[LINK]This is a study to see if people (students, actually) would increase aggression if they thought it was being done "for God"... and they did. They did the study at Brigham Young University (99% believers in both God and the Bible) and at Vrije University in Amsterdam (half believers in God, one-fourth believers in the Bible). It might be surprising and interesting to note that even the non-believers showed more aggression when religion was a part of the game.
It seems very logical to me that if someone is regarded as a higher-up, and ruler, a father or mother-figure, or the object of great affection, admiration or fear, that one will try harder to please them, and do things that they might not personally agree with deep down. It's a little governing voice that you've heard before and in your heart you are hearing again, a voice that says "because I said so" and "prove that you love me". Why did many of the non-believers react the same way? Who can say? The participants would have to explain their actions and they did not include first-person accounts in the article. The top researcher theorizes that perhaps they were believers deep down in their hearts. I think that's because he is a professed believer... and that's what believers do. Their belief is so strong that non-belief seems impossible to them. The truth is that we don't know the answer.
Is this study really conclusive and does it explain anything? I doubt it (but then I'm a skeptic) [grin]
Tags: god - aggression
3 comments:
All it takes is a belief that something/someone knows more than one does themself, then we'll pretty much do anything we've not already forbidden ourself. 'Specially if there's a Huge payoff promised.
Trust. Belief. Faith. Whatevs.. They're a descending order of stand-ins for Knowledge when that precious commodity is absent or still forming.
Nice (sad) 'toon.
I love the blog that you have. I was wondering if you would link my blog to yours and in return I would do the same for your blog. If you want to, my site name is American Legends and the URL is:
www.americanlegends.info
If you want to do this just go to my blog and in one of the comments just write your blog name and the URL and I will add it to my site.
Thanks,
David
David, looks like your main topic is sports and I very seldom have sports-related posts here (unless the STL Cardinals are in the Series!!), and I'm not sure why you think I would fit in with all those right-wing political blogs. The only time I link to blogs with right-wing content is for Carnival of the Cats and Friday Ark, which is supposed to be kept politically neutral. That's one of the nice things about it. We are willing to put our idealogies aside for the sake of the cats (for one post a week anyway). Thanks anyway.
:-)
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