Religious Children are Nasty Creeps

[Sinfidel]

Children from religious families are less kind and more punitive than those from non-religious households, according to a new study.

Academics from seven universities across the world studied Christian, Muslim and non-religious children to test the relationship between religion and morality.

They found that religious belief is a negative influence on children’s altruism.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...lar-kids-study

[Davin]

Those little shits.

[Sinfidel]

Davin wrote

Those little shits.

The study is not sufficiently in depth. What is the root cause? Being forced to sit in Sunday School and endure those boring Bible stories? Sitting next to mummy and daddy in Sunday finery, while the apostate kids get to run around and play in the sunshine? Listening to those dreary hymns and wheezing organ music instead of the Ipod? Those forced before meal and bedtime prayers? Seeing those horrible images of the Jesus guy writhing on the cross! Then there are the Isis ten year olds taught to execute the infidels. Who wouldn't go psycho? And you thought the Little Red Riding Hood stories were a bad influence. Hah!

[Davin]

I think the problem is that, like me, the kids are taught that:

• They are special
• They are moral
• God is with them
• Sinning is bad
• God rewards good people

So when they deal with the outside world, they see people that are not in their group and they see that those people are not special, are not moral, god is not with them, they are unrepentant sinners, and are not being rewarded because they are not good people. It's hard to blame a child for developing an arrogant uncaring attitude when those are lessons that they are taught from the womb.

Of course they also try to teach bullshit like, "hate the sin, not the sinner," which is supposed to solve the problem of treating unrepentant sinners like shit, but it really doesn't.

[AtomJack]

It is always about "The Others", defining some difference between "Us" and Them". My mom was a devout Catholic who lived in a small enough town that they used to petition the Vatican for dispensation to marry their first cousins. I think that I missed that bullet, but I do remember her talking about "Those damned Lutherans".

[carusmm]

Kids are monsters - who would have thought?