این مطالعه که به نظرم شاهکاری در نوع خود است نه تنها به اثر خداباوری بر رفتار اخلاقی میپردازد بلکه شرایطی را نشان میدهد که خداباوری میتواند باعث افزایش یا کاهش رفتار اخلاقی باشد .این مطالعه توسط افراد فراوان و در اهداف مختلف مورد استفاده قرار گرفته است . ابتدا یک بررسی کوتاه از مطالعه را از دانشگاه بریتیش کلمبیا خدمت خوانندگان محترم نشان میدهم .
Religion Makes People Helpful and Generous - Under Certain Conditions: UBC Researchers
Belief in God encourages people to be helpful, honest and generous, but only under certain psychological conditions, according to University of British Columbia researchers who analyzed the past three decades of social science research.
Religious people are more likely than the non-religious to engage in prosocial behaviour – acts that benefit others at a personal cost – when it enhances the individual’s reputation or when religious thoughts are freshly activated in the person’s mind, say UBC social psychologists Ara Norenzayan and Azim Shariff
Their paper “
The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality” appears in the October 3 issue of Science Magazine.
The two-part paper first reviews data from anthropology, sociology, psychology and economics. Norenzayan and Shariff then go on to explore how religion, by encouraging cooperation, became a factor in making possible the rise of large and stable societies made of genetically unrelated individuals.
To date, says Norenzayan, the public debate whether religion fosters cooperation and trust has largely been driven by opinion and anecdote.
“We wanted to look at the hard scientific evidence,” says Norenzayan, an associate professor in the Dept. of Psychology.
The investigators found complementary results across the disciplines:
- Empirical data within anthropology suggests there is more cooperation among religious societies than the non-religious, especially when group survival is under threat.
- Economic experiments indicate that religiosity increases levels of trust among participants.
- Psychology experiments show that thoughts of an omniscient, morally concerned God reduce levels of cheating and selfish behaviour.
“This type of religiously-motivated ‘virtuous’ behaviour has likely played a vital social role throughout history,” says Shariff, a Psychology PhD student.
http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/medi...mr-08-132.html
اما اصل مطالعه که حدود 13 صفحه است و خواندن آنرا توصیه میکنم در این آدرس وجود دارد .
dx.doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2011.556990
بطور خلاصه در این مطالعه نشان داده شده است که نه تنها باور به خدا و زندگی پس از مرگ موجب افزایش رفتار اخلاقی برای باورمندان میشود بلکه علت وجود برخی مطالعات هرچند اندک ( بنابر قول نویسندگان مطالعه ) که بین رفتارهای اخلاقی بیخدایان و خداباوران تفاوتی قائل نمیشنود یا اینکه حتی در برخی موارد خداباوران رفتار غیر اخلاقی بیشتری نسبت به خداباوران دارند چیست !