Compassion Predicts Generosity More Among Less Religious Individuals

[Skybird]

http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/04/25/1948550612444137.abstract

Abstract free, main text needs subscription.

Abstract

Past research argues that religious commitments shape individuals’ prosocial sentiments, including their generosity and solidarity. But what drives the prosociality of less religious people? Three studies tested the hypothesis that, with fewer religious expectations of prosociality, less religious individuals’ levels of compassion will play a larger role in their prosocial tendencies. In Study 1, religiosity moderated the relationship between trait compassion and prosocial behavior such that compassion was more critical to the generosity of less religious people. In Study 2, a compassion induction increased generosity among less religious individuals but not among more religious individuals. In Study 3, state feelings of compassion predicted increased generosity across a variety of economic tasks for less religious individuals but not among more religious individuals. These results suggest that the prosociality of less religious individuals is driven to a greater extent by levels of compassion than is the prosociality of the more religious.

Reasons could be that free thinkers not obeying any club rules need to form opinions and decisions by themselves, while club members must not do that, but comfortably just follow club rules. It is these rules that project the impression of security that many people seek when joining a club.

Of course, principle dogmas of a club's ideology also have their impact.

[Skybird]

Generosity, morals, education, intelligence - somehow this seems to be linked, doesn't it.

The more you believe to know, the more you are under anonymous group pressure, the more you simply follow preset patterns of obedience and rules that are laid out before you by any kind od dogma, may it be fascism or fundamentalist religion of any branch - the less need there is for you and the less incentive there is for you to use your brain and start thinking over possible answers yourself. This regarding intelligence, but also regarding morals: the more you simploy follow moral rules you have been indoctrinated with sicne your chiuldhood, the less need you see to think about an inbdividual case that needs moral assessement yourself.

http://freethinker.co.uk/2012/05/26/atheists-are-more-intelligent-than-religious-people/


I do not believe for a moment that it is racist to point out that, in those countries where religion dominates the lives of its citizens – countries whose populations are mainly of a darker hue – social, economic and technological progress is virtually at a standstill.
This paralysis exists not because these people are stupid, but because religion has served to crush innovation and entrench primitive thinking. There can be no doubting that these people have been stupefied by religion masquerading as knowledge.
The only cure for this boils down to proper education, free of all religious influence.That the decline of religious belief across developed nations in the 20th century led to more intelligent populations is indisputable, and I have no doubt that, if religion were to give way to better education in Africa and the Muslim states, the same trend would be observed there.
(...)
In his book Mooney ties together the disparate strands of the attack on science into a compelling and frightening account of the US Government’s increasing unwillingness to distinguish between legitimate research and ideologically driven pseudoscience.
It is the religionists (assisted by muddleheaded, pc-constrained liberals and leftists) who are quickest to equate anti-religious sentiments with racism, because they know that, by playing the race card, they can effectively stifle a debate they would rather not have because it is one they can never win.
^ Mirrors what i have said in past debates many times: People in general and Muslims in special are not born stupid, but are being made stupid - by the dogma under whose spell they are.