Religious People Are Much Nicer Than Atheists

[Fuzzly Bear]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyo...ear-study/

Quote:There’s an interesting article in USA Today by David Campbell and Robert Putman, two political scientists who’ve just completed a magisterial, five-year study of the way in which religion affects American society. They try and present their findings in an even-handed, politically neutral way, but there’s no escaping the fact that religion and religious people emerge vey well. Their new book, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us All, sounds like a definitive rebuttal to Christopher Hitchens’s assertion that “religion poisons everything”.
One of Campbell and Putman’s main discoveries is that religious people are “better neighbours” than their non-religious counterparts. By this, they mean that they’re more likely to volunteer to help out those less fortunate than themselves, as well as give to charity:
Forty percent of worship-attending Americans volunteer regularly to help the poor and elderly, compared with 15% of Americans who never attend services. Frequent-attenders are also more likely than the never-attenders to volunteer for school and youth programs (36% vs. 15%), a neighborhood or civic group (26% vs. 13%), and for health care (21% vs. 13%). The same is true for philanthropic giving; religious Americans give more money to secular causes than do secular Americans. And the list goes on, as it is true for good deeds such as helping someone find a job, donating blood, and spending time with someone who is feeling blue.
Perhaps more surprisingly, this activism extends across all forms of civic engagement, not just philanthropy:
[T]he “religious edge” holds up for organized forms of community involvement: membership in organizations, working to solve community problems, attending local meetings, voting in local elections, and working for social or political reform. On this last point, it is not just that religious people are advocating for right-leaning causes, although many are. Religious liberals are actually more likely to be community activists than are religious conservatives.
The authors were initially a little sceptical of these findings, but after controlling for a huge range of factors – women are more religious than men, for instance – their conclusions proved to be robust. Interestingly, the high degree of civic activism among religious people doesn’t vary according to what particular religion they belong to. “We examined the possible impact of 25 different religious beliefs on civic behavior, and none explains religious Americans’ good neighborliness,” write Campbell and Putnam.
They believe the explanation lies in the friends religious people make while engaging in religious worship or related forms of social activity:
The answer lies not in their beliefs but their friends. Specifically, having friends at church (or synagogue, temple, mosque, etc.) fosters neighborliness. While having more friends is, for civic purposes, better than having fewer friends, what matters most is having friends within a religious congregation. And the type of congregation does not matter. Friends found in Catholic parishes, Jewish synagogues, Protestant churches, Mormon wards — and every other type of religious grouping — all produce the same civic effect.
It’s safe to assume that a similar survey of British religious people would produce the same results and that, in turn, tells us something about the shape the Big Society is likely to take. Assuming that religious Britons, like religious Americans, are more likely to get involved in civic projects, then the Big Society will probably have a religious character – or, at least, religious people will constitute a disproportionally high percentage of those involved in Big Society groups. Indeed, it’s already happening – approximately 50 per cent of the first wave of free schools approved by Michael Gove have a faith component.
For Left-wing secularists, this will be yet another reason to oppose the Big Society. In fact, as Campbell and Putman make clear in this fascinating new book, the willingness of people of all faiths to give up their time to help others may be Western society’s best hope of civic renewal.

Thought this would be of interest to some.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Is this excluding any and all facts that it's the religious who condemn homosexuals as eternal sinners, women as the slaves of man, the poor to remain poor, and those who worship other gods than theirs as agents of Satan? lol

[Gezus]

There are very kind religious people. There are very evil mean religious people. Same goes for nonreligious people.

[psy0nyd3]

Even if religious people in the west donate more of their money and time to help the community, do the pros outweigh the cons?

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=dae_1236854361

...

[Fuzzly Bear]

Haha to those of you who don't know The Torygraph is a Tory supporting right-of-centre who have basically just interpreted the data to have a dig at atheists and Labour supporters.

I don't even want to watch that witch-burning video Psy

[The Vegan Marxist]

Religion and capitalism has been used consecutively throughout the world. I would say the cons vastly outweigh the pros by a long shot.

[Maveric]

Is it going by numbers or by ratio for the statistics? Also, theres a good deal of charity organizations and youth groups and whatnot that are directly religious, or facilitated by religious networks, whereas there are no such networks for nonbelievers. Also, being that nonbelievers are more sparse in the general population than religious people, any possible organizations would be farther spread out, further reducing any chance of organized philantrophic or communal organizations donating, or rallying to donate(as in the case of religious institutions), money to charity.

And maybe the religious people who were kind enough to take the survey from the stranger doing the polling were untrusting of their atheist neighbors(as the bible instructs) and just said they were bad neighbors for that reason?

[Sasha]

Religious people also have killed alot more :] they are so nice.

[The Vegan Marxist]

(11-30-2010 07:45 AM)Maveric Wrote:  whereas there are no such networks for nonbelievers.

Excuse me?

http://givingaid.richarddawkins.net/

http://earthward.org/mission.shtml

http://foundationbeyondbelief.org/

http://fellowshipoffreethought.org/

http://www.iheu.org/

http://www.atheistvolunteers.org/Austin

http://www.atheistcentre.in/default.html

So where do you claim that there's no Atheist charity organizations? There's plenty!

[Blizzard]

(11-30-2010 05:45 AM)The Vegan Marxist Wrote:  Religion and capitalism has been used consecutively throughout the world. I would say the cons vastly outweigh the pros by a long shot.

cosig, and fuck Jesus, fuck Allah, fuck Buddha and most importantly fuck you if you are offended by this!!!

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(11-30-2010 05:35 AM)psy0nyd3 Wrote:  Even if religious people in the west donate more of their money and time to help the community, do the pros outweigh the cons?

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=dae_1236854361

...

fuck donations, fuck people easing off their guilt by donating to the poor so that they feel good about themselves and yeah fuck you!!

[zanj uhuru]

A Christian Pastor asked me, would you rather go to Heaven or Hell? I told him to answer 2 questions 1st.
1st. After asking for forgiveness & finding peace with God, where do Rapists & Murderers go? He Replied. "Heaven of course".
2nd. Where do Atheist women who have devoted their lives to helping the hungry & the sick go?? "To HELL" he replies.
I said oohhh Theres your answer. Ill go where the women have gone!!

[Fuzzly Bear]

Are you joking or is that actually a true story