Belief In Hell Predicts a Country's Crime Rates Better Than Other Factors 471
An anonymous reader writes "Religion is often thought of as psychological defense against bad behavior, but researchers have recently found that the effect of religion on pro-social behaviors may actually be driven by the belief in hell and supernatural punishment rather than faith in heaven and spiritual benevolence. In a large analysis of 26 years of data consisting of 143,197 people in 67 countries, psychologists found significantly lower crime rates in societies where many people believe in hell compared to those where more people believed in heaven."
Savvy study author ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Must be a regular
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:5, Informative)
"Shariff noted that because the findings were based off of correlational data, they do not prove causation."
And the paper itself even explains with some detail:
(I.e., "A is correlated with B" does not necessarily mean "A causes B"; B could cause A or C could cause both A and B.)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm definitely going with higher crime rates (and overall shitty living conditions) work to destroy faith in a "benevolent" creator, so this is entirely an expected result.
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm definitely going with higher crime rates (and overall shitty living conditions) work to destroy faith in a "benevolent" creator, so this is entirely an expected result.
You're definitely going with idiocy? Or do you just not understand the distinction between heaven and hell?
From TFAbstract (and heavily hinted in TFS):
... showing that the proportion of people who believe in hell negatively predicts national crime rates whereas belief in heaven predicts higher crime rates.
The regions with strong belief in a benevolent creator* have high crime.
The regions with strong belief in a vindictive creator* have low crime.
*Your use of "creator" seems a peculiar choice in this context. The existence of an afterlife, whether of reward or of punishment, is in no way contingent on a "creator" as such, or even a group of creators. Do try to expand your scope beyond the monotheistic/Abrahamic religions.
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:5, Interesting)
"... showing that the proportion of people who believe in hell negatively predicts national crime rates whereas belief in heaven predicts higher crime rates."
I don't believe this for an instant.
By *every* measure, religiosity is lower in Canada than the US. Moreover, Canada is generally more pluralistic in terms of faith. Both would contribute to significantly lower "belief in heaven" *and* "hell".
Yet the crime rate in Canada is much lower than the US. There are a few categories where it is higher, like car theft, but their relative increase is dramatically less than the relative decrease of all violent crime (30% more vs. 3x less).
I realize this is a single counterexample, but I suspect this is true for most countries in the western world, and would not be surprised if this were true for much of the planet.
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect that it is actually the opposite.
Higher Crime rates generally correlate with higher poverty levels. Those who are poor have a greater need for hope thus a benevolent god.
Those in lower-crime areas have hope and thus might attune to the higher contrast of a vindictive deity.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wall Street should have just about no crime, then.
Re: (Score:3)
That is a logical fail, and maybe that was your point. The issue with Crime in Poverty comes from 2 angles. Those in poverty of course need to eat, so crime increases. At the same time, those in power tend to abuse their power to get more. A bit of history lessons are probably in order for you to understand.
More Americans should be asking why the people running the banks that gambled with other peoples money, and lost it all, while themselves making millions to billions of dollars are not in jail for fr
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:4, Interesting)
In Wisconsin where I live, a scandal involving the Milwaukee Police Department brought to light numerous instances of cooking their reporting data specifically to reduce incidences of violent crime and thus make Milwaukee appear to not only be safer than it really is, but to make MPD seem much more effective than it really is. Some of the misreporting has been genuinely atrocious; knifings get reported as domestic disturbances, for instance. The local rag, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, has been carrying stories of the corrupt abuses regularly (in relatively palliative language of course, wouldn't want to upset the officials).
So forgive if me if I laugh at your sincere belief in the stats you quote. There is no reliable data when the credibility of the reporting agencies is so heavily damaged. It's the tragedy of opacity. It will undermine everything we thought we knew if we let it.
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:5, Interesting)
It has been shown that once you have a basic level of needs taken care of, the GINI wealth inequality accurately correlates with high crime.
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:5, Insightful)
One counter-example is not enough to make a correlation vanish. He didn't say anything about causes, just correlations.
Though I also would like to have the poster show some studies describing the GINI & crime -link.
Re: (Score:3)
Interestingly, crime rates in across the United States have been declining steadily for the past three years, and gun sales across the states have been up significantly too. It's possible that the fear of different forms of punishment (getting shot, going to hell, jail, execution, etc) influences the crime rates.
