Research Report: Does Religion Really Make Us Better People?

It should come as no surprise to readers that the general public overwhelmingly assumes that religion is tied to morality. This can be de scribed as the “Religion Makes You Good” theory. In more scientific terms, this “religious prosociality hypothesis” predicts that religious belief is associated with a variety of positive social behaviors ranging from …

Here’s a question you won’t find on a Gallup or Pew survey: “How much do you hate religious proselytizing?” Wouldn’t it be nice to know how Americans really feel about being evangelized? Don’t expect the answer soon! The problem is that neither major polling organizations nor such major funders of research as the Templeton and …

In 2009, when I published my book The God Virus, I received an overwhelming number of e-mails and phone calls from people asking for help dealing with the emotional and psychological trauma in connection with their leaving religion. In response, I founded Recovering from Religion, now a rapidly growing organization headed by Executive Director Sarah …

  The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed. —Attributed to William F. Gibson Many people are convinced that the end of the world is nigh—even aft er the failure of predictions in 2012 based on the Mayan calendar—due to what they believe is stated in the Book of Revelation. To be sure, …

To: Charlotte@airmail.net From: TuckerBeckdk1209@freeway.cyb Subject: first impressions Dear Lottie, What did it feel like when I first came here? It’s hard to say. At first, I didn’t feel much of anything. It was like waking up any other day. I knew everything had changed, but it didn’t feel different. I was still the same person. …

In case you missed it, Roman Catholics have a new pope. Pope Benedict XVI resigned, which no pope has done in almost six hundred years, and the College of Cardinals met in conclave and elected Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who chose the name Pope Francis. But of course, you didn’t miss it. No one …

I’ve been unusually steeped in the history of atheism and freethought in the United States and the United Kingdom recently. Barry Duke, the editor of the UK magazine The Freethinker, sent me a history of the magazine published in 1982 to mark its hundredth year of publication (Vision and Realism: A Hundred Years of The …

The central achievement of the American Revolution was to demote government to the role of a cop on the beat. The citizen became sovereign instead of the monarch. Self-government became an aspiration for all people, not just for rulers. The idea became prominent, at least for a while, that government’s proper role was to secure …

It is no exaggeration to say that the invention of monotheism has been the greatest misfortune of humanity. In the polytheistic world, every city had its gods, who were deemed to be its protectors against very real threats such as floods, famines, crop failure, volcanoes, military defeat, and other disasters. Even when a city was …

When I came of age in the 1950s, deep in Appalachia’s Bible Belt, narrow-minded sanctimony prevailed. It was a crime for stores to open on the Sabbath. It was a crime to buy a cocktail or a lottery ticket any day. Boot­leggers and “numbers” runners were nailed by cops. You could be jailed for looking …

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, popes have become the focus of heightened religious emotion. Eamon Duffy, professor of the history of Christianity at Cambridge and a staunch Catholic, has said that the Polish Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005, spent his final years of physical and mental decline “acting out a …

  The Meaning of Life and Death Ronald A. Lindsay’s editorial “The Argument from Death and Meaningless—Again” (FI, April/May 2013) helpfully argued that if heaven destroys our individuality, it is not a reward but another form of death and therefore can’t make mortal life meaningful. Alternatively, if we survive eternally as ourselves, we will inevitably …

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the American national government’s founders, following the lead of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in Virginia, incorporated these words into the Constitution’s First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” In 1802 Jefferson explained that these words built …

  Shake it up, baby, now (Shake it up, baby) Twist and shout (Come on and twist and shout) —“Twist and Shout,” written by Phil Medley and Bert Russell. Recorded by the Isley Brothers, 1962 What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet. —Romeo and …

Recently, I read a transcript of a debate on the resurrection in which the conservative Christian debater Michael Horner said the following: “God doesn’t send anyone to hell. . . . We each have the number one choice to make in our life, and that is, do we want to commence a relationship with the …

God or Godless: One Atheist. One Christian. Twenty Con­troversial Questions, by John W. Loftus and Randal Rauser (Ada, MI: Baker Publishing, 2013, ISBN 978-0-8010-1528-1) 203 pp. Paperback, $13.99. Baker deserves a lot of credit for publishing God or Godless: One Atheist. One Christian. Twenty Con­troversial Questions. It represents a departure from the traditional evangelical Christian …

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt (New York: Pantheon Books, 2012, ISBN 978-0-307-37790-6) 448 pp. Hardcover, $28.95. Are consequentialist ethics adequate? According to University of Virginia social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, they are not. They suffer from two crucial flaws. First, they depend too heavily on reasoning …

The Enlightenment Vision: Science, Reason, and the Promise of a Better Future, by Stuart Jordan (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2013, ISBN 978-161614-640-5) 284 pp. Hardcover, $26. Thanks to the thinkers and activists of the seventeenth and eighteenth century period in Western Europe and America called the Enlightenment, increasing numbers of people have enjoyed a better life …

What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster, by Jonathan V. Last (New York: Encounter Books, 2013, ISBN 978-159403-641-5). 230 pp. Hardcover, $23.99. The title of this book riffs archly on a current mega–best seller (What to Expect When You’re Expecting), which should give you a clue about author Jonathan V. Last’s …

“It’s Not About the Sex,” My Ass: Confessions of an Ex­Mormon Ex­Polygamist Ex­Wife, by Joanne Hanks as told to Steve Cuno (Self-published: 2012, ISBN 978-1-105-99740-2 paper) 171 pp. Paperback, $15.97. Available in paperback or Kindle on Amazon.com; available in hardcover, paperback, Kindle, Nook, iBook, and eBook at www.itsnotaboutthesexmyass.com. We seldom review self-published books, so let’s …

Unsong the morning Preen it from its pinks Unstar the fallen Their light no longer keeps Uncrib the branches This kingdom needs no throne Unwish the wind its strength I need it for my own Uncrow the pines Don’t let the vultures land Unblue the sky Bring them back again  

After snow, I widen squinched-up eyes, watch tips of pine floating trunkless over muffled ridges—or seem to. What flickered once is holding now, the first clear light after nights that almost closed their eyes for good—like you, like me, snowed in for years, as disembodied as the wintry pines, our final talk dead as year-end …