When It Comes To Integrity The Atheists Come Out On Top

[R. S. Martin]

http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/chapter4.pdf

 

Scroll down to the bottom of page 115.

 

Psychologist Bob Altemeyer does an experiment. He asks fundamentalist Christians about school prayer. There are three questions.

 

1. Suppose a law were passed requiring strenuous teaching of religion in public schools. Beginning in kindergarten, all children would be taught to believe in God, pray together in school each day, memorize the Ten

Commandments and other parts of the Bible, learn the principles of Christian morality, and eventually be encouraged to accept Jesus as their personal savior. How would you react to such a law?

 

2. Same question, with Muslim faith and terms substituted.

 

3. Same question with atheist world view and principles substituted.

 

You can imagine the fundy Christians' response. Only their own world view would be okay. And it should be imposed on the entire population because the majority rules--minorities can pay for private schooling. If the Christians happened to live in an Arab democracy, then no matter, the minority has rights too and it's wrong to impose Muslim religion on the children of Christians. (Note the major contradiction in the same breath. It's not a typo or mistake.)

 

When he presented a reverse of this to Atheists, 100% said such a law presenting atheist world view and principles was inappropriate for public schools.

[Piprus]

That's very interesting.

My conclusions from this survey: 1) Fundies are hypocrites 2) Atheists are antagonistic to indoctrinating children in schools with either a religious belief or a lack of it. Religion is a matter for home and family, school should be secular.

I quite agree.

[Jun]

That's very interesting.

My conclusions from this survey: 1) Fundies are hypocrites 2) Atheists are antagonistic to indoctrinating children in schools with either a religious belief or a lack of it. Religion is a matter for home and family, school should be secular.

I quite agree.

 

I also have to agree.

[Light_of_Reason]

Hearty agreement from me as well.

[R. S. Martin]

I can see that for fundies who have been raised in church schools, or in public schools where prayer and bible stories were part of the regular school day as they were back in the mid-60s for me, that they think it's a must. However, I have now spent about a decade in classes (secular and religious) where an objective approach was taken and it seems natural. People can be decent and orderly, and the meeting can be constructive, instructive, and edifying, without prayer and hymns and scripture reading.

 

In two of the seminary courses we did have some sort of religious "ceremony" but it was arguably part of the teaching of that specific course, and not part of seminary proceedure. Not even chapel attendence was necessary except for students training for the ministry. For them, obviously, it was part of the training.

 

Thinking objectively is not something fundies are especially well-known for. For this reason, I found it really enlightening that a psychologist could show up with systematic research to prove that the fundies are indeed hypocritical and operate by a double standard quite regularly, while the atheists demonstrate integrity. So much for needing god for morals! (He goes there, too, and shows how they can be so happy and carefree because all they have to do is say sorry to god and then they feel totally free of guilt and can repeat their offense--UGH!)

 

He pointed out repeatedly how they would, in almost the same breath, say opposite things. For example, on the same survey about two minutes apart from each other, they would agree with both:

 

Birds of a feather flock together and Opposites attract when talking about love. That is about as consistent as saying the majority rules when they are in the majority and the minority has rights too when they are in the minority.