Hmmm this can also be read as.... In the 3 years that Obama came to office crime rates have been on the decline. Since Obama came to office personal gun ownership has seen record rates. Looks like Obama is the most pro-gun anti-crime president the US has seen in decades.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:5, Informative)
The crime rate also dropped during the second world war in the UK.
It's often said that that's the case, but as with many beliefs about crime rates, it's not true. Crime in every category soared during the war years, ending with almost double the crime rate at the end of war compared with before the war.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-research/historical-crime-data/rec-crime-1898-2002 [homeoffice.gov.uk]
This, despite the fact that most of the young men had been drafted into the army. So with the most usual offending category either out of the country, or at least under disciplined regimes in an army camp, one would have expected a drop in crime. But it didn't happen.
And it wasn't just looting and black-marketeering either. Every kind of crime was up.
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Atheist countries"? ACs are really scraping the bottom of the barrel with their lies. The closest you can get to an "atheist country" is France and maybe a few of the scandinavian countries. And they're actually nice and friendly... unless of course you pull the "asshole American" routine on them, in which case they will toss you out pretty quickly.
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Atheist countries"?
It's amazing some people consider a term for not believing in magic as derogatory.
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Atheist countries"?
Yes, like the USA.
The Treaty of Tripoli [wikipedia.org] (Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary) was the first treaty concluded between the United States of America and Tripolitania, signed at Tripoli on November 4, 1796 and at Algiers (for a third-party witness) on January 3, 1797. It was submitted to the Senate by President John Adams, receiving ratification unanimously from the U.S. Senate on June 7, 1797 and signed by Adams, taking effect as the law of the land on June 10, 1797.
The treaty was a routine diplomatic agreement but has attracted later attention because the English version included a clause about religion in the United States.
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Muslim] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
The treaty is cited as historical evidence in the modern day controversy over whether there was religious intent by the founders of the United States government. Article 11 of the treaty has been interpreted as an official denial of a Christian basis for the U.S. government.[3]
Re: (Score:3)
The term you're looking for is "secular", not "atheist".
Re: (Score:3)
You fail at history. While the United States was founded as a "non-religious" country, Christianity is the foundation for the laws of the land. What you had back then were Kings and Nobles that gave themselves military ranks and positions within the Church, making themselves both Religious, Political, and Military leaders. The US tried to separate all aspects of Political leadership from Religion because you end up with the policies such as you had in England where a Lord had the right to bang a newly we
Re: (Score:3)
A number of those things were added a long time after the founding of the country. And the end bits of those Oaths likely crept in over time as it was commonly how people ended an oath. There are definitely large groups of people in the USA who would like to think of the nation as a "christian" nation. And I suppose by virtue of being largely christian it is. But by the leter of the law there is no officially endorsed religion.
Re: (Score:3)
"Atheist countries"?
Yes, like the USA.
Pledge of Allegiance: "...one nation under God..."
National motto: "In God we trust"
Both cases were added in the 1950's as a paranoiac response to "godless communism". There's a Porky Pig cartoon made during WWII where he has a nightmare about Nazism and when he wakes up he stutters his way through the Pledge of Allegiance: "...one nation, indivisible...". Ironically, the original version which lacks the phrase "under God" was penned by a minister.
Court oath: "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"
Oath of allegiance: "...I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God"
The small number of times I've bumped into a need to make a formal statement or oath, I've notified the clerk or judge and been advised to
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:5, Informative)
China is pretty atheist, if you actually ask what the younger generation believe personally.
From my experience, if you ask surface level "what do you believe", you will generally get an answer "Chinese are buddhist"; but if you probe what they actually believe you tend to get a very atheistic worldview. The older generation may or may not believe in buddhism, although tradition seems to be big there so Im not really sure what the dominant belief system is for that generation.
Not to mention that in order to get a government job you have to affirm atheism.
There are indeed atheist countries out there, whether or not you want to acknowledge it.
Re: (Score:3)
Buddhism by itself is an athiest religion - there is no such thing as God in a purely Buddhist worldview.
Often Buddhism is joined with another religion to meet that need for people. A couple of examples of this would be Bon in Tibetian Buddhism, and Shinto in the Japanese version.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:5, Informative)
Atheist generally is a term for those who do not believe in a God. This is both its common meaning, and its etymological meaning: atheos, meaning "without gods".
