Question

[Shadowrun]

Let’s assume I am atheist. I do not believe in any kinds of commandments and laws from a higher power.

Now, what makes me not go around pillaging and raping towns?

1. Fear of punishment, not in a higher power but in the police force.
2. Overall, sense of morality, that is to say my mom was loving and tender with me and taught me right from wrong, thus even without religion I have this.
3. Any other number of reasons I did not spend much time on this aspect.

Now, lets say an atheist does not have this sense of morals and is not afraid of prison/death. It then becomes in his best interest to try to maximize his utility by whatever means he can.

What I want to know is, does religion keep anyone from committing crimes more so than atheism. Obviously, there are plenty of religious and non religious criminals and I am not looking for per-capita data or anything like that.

Do posters feel that religion is able to keep some criminals from committing crimes because they are afraid of going to “hell”?( Or even keeping criminals to committing to lesser types of crimes i.e. if I kill someone I am a shoe in to go to hell, but stealing I can always repent for.)

[thylacine]

I do not believe that religion can make any person intrinsically more moral than they could be without religion.

[Duke]

Well, I think I'd rather have people raping and pillaging all the time. That way they'd be more likely to be removed from the gene pool (pay back's a bitch), and we'd have fewer of them. In a way, religion's way of "corralling the jackasses" runs contrary to evolution and sticks us with real jerks who would otherwise have been weeded out, as their god-fearing parents managed to suppress the jackassery long enough to procreate.

This is making a decent sized leap and asserting that certain behavioral tendencies are genetic in origin, but it's an idea that I currently happen to agree with.

On the whole, the down side to religion is much bloodier and harmful than the crime suppression is a good thing, but perhaps it would be useful on an individual basis. If I had a murderous lunatic that I wanted to keep in line (if I couldn't kill him for whatever reason), you can be sure that I'd try anything - including putting the fear of Hell or whatever else into him that I thought might work.

[yukoncpa]

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Now, lets say an atheist does not have this sense of morals and is not afraid of prison/death. It then becomes in his best interest to try to maximize his utility by whatever means he can.


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It’s more than just the thought of punishment, a loving mother, etc that imbues everyone with a sense of right and wrong. Some say this sense comes from God, but it is perfectly rational to realize that as early pact primates, we either got along well with other members of the pact and had offspring, or we were ostracized and did not reproduce. Morals are evolved. Sure, everyone wants to maximize their utility, but usually not at the expense of the rest of the members of society

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What I want to know is, does religion keep anyone from committing crimes more so than atheism. Obviously, there are plenty of religious and non religious criminals and I am not looking for per-capita data or anything like that.


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I don’t know the stats on atheist v. religious criminals. Certainly, religion prevents some people from committing crimes. But that very religion might compel another to commit a crime, based on the religions teachings. I.e misogynist teachings, anti-gay teachings, biased race teachings, etc.

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Do posters feel that religion is able to keep some criminals from committing crimes because they are afraid of going to “hell”?( Or even keeping criminals to committing to lesser types of crimes i.e. if I kill someone I am a shoe in to go to hell, but stealing I can always repent for.)


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I believe that many folk obey laws strictly, for the same reasons that they obey their church’s teachings. I believe that many potential criminals refrain from acts that they would like to commit because of their fear of hell. However, there are certain Christians who will actually feel perfectly free committing a crime because they are aware that their belief in Christ alone will save them from hell and gain them admittance to heaven.

[tame_deuces]

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Now, lets say an atheist does not have this sense of morals and is not afraid of prison/death. It then becomes in his best interest to try to maximize his utility by whatever means he can.


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That's a fairly harsh assumption to use in your question, and with that in place the question answers itself.

If you chose between two groups, one which commits crime if (A) AND (B), and one which commits crime if (B). Then naturally the second group would commit more crime. There is no other answer, so the assumption renders the question moot.


As for real life, an atheist is a result of the culture he grows up in just like a religious person. Cultural norms affect him as it does the religious believer, and many of those norms come from religion and will shape both people's perception of right and wrong.

