(June 18, 2013 at 6:15 am)ideologue08 Wrote: You're right, it is not unreasonable to expect that at all. The problem here is how you define morality, as well as the fact that a person who believes in the correct religion is still a human being and is just as susceptible to the same emotions of anger, sadness, fear etc. In theory what you're saying makes sense but in practice it doesn't really work, we all make mistakes regardless of what we think the correct option is.
About the morality part and its subjectivity, I don't watch porn or gamble, but people who do these things could argue that what they're doing is not immoral at all. So how can you judge religions on the morality of a religion's followers if there is no consensus between us what the moral or immoral actions are. Breaking the law is only one aspect of immorality, as well as the fact that there are many people who do immoral things without breaking any laws (such as some bankers, politicians, lawyers etc.).
On the subjectivity of morality would it be acceptable to use merely a sub-set that we all might agree upon.
I would expect murder, rape and paedophilia would be regarded by all of us, whatever our religious backgrounds, as being morally unacceptable.
If we can agree on that then we can measure the propensity of religious followers of any religion against the average to see if they are less likely to commit these crimes than anyone else.
Atheists can be a handy nul case for comparison.
I suspect, you - in common with me - anticipate no correlation whatsoever - I'm just wondering if its ever been formalized.