Atheists may or may not believe in supersitions; perhaps the term you are looking for is something like "naturalism" (as opposed to "supernaturalism") or "secular humanism"
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:4, Interesting)
God's grace is actually a great motivation to take responsability of consecuences for past acts, as those consecuences dont inhibit being loved and signified by God. And it's a great motivation to take action in the present for better, as it gives meaning to efforts.
This is nice in theory, but in practice, it fails. That's what the study is all about. People who see a godly grace as a motivator for a better life seem to be by far outnumbered by people who see godly grace as an excuse to behave badly, because the big boss will forgive them anyway.
Re: (Score:3)
A x C x D x E x F x G x H x I x J x K x L x M x N x O x P x Q x R x S x T x U x V x W x X x Y x Z = B
In this equation, A is correlated with B. If you know what A is and how to influence it, you'd be pretty stupid to not use it or even ignore it.
That's not a study, that's a formula. In a study, such as this one, all you have is "A and B are correlated" (which I prefer to "A is correlated with B" or "B is correlated with A", as it more clearly indicates that it's not as if one is the independent variable and the other is the dependent variable); you don't have an established theory with a formula. I.e., your example is irrelevant to the statement in the paper at this point.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:5, Interesting)
What about largely secular nations like the Netherlands? Norway? Sweden? Don't they have very low crime rates?
And what about the US Southern states, where religion is fire and brimstone? Don't many of those areas have very high crime rates?
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:5, Funny)
Where can I get hired to turn our crap like this and never have to produce on solid thing that can be measured against the real world?
Trick is, you can dig at the softness of the soft sciences all you want; but it's a knife-fight-in-a-telephone-booth to get a decent tenure track job in them. For every one who gets to bullshit in public, there are probably 20 or more grading freshman philosophy papers for $12,000/year.
How's that for true hell? A brutal, dog-eat-dog competition, with no real world metrics against which to measure yourself? An endless, inter-subjective void, with nothing but brutal struggle for the few jobs that exist, and lots of Derrida. Flee crying back to the hard sciences while you still can, grasshopper...
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, way to miss the point and look like a pompous ass.
Re:Savvy study author ... (Score:5, Informative)
No, 0.0999[...] (I can't do the symbol here, because /. doesn't do Unicode) is not the same as 0.1 It's never 0.1. The more decimals you add, the closer you get, but like the speed of light, it can never be reached.
Wrong. 0.09999... == 0.1 for the same reasons 0.999999... == 1:
Let:
X = 0.09999...
Then:
10X = 0.9999...
(10X - X) = 0.999999... - 0.0999999...
(All 9's in hundredths place and beyond cancel out)
9X = 0.90000000... .1
X =
QED
Apples are a better Predictor than Oranges (Score:2)
No faith in heaven? (Score:2)
Yes, but Belief in Heaven Increases Crime Rate (Score:5, Insightful)
So the net result is that believing in both has not statistical signifigance.
Belief in chart:
Heaven, Hell, Net Effect
0, 0, None
0, 1, Less Crime
1, 0, More Crime
1, 1, None
The headline is making a very dangerous and intentional omission of fact here. http://www.plosone.org/article/slideshow.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0039048&imageURI=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0039048.t001 [plosone.org]
Re: (Score:3)
As predicted, rates of belief in heaven and hell had significant, unique, and opposing effects on crime rates. Belief in hell predicted lower crime rates, = 1.941, p<.001; whereas belief in heaven predicted higher crime rates
And the title of the article is "Divergent Effects of Beliefs in Heaven and Hell on National Crime Rates"
I still think the slashdot summary is misleading.
Re: (Score:2)
Ironically, belief in heaven seems to be more powerful than belief in hell, or something - roughly 10% of Americans (as of 1997) declared themselves non-religious, but only 0.02% of inmates describe themselves thus. For Christians, on the other hand, both numbers (70%) are the same - and, of course, both heaven and hell are part of Christian dogma.
How does this reconcile with other data? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How does this reconcile with other data? (Score:5, Informative)
Almost every single sentence you've wrote is wrong as far as I can tell. See Zuckerman's paper I referenced earlier for a very long list of references showing that crime is not reduced by religiosity. There are complicating factors (for example, in a worse off society people may be more inclined to turn to religion) but your claim that there are "numerous studies" backing up this sort of position is simply false. Moreover, if this sort of claim were at all true then one would expect Sweden to be in absolutely awful shape since it is even less religious than Russia and China, yet Sweden is extremely well off.
