According to a new study, there is no more moral obligation in people who are religious compared to people who are not religious. A study conducted on 1,252 people who are of different religious as well as political backgrounds found that no matter which religion or political background they were affiliated with they all reported back around the same amount of moral acts committed by themselves.
In the study they were specifically asked to “record the good and bad deeds they committed, witnessed, learned about or were the target of throughout the day.” (Religion Doesn’t Make People More Moral, Study Finds). With each report, the researcher Dan Wineski found that all of the subjects no matter their religious or political stance reported that they had committed more moral acts compared to immoral acts and that they were witnesses to or heard of more immoral acts. However, there were some differences with how people emotionally responded to the acts. For instance, religious people had negative feelings after carrying out an immoral act; they also felt more positively about committing moral acts compared to non-religious people. On the political side of the spectrum, Liberals and Conservatives differed as well. The Liberals were more keen to describing more “honesty” and “fairness” acts of morality whereas Conservatives were keen to describe “loyalty” and “sanctity” related moral acts.
The neat thing about this study is that it’s the first of it’s kind in this related field. Rather than study candidates in a laboratory setting feeding them imaginary moral/immoral acts, they are asked to report the acts themselves. This is a more individualized approach and it can also help to narrow the viewpoint of how different political and religious affiliated people categorize moral and immoral acts and how they feel towards them.
I believe that this is a well done study, considering the individualization of the results. However, the issue of religion vs. relationship is something I thought about as I was reading the study. My point is that someone who may consider themselves “religious” could very well not be as religious as someone who is truly and honestly dedicated to their religion and all of its implications. If someone is dedicated to their religion, I assume they have some sort of relationship with their God/Gods; let’s refer to them as the “relationship type”. The relationship type may have a higher degree of morality than those who aren’t as dedicated to a given religion meaning that these people (the relationship type) could have completely different results as compared to the so called “religious” people in the study. This could be likely because I know of many different people who consider themselves religious (while I’m aware that this is an anecdote, it still applies). Some of them act no different than anyone else other than going to church – which I guess is enough for them to consider themselves religious. Others who claim that they are religious truly are by not only learning and believing in their religion but also by carrying it out into their daily lives. These are the people I believe would have a higher morality than those who aren’t as religious.
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