because empathy has not yet been breed out of them. I have also seen how instead of using this 'authority' in the proper manner it was allotted to them, they tend to garner it as a gold star at recess for a job well done for the establishment. Our governments are full of these mentally regressed egomaniacs.
AkhaldanSolo
I don't want to live under Shariah (sic) law, or Jewish law, or Christian law, or Judeo-Christian law, or Talmudic Chabad-Lubavitch Noahide law, or any other laws formulated by lying religious bigots of any stripe.
May knowledge and reason expose all of their fraudulent teachings for the benefit of humanity.
How about some gospel music:
The Dear Hunter "The Bitter Suite IV and V: The Congregation and The Sermon in the Silt"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIBJ-RYSAhU
[The Congregation:]
They come in crowds to hear him speak
And he will greet them in a Smile that sticks like Vaseline
So do your best to keep your distance, in this instance
You're a stranger in the weeds
Some things are better left unseen
Commanding listeners to believe
Manipulations of narrations 'Anno Domini'
Not with a whimper, but a bang
He'll take the stage and leave their jaws upon the floor
Begging for more
So Father, won't you tend your flock and save us now?
Won't you save us now?
Come and save us
[The Sermon:]
I hear you're looking for god
Well I can show you the way just as long as you can pay
But the price is going up...
And like a prayer to the air
We deliver you to glory (Pay up')
I swear you'll get what you need
And we Can lead you to salvation
With the right denomination
It all lies in your hands
Or in your pocketbook to be more demanding
Don't you tread too close to the line this time
Don't get lead too close to the light this time
You went far too close to the line this time
Line this time
Hey! Hey kid! Hey kid - get a god!'
Hey! Hey Hey Hey! Hey Kid Get A god!
So you committed a sin?
Well, we can rid that with a remedy
The bidding starts at $70
Sold!
To one and all now
Get your hands ready to make a withdrawal
You've got no other way to find what you Want
If it's a saving that you're craving
And your confidence is fading
Be calm
The Doctor's in
I got the cure, because I know where you've been...
Don't you tread too Close to the line this time
Don't get lead too close to the light this time
You went far Too close to the line this time
Line this time
[x3]
If you wanna get up
Reserve a Room on high
Put your coins in my hat
And don't ask why
Don't you tread too close to the line this time
Don't get lead too close to the light this time
You went far too close to the line this time
Line this time
Line this time
The worth of a woman: the Bible vs. the Quran
Don't you love it when the Bible and the Quran agree (more or less) on something? I do. Because whenever they do, you can be pretty sure they're both wrong.
Take the worth of a woman, for example. They go at it from slightly different angles, but come up with the same answer. A woman is worth about half as much as a man.
Continues:
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2006/08/worth-of-woman-bible-vs-quran.html
I'm not sure if my correction made it through and after rereading my comment I can tell that it doesn't seem quite right. I meant to convey that many of us who have been diagnosed with issues relating to our abuse that we are often labelled as 'anti-authoritarian' and cannot 'trust authority', which, by all intents and purposes, is a natural safeguard against the reality that these people are indeed most often over-reaching with the 'power' they are allotted and in most cases very under-educated with very vindictive personalities.
I am finding this to be the case with many of the police shootings around the country, these people are given training how to use their weapon and protect themselves but at the same time they are still young, malleable American schooled idiots who have no real import of the laws they are beholden to preserve and make up their own interpretations of the law before a court process is even considered. We need better standards of testing not only for intelligence mental capacity for ALL public servants. It really does look like the world is being run here in America by a bunch of incompetent regressed assholes.
ASolo
Inconceivable! A servant girl is worth the same as a milch cow, not one farthing more or less- it's the law!
Recommended reading—books by John Mackinnon Robertson:
Christianity and Mythology
Second Edition, Revised and Expanded
Published 1910
https://archive.org/details/christianitymyth00robe
Pagan Christs: Studies in Comparative Hierology
Second Edition, Revised and Expanded
Published 1911
https://archive.org/details/paganchristsstud00robe
A Short History of Christianity
Second Edition, Revised, With Additions
Published 1913
https://archive.org/details/cu31924029223173
The Jesus Problem; a Restatement of the Myth Theory
Published 1917
https://archive.org/details/jesusproblemrest01robe
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