As to your claim about philosophy, many prominent philosophers, such as Kant, Bentham, and Rahls would disagree. All three would see humans as having innate instincts for moral good. And in fact, studies have shown that many mammals will instinctively help other members of their species even when they have not encountered them before. For example, when another rat is hurt or trapped, nearby rats will help free them http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2011/12/08/helping-your-fellow-rat-rodents-show-empathy-driven-behavior [uchicago.edu]. The instincts for basic moral behavior run deep.
At a temporal level, the claim is also questionable. It is pretty clear that over time, religiosity has gone down. But over the last few hundred years, the overall violence level when measured by the percentage of the population that dies violent deaths has gone down. There's an excellent book about the decline of violence among humans, The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker, which I strongly recommend.
By the way, the first major proponent for National atheism is Carl Marx. This is something to think very strongly about, though I very much doubt that people will do so even after reading that statement.
Ok. So first of all, his name was "Karl". Second, the that's just not true. Marx was born in 1818, when the French revolution was already over. During the French Revolution, major proponents of atheism included Jacques Hébert http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_H%C3%A9bert [wikipedia.org] and Chaumette http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Gaspard_Chaumette [wikipedia.org]. Curiously, the bloody Robespierre strongly favored deism. But let's pretend that your claim was true for a moment and that Karl Marx really had been the first proponent of national atheism. Would this matter? Not really. This is in essence the genetic fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy [wikipedia.org]- who comes up with an idea doesn't impact whether the idea is valid. For example, the mathematician John Nashh is schizophrenic- that doesn't make his math incorrect. And even if the genetic fallacy were valid, Marx's idea of national atheism, a forced destruction of religion, is extremely different than a secular society that simply doesn't care much about religion, (like say Sweden).
welcome to the monkey house (Score:4)
Atheists lack a defining text. And people think managing programmers is like herding cats. Unification of agenda under a grand banner is mostly a theist creation.
Apparently, we hadn't properly solved the equations for Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma [edge.org] after three decades of study and you suspect on gut instinct that the grand mechanism of fitness is tapped out? Let me guess, you're soon about to argue that lack of a moral code correlates with lack of fitness?
Bee Eye Enn Gee Oh.
Shortly after the 1983 Korean Air Lines Flight 007 [wikipedia.org] incident I attended some Sunday services at a televised evangelical church in Toronto out of courtesy to the family I was boarding with. One of the speakers they invited was Hal Lindsey [wikipedia.org]. I don't recall the other guests by name. In one service it was preached that America engage in eye-for-eye tactics and shoot down an equivalent aircraft from the Soviet sphere. Nice. Well, America evened the score on quick trigger fingers not long after with the Iran Air Flight 655 [wikipedia.org] incident in 1988. If we had deliberately boarded the eye-for-an-eye bus, we'd now be asking the Irish for advice on how to cool the exchange.
The other sermon I recall rather vividly was the claim that the rapidly rising disease in western society was a sign of God's wrath. He was referring in particular to the number of distinct diagnostic categories, completely oblivious to the fact that refinements in diagnostic category are the hallmark of science making progress. Where we used to have one lump for infectious disease, we now distinguish thousands of pathogens, all the way down to minor strains.
FOX News excluded, mental health in America has probably never been better. I watched the extremely difficult movie Breaking the Waves [suntimes.com] over the weekend. There wasn't a shred of mental health in evidence in that nasty Calvinist congregation. Every one of them would rather crush pint glasses with their bare hands than seek help for depression. Hitchens was exceedingly vocal about how Mother Teresa [slate.com] defined misery as next to godliness. She did almost nothing to alleviate suffering.
As society less frequently accepts that suffering is next to godliness, more people seek treatment for minor mental health conditions. The same data you cite reads to me as major progress.
Re:How does this reconcile with other data? (Score:5, Insightful)
BZZZZ! WRONG!. On all accounts, but that is not surprising. There is a strong correlation between education level and religiosity. The less education one have, the more religious one tends to be. The correlation is particularly strong in hard sciences.
The most atheistic countries in the world are probably the Scandinavian countries and some of the Benelux countries. These all have significantly lower crime rates than the countries where religion has a more prominant position. If you look at the US and The Netherlands for example, it is interesting to see that the religious US has higher crime rate, higher divorce rate, higher teen pregnancy rate, more children born out of wedlock etc, than the rather atheist Netherlands. Oh, and the Dutch also have a more libereal drug legislation. So, comparing the US and and Netherlands less religion and more drugs leads to less crime, less divorce and in general more "moral" behavior as determined by the traditional Christian "moral code".
