Want to be good? Science says go to church

How do you know your god is good rather than evil?

"Want to be good? Science says go to church."

A) No it doesn't science doesn't 'say' anything. It's a method not a body of beliefs. One report by one social scientist says that you are statistically more likely to be better according to one definition if you go to church.

B) If you want to be good, then going to church will not definitely help you according to this report. It's likely that it could. But this a probabilistic conclusion rather than a prescriptive one.

C) The dominant factor they found was self control. Religion was more likely to make you better by improving self control. in other words it goes Church -> Self Control -> Morality. Not Church -> Morality.

D) The scientist has not considered the direction of causality. It could be that people with a pre-existing tendency towards self control are more likely to go to church than those without that level of self control. Church/Religion does not improve your self control, if you have a pre existing desire to go to church or belief in god then it's an indicator that you might already have it.

You might want to change the title to "Want to be good according to one theory? Then a study by a social scientist says that you should try to improve your self control. Going to church might or might not help you to achieve this." But that would be nuanced and accurate.

Why would anyone even want to be good in the first place?

As Rod points out, he would probably not be very different if he were not religious because he was raised in a culture saturated with religious values, though by now many people (represented by commenters here) have abandoned the support behind those values, God and the Christian tradition. I suspect, however, that people who dismiss and scoff at the values and beliefs of religious people would not be very happy living in a culture that was not formed and supported by those values. Essentially, we all need checks on our selfishness and anti-social tendencies. Religion gives meaning, purpose and a reason to check our selfishness, and, what I am most thankful for, a template by which to live. People today are perhaps cursed with too many choices. At my stage in life (early 50's) I realize that it is important to have a model by which to live which allows us to avoid many of the pitfalls of life that, when you think about it, turn out to be old-fashioned sin. I don't mean to sound self-satisfied here, but it's just that looking back over my life I can see that because of my religious upbringing and the values and the understanding of life it has given me, I have a happy marriage, a good family, a supportive community and the beginnings of a career I love. My religioius faith has been at the center of all that is good an beautiful in my life and I am grateful for God's tender mercies. People who do not believe in God are free to believe as they believe of course, but it is alarming that many are so scornful and dismissive of religous faith. I am trying not to be too judgmental, but it seems to me that the irreligious are far less tolerant of the religious than vice-versa, though the irreligious THINK they are models of tolerance.

I searched the article, but could not find any strong indications of causality. And if you read carefully, the correlations that exist seem to indicate mostly that activities that produce certain brain states, like meditation, help with self-control more than "church" as such.

In any case, none of this seems to have helped Bruce Pardo--whose story has gone unmentioned here, though if he'd been a Muslim I'm sure it would have been noticed. A fellow worshipper who worked with Pardo as an usher at the Catholic church Pardo attended regularly commented: "He was just the nicest guy. He would do anything for the church. " Yeah . . . anything. Except, apparently, restrain himself from shooting an 8-year-old girl in the face on Christmas Day, then incinerating an entire family with a homemade flamethrower. I guess you could say he had self-control. It took a lot of self control to carefully plan the murders, build the weapons, and booby-trap his car in hopes of killing more people while he fled to Canada. All the while attending church and volunteering as an usher at the children's Mass. Maybe he should have picked a different religion. Catholicism apparently didn't do it for him.

Sadly, Bruce Pardo's faith did not overcome his demons or give him the self-control he so desperately needed. It does not follow, however, that religion can be blamed for his behavior. In addition, it is silly to reduce the complex process by which religion has worked to inform the moral systems by which all of us live, religious and irreligious alike, to religious people doing what they think their god wants in order to avoid displeasure. I can only say that I don't want to live in a world that is not informed by religious values. I don't think anyone does.

A poem by Reed Whittemore

Psalm The Lord feeds some of His prisoners better than others.
It could be said of Him that He is not a just god but an
indifferent god.
That He is not to be trusted to reward the righteous and
punish the unscrupulous.
That He maketh the poor poorer but is otherwise
undependable.

It could be said of Him that it is His school of the germane
that produced the Congressional Record.
That it is His vision of justice that gave us cost accounting.

It could be said of Him that though we walk with Him all
the days of our lives we will never fathom Him
Because He is empty.

These are the dark images of our Lord
That make it seem needful for us to pray not unto Him
But ourselves.
But when we do that we find that indeed we are truly lost
And we rush back into the safer fold, impressed by His care
for us.

"I can only say that I don't want to live in a world that is not informed by religious values. I don't think anyone does."

You need to get out more. There are a lot of very workable values, like the Golden Rule, that are not religious, just common sense.

Matt, I like your point: "The "Christian values" that perhaps have the most benefit aren't really uniquely Christian: respect, stealing, adultery, murder, lying. The idea of those acts being wrong/immoral predates Jesus and Moses..."

If someone asked me to worship a god who told me to lie, steal, kill people and sleep around, I'd assume he wanted me to worship an evil god. So for me, at least, these values exist prior to any consideration of a god or god's dictates.

That said, I think going to church is probably causally connected with living by one's values in the same way that going to Weight Watchers is causally connected with staying on one's diet. None of us needs Weight Watchers to tell us about calories and exercise, we know that. We don't believe in these concepts because of the authority of Weight Watchers. But getting together with other people who are trying to put the concepts into action is helpful.

Good point that Christianity linked proscriptions with a motivation system--no small achievement. But beyond this, Christianity celebrates virtues that dispose people to obey the golden rule--meekness, humility, loving ones enemy, and so on. Declaring that the last shall be first and the first shall be last, for example, might be a motivator or sorts, but it also encourages a kind of unselfishness that undergirds the lions share of the good that is done in our culture. Why do you suppose religious people make charitable contributions on a large scale, far out-contributing non-religious people? I think it is because of a uniquely Christian understanding of moral behavior that valorizes a kind of unselfishness not natural to humans. Beyond this, our very way of thinking about the will and conscience come to us from the Christian tradition. Aristotle didn't talk about these things. Basically, we are so steeped in the Christian tradition that we can hardly think outside it. Lastly, there is the issue of authority. Why should we accept any moral tradition? If we believe it comes from God, that is a good reason.

Why should we accept any moral tradition?

Because it is useful.

Science is OK when it says religion is of value. But, when science can't prove there is a God? Not so much - junk science, right?

"When Jesus said "love your enemies," he wasn't talking about people who "deserved" love. In fact, that was kinda the point."

Similarly, Buddhists are exhorted to love and wish well for all beings without exception. Deserving has nothing to do with it. Tibetan monks and nuns who escape from Chinese torture often report that the worst aspect of the experience was that it sometimes interfered with their compassion for their tormentors.

There is, as already noted, no guarantee that exposure to religion will take. Bernard Madoff was apparently the product of a Yeshiva education.

but since when do conservatives - hard, soft or crunchy give a fig what"science says"?