Morality Without Religion

In my last post I touched on the per capita rape and murder rates in nations that are highly religious versus nations that have lower rates of religiosity. In this post I will discuss the false equation of religion with morality by taking a look at children brought up with religion and without it, the morals exhibited by these children and the long-term effects these methods may have on the adults these children will become.

What we would expect to see in religious children, particularly those raised within Abrahamic (i.e. Judeo-Christian-Islamic) religions--which the studies references further on seem to focus on--are high rates of qualities held as virtues within these religions, e.g. empathy, altruism, forgiveness, generosity, etc. If one believes that religion is key to the development of a moral code then we should certainly see these qualities manifest themselves much more clearly in religious children when compared to irreligious children, who the “religion equals morality” crowd would argue have a weak or malformed moral code, or have no moral code at all. Let’s see if this is what we find.

One study, often referred to in the media as “the sticker study”, looked at more than a thousand children, aged 5-12, representing diverse ethno-racial backgrounds. The children studied came from six different countries (the United States, Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey and South Africa), and their religious breakdown was 24% Christian, 43% Muslim and 28% not religious. Smaller numbers of children belonging to other religions were not compared.

Originally published in Current Biology, the study was led by Professor Jean Decety, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago. The study gauged altruism using “the dictator game”, in which each child was given thirty stickers and told to choose how many to share with another child. The results were used to calculate a generosity score. The results revealed that irreligious children shared more stickers, while the religious children were less generous. All of the groups compared saw a drop in generosity with age, though religious children consistently scored lower, suggesting that the longer a child was exposed to religion, the less generous and altruistic they became. Meanwhile the parents of the religious children were more likely to consider their children to be “more empathetic and more sensitive to the plight of others”, even as the results seemed to prove differently.

On the issue of sensitivity to perceived injustice, and the harshness of responses to that injustice, the children were shown videos depicting incidents of mild interpersonal harm (e.g. pushing or bumping), and then were asked to judge the “meanness” of the act, and to rate an appropriate level of punishment for the perpetrator. Overall the religious children rated the acts they witnessed as meaner than did the irreligious children, and favored harsher penalties. So much for “turn the other cheek”.

 Source: Forbes

How does one explain these results? One factor Decety points to is a psychological phenomenon known as “moral licensing”, in which a person will justify committing an immoral act because they’ve already done something they consider to be a “good” act.

“It’s an unconscious bias,” Decety explains. “They don’t even see that’s not compatible with what they’ve been learning in church.”

For nearly forty years Vern Bengston, professor of gerontology and sociology at USC, has overseen the Longitudinal Study of Generations, the "largest study of religion and family life conducted across several generational cohorts in the United States”. In 2013 Bengston added secular families to his study in response to a rise of irreligion in society. What he found were “high levels of family solidarity and emotional closeness” between parents and youth in irreligious households, as well as strong ethical standards and moral values.

“Many nonreligious parents were more coherent and passionate about their ethical principles than some of the ‘religious' parents in our study,” Bengston said. “The vast majority appeared to live goal-filled lives characterized by moral direction and sense of life having a purpose.”

Some of the personal qualities taught within (and held in high regard by) secular families were rational problem solving, personal autonomy, independence of thought and empathy, as well as a willingness to question beliefs.

Irreligious families seem to be keen believers in the Golden Rule, which can be stated as: One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself. This is quite different from the moral lesson taught, whether explicitly or implicitly, within many religious families: that one should behave well out of the promise of divine reward and/or fear of divine punishment.

Studies have shown that, while growing up, irreligious teens are less susceptible to peer pressure, less likely to try to fit in with the “cool” crowd, and as adults (on average) tend to be "less vengeful, less nationalistic, less militaristic, less authoritarian and more tolerant”, than their religious counterparts. A 2010 Duke University study also showed that secular adults were less likely to exhibit racism than religious adults.

None of this is meant to give the impression that all people raised with religion are selfish, vengeful, or racist people, or that all people raised with secular ideals are selfless do-gooders who live in complete harmony with the rest of society. When one looks at the big picture, however, it would seem that a moral code based in reason--in which a strong sense of empathy is impressed upon children, and which allows for them to question everything, even the very moral lessons they are being taught--is more likely to have a better outcome, and result in children with  a stronger sense of empathy and generosity toward their fellow man, than one based on instructing children that they should behave a certain way because a book says so, and that if they don’t they will be punished by an omnipotent being.

sources:

 http://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2015/11/05/religion-morality/#566ee069670e
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-oe-0115-zuckerman-secular-parenting-20150115-story.html
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/06/religious-children-less-altruistic-secular-kids-study
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/nonreligious-children-are-more-generous
http://psr.sagepub.com/content/14/1/126.abstract