Guess what happens to people with no moral guide lines?
What a childish and inane statement. Shows a serious lack of brains right there. Moral guidelines have nothing to do with religion. Adults, as opposed to sniveling children, don't need a big bogey man behind the door to scare them into moral behavior. Thinking adults can actually act morally based on philosophy or self-interest. Please grow up. Santa doesn't exist. There is no God. stop using a divine entity as an excuse for inexcusable behavior. It is inexcusable to be unable to device a set of moral rules without the scary bogeyman forcing you to.
Oh, and if you want to take moral guildelines from someone, the Abrahamic God is the last place to look. That dude is a shitbag and deserves only contempt. Even the idea of a divine entity demanding a loyal subject murder his oldest son for him is abhorrent. If God stepped down tomorrow and asked of me what he asked of Abraham, I would spit him in the face. If he continued his insane demands I would have him comitted or I would slay him. You see, slaying divine entities is easy [wikipedia.org].
I guess fear is a efficient way to rule (Score:2)
Here in the US, we are told there is constant threat of terrorism, which is used to keep people in line. So other countries simply use Hell instead, which seems to be more effective.. provided you can get people to truly believe in hell.
Re: (Score:2)
Here in the US, we are told there is constant threat of terrorism, which is used to keep people in line. So other countries simply use Hell instead, which seems to be more effective.. provided you can get people to truly believe in hell.
Actually, The Atlantic advises that you're more likely to be killed by your furniture than by a terrorist attack in the US. [theatlantic.com]
Maybe hell is heaped high with chairs, wobbly tv sets and tables?
Re: (Score:3)
Depends on who is throwing it at you.
Marx had this one right (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people [wikipedia.org]
The heaven side convinces the 99% to accept their fate, the hell side warns them what happens if they don't.
Unfortunately, Christianity has a get out of jail free card so you get the occasional douchbag that takes "I am the truth, the way, and the light" literally and screws everyone they can. This seems pretty common in those that are super Catholic, and less so in casual Christians. YMMV.
I think if the rationalists take over you would see a steep rise in vig
Re: (Score:3)
> takes "I am the truth, the way, and the light" literally
"And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity".
I swear ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hell and the Devil (Score:5, Interesting)
Little Boy: The Devil is evil?
Pastor: Yes my boy.
Little Boy: But why is the Devil evil? He punishes all the bad people.
Pastor: >slap
Let us all go to hell. At least there is a party there...
Re: (Score:2)
Do you honestly think you're bad enough to get into Hell?
Re: (Score:2)
Behold! A perfect example of a straw man argument, in all it's pristine glory.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Now maybe you don't accept that evidence.
That'a not "evidence", that's a bunch of wild claim about supposed events that took place a very long time ago. A fossil bone, a rusty sword or a floor plan of an ancient villa is much more a piece of evidence than any old mythological book.
Correlation is not causation (Score:2)
Aren't those basically the same people? The number of those only believing in one is small enough to make the study basically random alone. Even worse, those few people are scattered across 60 countries, with the crime rates of those countries were used to determine how
Re: (Score:3)
Depends.
Given the notoriety of the Bible Belt, I'm inclined to think that they're not strong on believing they'll be punished. Others might, but they won't, so effectively they don't believe in hell as pertains to them.
The Buddhists* don't strictly believe in heaven OR hell, but do believe that you're either cycling endlessly in futility or step off the hamster wheel of incarnation. If phrased in Judeo-Christian terms, this would be a heaven without a hell.
*Ok, some Buddhist sects believe in a hell, but the
Huh (Score:5, Informative)
According to Table 1 of the study, the choices of religious affiliation include "Roman Catholic," "Other Christian," and "Muslim."
That would seem to ignore much of the world's population, beginning with Jews and continuing on to the various religions that believe in reincarnation.
They claim to have drawn their data from publicly available sources. I'd love to hear how they spun that data to achieve their sample.
Re:Huh (Score:4, Funny)
They were going to include Jedi, but after some hand-waving they "forgot" to.
