Posted on: 12/11/2008 16:17

I subscribe to the Pew Research mailing list and thought this might be a timely and interesting topic. If I've set it up right, there should be a linked graph in this topic as well as a link to the article on the Pew Forum site.

I've only glanced at this yet, but one of the things that caught my attention right off the bat was that, of the "developed" countries in the chart. the US is the only one where a majority still believe that God is the only reason we're "good." (without quibbling over what "good" means).

I know this is not a new argument here, but i thought that the results might be interesting to toss around.

The only thought I have time to throw out is an old one too - if we need God to be good, isn't there a temptation to be "bad" (since we can't help it) and then simply ask for forgiveness? That's always seemed to me to be one of the cardinal weaknesses of thinking of God as "out there somewhere". Abdication of personal responsibility.

Login or register to post comments
Add new comment

Comments

crazyheart

Interesting GR when I

Posted on: 12/11/2008 16:24

Interesting GR when I enlarged this so I couild see it, 99% of Egyptians believe that you have to believe in God to be moral. Now is "moral" good?I wonder what the other 1% believe.And would this God-name be Allah?

killer_rabbit79

The site says that " much of

Posted on: 12/11/2008 16:38

The site says that " much of Africa, Asia and the Middle East there is widespread agreement that belief in God is a prerequisite for morality", but the only Asian country they had was India. I'm pretty confident in my assumption that China would almost unanimously believe that a god is not necessary for goodness though, since the majority of them are Taoists and Buddhists. I would guess that Japan and Korea would hold similar views. The rest of their conclusions I agree with.

[edit] I looked at the full report and it has China at 17% yes and Japan and 33% yes and South Korea at 56% yes.

I have heard Bill Maher talking about this phenominon of Europe being very nonreligious and the US being the opposite and he says that it's because Europe is growing out of religion, having had it for so long, while the US and Canada are relatively young countries that will not grow out of religion for a little while longer. Carrying this theory further, one could also argue that the reason Canada has more "yes"es than Europe but more "no"s than the US is because of our association with the British monarchy. He has also said that the reason why Islam is so full of extremists is because it is much younger than Christianity and possibly in another 500 years, the middle east will calm down. The flaw with his theory though is that it doesn't explain India, which is a Hindu nation and Hinduism is the oldest of the major religions today.