Friday, June 22, 2012

Does Belief in Heaven & a Forgiving God Lead to Higher Crime Rates?

Can we blame God’s mercy for higher crime rates? This is the seemingly bizarre question that the NewScientist is asking this morning, as the outlet explores eternal damnation and the ways in which faith interacts with, complicates and impacts criminal activity.
The focus of the article is a new study from the University of Oregon in Eugen, which seems to show that there could be a correlation between belief in heaven and a forgiving God and…breaking the law.
Dr. Azim Shariff, a psychology professor, and his team looked at global data that highlights peoples’ beliefs about life after death and also looked at information collected by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The massive examination included 143,000 individuals living in 67 nations. Obviously, such a massive sample enabled the team to include a diversity of religious backgrounds.
In most of the countries examined, it was more likely that people reported a belief in heaven than in hell. From this, the researchers were able to examine the intensity and degree to which each nation’s belief of heaven outpaced its acceptance of hell. The goal was to explore how differences in belief surrounding both post-mortem localities impact crime.
Interestingly, here’s what the researchers found: Even after controlling for crime-related issues like GDP, income inconsistencies, population density and life expectancy, national crime rates were higher when nations believe strongly in heaven but have weak acceptance of a hell.
“Belief in a benevolent, forgiving god could license people to think they can get away with things,” Shariff explains, but he cautions that this speculation is preliminary and that causation hasn’t yet been proven between religious beliefs and crime rates.

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