The "noble lie" (Score:5, Interesting)
It would follow that, in order to achieve these socially desirable ends,e.g., lower crime rates, governments and religions should instill and promulgate belief in a vengeful God and in divine punishment. Plato had much the same idea in his Republic when he introduced the idea of the "noble lie" [wikipedia.org], a constructed mythology that would be taught to all in order to promote social harmony and love of the State. Excellent for the myth-makers, who shape our minds for our own good -- and their own benefit.
belief in hell (Score:3)
If you must believe in hell then hell must not exist in your country as an actuality.
Therefore, your country probably doesn't have a very high crime rate.
I doubt it because .... (Score:5, Interesting)
I really doubt it because it's a rather well know fact by now (e.g. research by Zimbardo et. al) that the majority of people that commit crimes don't actually think about the future before committing them. They don't even think a few months in advance, let alone at what happens after life ...
Justice (Score:3)
So if a person has committed crimes during his life, e.g burglary, violence, fraud and a bit of adultery thrown in for good measure, most believers would say that he will go to Hell and burn in all eternity for his sins.
So does the punishment befit the crime(s)?
Is torturing somebody by subjecting them to continuous pain, suffering and torment for an infinite length of time justifiable for whatever they did during the ~80 odd years of life on Earth?
What about after the first trillion years of torture? Dont you think that would be enough considering the crimes committed?
What about when the misery and torture has reached a few billion trillion years?
And dont forget, 10 to the power of 10000000000000000000000000 years is not even the most insignificant fraction of eternity.
No crime I can possibly think of can ever justify that level of torture.
If this is how the universe works, then whatever Deity created this system is a monster of the highest order.
DUH! (Score:5, Insightful)
People that believe they will suffer dire consequences are less likely to commit a crime. Really? Imagine that.
Worst study I have seen in a long time (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Data mining
> no correction has been made for inflated error rates due to performing a large number of analyses
Also, the correlations for beleif in heaven and belief in hell are both large and of the opposite sign. A classic red flag for data mining, i.e. torturing the data until you get the result you want.
2. Garbage data
If you look at the article, it claims that Russia is a far more law-abiding country than Australia.
However when you look at the one crime statistic that is very reliable, we see that Russian has 84 murders per day = 217 per million people per year. Australia has about 260 per year = 11 per million people per year. That is, Russia's murder rate is 20 times higher. Yet we are supposed to believe that Russia has a lower crime rate than Australia.
If this is at all representative of the quality of their data, it is a sad joke.
http://www.smartraveller.gov.au/zw-cgi/view/advice/Russia [smartraveller.gov.au]
Re:So, Judeo-Christian areas, then? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So, Judeo-Christian areas, then? (Score:5, Funny)
As an atheist, I didn't used to, but then I spent a few weeks in Arkansas. If that's not hell, I don't know what is...
Re:So, Judeo-Christian areas, then? (Score:5, Informative)
Who else believes in hell?
Well, let's look at The Fine Paper [plosone.org]:
So presumably some flavors of "Other" believe in a hell of some sort (for example, "being reincarnated as something in the "sucks to be you" category" might fill the bill), as does Islam. I don't see "IL" in Figure 1, so, unless I've missed something, there's no country where Judaism is a national majority (I'm assuming it's still a national majority in Israel), so I'm not sure it addresses the "Judeo" part of that.
(Oh, and the data point for the US is a fair bit above the line, meaning a higher crime rate for the US's value of {believers in hell} - {believers in heaven} than the line would predict. I don't know whether that's significant; if it is, maybe hell is a less effective deterrent here in the City on the Hill.)
Re: (Score:2)
Oi! Hel is the name of a Nordic giantess, thank you very much!
Re: (Score:3)
As far as I know there are no concrete concepts of either hell or heaven in Judaism.
Hell != Hell (Score:4, Informative)
As far as I know there are no concrete concepts of either hell or heaven in Judaism.
Nor did Jesus teach about any sort of eternal conscious torment. Part of the problem is that some churches have conflated two concepts, Sheol and Gehenna, into "hell". Sheol (also called Hades) is the grave, an unconscious state of being ("the dead are aware of nothing", Eccl 9:5) in which the dead sleep awaiting resurrection. Gehenna (from the Hebrew for Hinnom Valley) is literally the name of a valley where garbage was destroyed through burning, and it symbolically refers to destruction of the incorrigible with no hope of resurrection, not eternal conscious torment.
The Hebrew Scriptures have a concept of a kingdom of God that will destroy the kingdoms of man (1 Chr 29:10-12; Daniel 2:44, 4:3).