[Lestat]

It's a monumental fallacy that morality comes from religion. Humans have evolved to use and need societal cooperation. The key word is "evolved". Religion has nothing to do with it.

If we follow the morality of the bible, we'd still be selling our daughters to the highest bidder.

[madnak]

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Now, lets say an atheist does not have this sense of morals and is not afraid of prison/death. It then becomes in his best interest to try to maximize his utility by whatever means he can.

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No remorse or fear of consequences is essentially what we call psychopathy. I believe atheists are actually under represented among criminal populations of psychopaths. It's all a rather controversial subject, but based on the evidence that exists it appears that these qualities result in highly "immoral" behavior regardless of religion. They are also strongly associated with brain damage and deformity, indicating that morality and lawfulness have a physiological basis.

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What I want to know is, does religion keep anyone from committing crimes more so than atheism. Obviously, there are plenty of religious and non religious criminals and I am not looking for per-capita data or anything like that.

Do posters feel that religion is able to keep some criminals from committing crimes because they are afraid of going to “hell”?( Or even keeping criminals to committing to lesser types of crimes i.e. if I kill someone I am a shoe in to go to hell, but stealing I can always repent for.)

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I doubt it. I'm not sure if specific studies have been done, but I strongly believe that those who are afraid of hell are likely to be those who are afraid of prison time, etc. There will be exceptions here and there, but I think atheism is more likely to prevent such behavior than religion.

[Aver-aging]

Moral ideology is ingrained in society, and its not due to any religious purposes. Low subsistence aboriginal groups in pre-contact North America did not see ethics and religion as one in the same, but they were devoutly ethical and egalitarian. It was even considered to be unethical to not share everything you had with the people in your group. You could even say that these groups were even more ethical (in certain ways) than modern religious or secular humanist people in today's society.

It all has to do with the influence of moral ideology in high resource societies, but in low resource societies it's all about survival of the fittest ethics through ideology. Being highly 'ethical' is just advantageous and more efficient when it comes down to it, henceforth people are innately ethical. Even feral children who grow up alone in a forest, can't speak and can't understand other people's emotions very well usually have a tendency to co-operate with people whenever someone is nice enough to give them the chance.

What you have to realize is that if a person doesn't co-operate with other individuals, they are physiologically different than everyone else, either at the genetic level, or their left frontal cortex is underdeveloped/damaged. People are not innately 100% selfish. Selection made sure of that. I don't know where people are pulling out the idea that without proper influence a person can't act under moral pretenses. Since when have people lived in a dog-eat-dog society? If we were immoral in nature, wouldn't that happen more often? Anarchy is a rare occurrence.

However, I won't discount the idea that learning and practicing a type of effective moral ideology raises the likelihood that the person won't behave immorally. Making a more complex model of moral behavior at a young age in a person's mind is, for the most part, beneficial towards getting them to act under moral pretenses. That is just not the be all and the end all though, people can learn on their own, or have strong genetic tendencies towards moral behavior.

Oh yeah, I also forgot to mention that atheism has a tendency to be adopted by intellectuals and moderates, so when you look at statistics of criminals who are atheists vs. ones who are religious, you will see a giant drop in the number of atheist criminals.

[Philo]

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Now, lets say an atheist does not have this sense of morals and is not afraid of prison/death. It then becomes in his best interest to try to maximize his utility by whatever means he can.



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Just a comment about your inference here--from the fact that one does not have a sense of morality and is also not afraid of punishment or death it does not follow that it is in one's best interest to maximize one's utility (you have left it open what one's utility consists in) by whatever means one can.

[Shadowrun]

Good thoughts by everyone, i especially liked


"I doubt it. I'm not sure if specific studies have been done, but I strongly believe that those who are afraid of hell are likely to be those who are afraid of prison time, etc. There will be exceptions here and there, but I think atheism is more likely to prevent such behavior than religion." by Madnak