Re: (Score:3)
Detroit (Score:5, Funny)
People who live in Detroit? All they have to do is open a window and look outside.
Re:Detroit (Score:5, Insightful)
I also do not like $LOCATION. Where's my funny points?
Re:One acknowledges the existence of the other (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, some people argue that Hell was created later and added to the Bible. A hell mythology is quite popular everywhere so if you start out without it'll be added sooner or later.
If hell impacts good behavior and heaven does not, then one would expect Buddhists to do well right? They do not have heaven but they can get really bad Karma... Good karma is not Heaven but bad Karma could be bad enough to be considered a form of hell.
Re: (Score:2)
What makes you think bad karma is hell? Bad karma is bad karma, no more no less. Similarly moksha is moksha, and is not heaven.
Re:One acknowledges the existence of the other (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the Western concept of Hell is mostly based on Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost -- likewise the concept of alien beings being white with halos and dove's wings, and others being red with forked tails, goat's horns and pitchforks is something that comes from popular culture and not theological treatises.
Added to this, if you look in the Christian Bible or any of the Jewish religious works, you'll see that earlier works only refer to Abaddon or Hades, and even later works rarely refer to Hell (8 references, mostly in Matthew, also in Mark, Luke, James and 2 Peter, with the Matthew and Mark ones paraphrasing the same sermons). Original references to Hell in the Bible are attributed to Jesus, Paul, James and Peter. Of these, Peter describes it as gloomy (similar to Hades), James as fiery, Jesus and Paul purely as a place Angels and Humans can be exiled to, possibly with a gate and wall.
What am I getting at here? Mostly that this study is likely mostly useless, as the entire concept of what Hell is and who goes there and for what varies wildly throughout history and geography/culture. Nowadays, most people apply the Yin/Yan dichotomy to Heaven and Hell; others have labelled Hell as being "not Heaven", and then of course there's the "Heaven's Prison" and "Place of Eternal Torment" depictions mentioned in the Bible.
I'd be more interested in seeing this study done looking at belief in a benevolent creator and belief in a malignant rebel; the results may be the same, but that's in no way guaranteed.
Re: (Score:3)
Of these, Peter describes it as gloomy (similar to Hades), James as fiery
Are they talking about the same hell? Hades and Gehenna are two different hells, as I mentioned elsewhere [slashdot.org], and translators have confused them.
Re:One acknowledges the existence of the other (Score:4, Informative)
Good article on this here: http://www.cracked.com/article_18757_5-things-you-wont-believe-arent-in-bible.html [cracked.com]
Re:One acknowledges the existence of the other (Score:5, Informative)
If there's good then there's evil. If there's a God then there's a Devil. If there's a Heaven then there's a Hell.
It might help if you took a comparative religion course. Many people believe in God without a belief in a Devil. This applies for example to many liberal Christians. In Judaism, the closest thing to the Devil is "Satan" who acts more as a prosecuting angel or a gadfly in the heavenly court. This interpretation is based on pretty old sources including the actual mentions of Satan in the Old Testament, especially the book of Job.
Similarly, many forms of Christianity have a notion heaven without any notion of hell. This is common among Christians who ascribe to universal reconciliation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_reconciliation [wikipedia.org] and similar beliefs. Some other groups believe that there is either heaven or oblivion- this belief is common among Jehovah Witnesses for example. Similarly, many forms of Judaism have a notion of purgatory but no equivalent of hell. Indeed, there's a belief common among Orthodox Jews that no matter how bad you are you won't suffer for more than a year in the afterlife. This is related to the tradition of saying, Kaddish, the prayer for the dead http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaddish [wikipedia.org] for 11 months- one wants to ease their suffering but one does not want to imply that that someone was so bad that they were being punished for a full year.
In the other direction, you have some belief systems that have a notion similar to hell but no equivalent of heaven. For example, in some forms of Buddhism, there are very unpleasant things one can be reincarnated to to suffer for milllenia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naraka_(Buddhism) [wikipedia.org] but there's no real equivalent of heaven. So one can not only have a belief in heaven with no belief in hell, one can have a belief in hell with no belief in heaven.
Re:One acknowledges the existence of the other (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
There are lots of people who believe that when you die you "go to the afterlife," and that even bad people end up there (where their lives won't be so hard). The idea that good people will go to Heaven only if bad people are punished for all eternity is a fairly wrathful concept.
Likewise, the idea that the Devil is "the opposite of God" is a kind of fringe belief for Christianity. By most reckonings, the Christian Devil is clearly subordinate to God. Some Christians don't really believe in the Devil at all.
Re: (Score:2)
If there's a God then there's a Devil.
There are many religions where there is God, but no "devil" or "satan". Even if you look to the bible (instead of the christian folklore of Milton, and Dante), the "devil" inhabits both heaven and earth and is more a tempting spirit (more like Goethe's Faust) than a counterpart to God who happens to live in Hell.
If there's a Heaven then there's a Hell.
How can there be one without the other?
AFAIK, there is no "hell" in the christian biblical sense of eternal punishment in Judaism, but there is Heaven. Although Judaism seems to have a temporary state of shame that offers the chance of
Re: (Score:3)
(Puts on buzz killington outfit)
Actually, the judeo christian bible is quite clear about what happens to unriteous people when they die. (Saying "sinners" implies a false dichotomy. All people are sinners by biblical standards.)
The old testament uses the term "grave" in most english translations. The original hebrew word was "sheol", which actually means "null", "nonexistence", "void", "emptiness", etc. Lit. The state of no longer being.
The current version of popular "hell", is a purely dogmatic construct w
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
... where fewer believed in hell.
FTFY, AC
Re:So religion is an evolutionary strategy (Score:5, Funny)
Ha! Suck it fundamentalist deists! You're on the no statistical significance side of the evolution fight this time!
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
There are some problems with your argument, although the quote from Sherman is a pretty good point. Mainly, people don't use Paris to describe an emotional state. Not like they do with heaven. They might say something is like being in Paris, but that is still obviously referring to the city in France.
Heaven and Hell are concepts, just as much as they are places described in the Christian bible. When referring to the Christian Heaven/Hell then capitalization is correct. When referring to the abstract idea th
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
However, recent studies suggest that not all religious beliefs are equal in this respect. Though supernatural punishment is associated with increases in normative behavior, laboratory research reveals the concept of supernatural benevolence to be associated with decreases in normative behavior
As predicted, rates of belief in heaven and hell had significant, unique, and opposing effects on crime rates.
Re: (Score:3)
It's a depressing state of affairs if you ask me.
Re: (Score:3)
so out-breed them! :)
i don't understand people who have an idea how the world should be, yet they decide it's not worth bringing a child into the world as it is. if people like us don't breed, then the world will never be as we would like it.
Re: (Score:3)
so out-breed them! :)
i don't understand people who have an idea how the world should be, yet they decide it's not worth bringing a child into the world as it is. if people like us don't breed, then the world will never be as we would like it.
The reluctance of people in the 'educated' world to have kids is wierd. I myself never thought I wanted to have kids. It wasn't until I was much older that I realised what a terrible mistake I'd made. This was after reading Nietzsche and realising something about myself, about kids and what they are.
The human race is on a journey. We travel from the bestial to the superhuman. Each child is a step on that journey. If we continue to have children, to nurture them, to raise them to be better than us, stronger,
Re: (Score:3)
Religious people tend to have more babies
The statistics seem to indicate that might not be true.
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies.html [ted.com]
Re:So religion is an evolutionary strategy (Score:4, Informative)
where there is no infrastructure, there is religion.
when a ruling power cannot effectively educate it's people, there are religious people doing it for them (for free!).
Its not 'for free', they have to sell their souls.
in this way you could take religion as being a kind of base level of education that will reach everywhere.
the goal of an enlightened society is to educate people even halfway as effectively, or they'll be dominated by supernatural thought.
religion will keep a people alive, but rarely can they achieve greatness without demystifying the world.
I've recently been working in a developing country, in what I thought was a university. Turns out this 'university' is a front for christian missionaries and despite handing out degrees the quality of education is laughable. About 85% of the teaching staff have NO KNOWLEDGE of the subjects they are pretending to teach. But they feel good about what they do because they are spreading the word of god. Its pretty detestable stuff. And its stifling genuine education, which is EXACTLY what they want.
Re:So religion is an evolutionary strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
when a ruling power cannot effectively educate it's people, there are religious people doing it for them (for free!).
Bingo.
It'll never happen, but if the USA wants to end terrorism against them the solution is to fund secular schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Do that for 40 years and you'll end religion's stranglehold.