Thread: Heaven, Hell, and Crime

Interesting study out in the Economist! Have you seen this?

Seems there is a strong correlation between the concept of forgiveness and crime... or well that's what it seems like to me. Stunning really!

Daily chart: The Devil's in the deterrent | The Economist



What do you think it says?

David --
Actually, the chart makes no mention of "forgiveness". Rather, it does show a positive correlation between crime rate and belief in some afterlife based on SD from the mean. In essence, it really means little. This is comparing an overt behaviour (criminal act) with a covert behaviour (belief system).

Doesn't make much sense to me. Believing in heaven or hell are ingredients of the same soup. What about countries like mine where majority of folks do not seriously believe neither of this things?

Although the chart says so, i do not believe that crime rates are lower in say Mexico than in Sweden or Norway (just an example) or lower in Pakistan than in Canada? Unless things that are crimes in Sweden are perfectly ok somewhere else, making the whole chart inconsistent.

Having made several charts like this, several questions need to be asked first. Where did they get their sample? Are the crime areas in the same as the religious areas? Who said the whole country is that religion? What are the legal systems like in the lower countries? How often are crimes reported? ...

It is fun to look at. I would love to say that beliefs would dictate actions, but the psychologist-sociologist-realist in me knows that no one has made a perfect system of thought. So I would rather try to find the "spoink", which is what is the actual link.

Cool find,
JackofDiamonds

Taken from the accompanying article:
"The researchers found that the degree to which each country’s citizens believed more strongly in heaven than in hell predicted higher national crime rates. It seems that believing more strongly in the forgiveness of sins than in punishment in the after-life may help pave the way for further transgressions."
Thus, in a nutshell, the more likely a society is to believe in deities, the higher the crime rate.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.
Benjamin Disraeli

Originally Posted by DGilloon

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.
Benjamin Disraeli

Actually, that was Mark Twain as well.

The problem with these correlational studies is that they try to hard to prove influence and not just relation...

Take ice cream and murder rates. As ice cream sale raise, so do murder rates. Does this mean humans are influenced by the sweet dairy goodness to go out an kill one another?! ... No, that's absurd. But the link is temperature. As summer peaks, ice cream sales go up and people get more irritable due to extreme heat.

I would love to hear the problem is we have too many people believing in heaven and not enough in hell. It would give me something to preach at my store. But I am too much of a skeptic to take this at face value.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc?

Originally Posted by JackofDiamonds

The problem with these correlational studies is that they try to hard to prove influence and not just relation...

Take ice cream and murder rates. As ice cream sale raise, so do murder rates. Does this mean humans are influenced by the sweet dairy goodness to go out an kill one another?! ... No, that's absurd. But the link is temperature. As summer peaks, ice cream sales go up and people get more irritable due to extreme heat.

I would love to hear the problem is we have too many people believing in heaven and not enough in hell. It would give me something to preach at my store. But I am too much of a skeptic to take this at face value.

True. And I suspect Jimbo will weigh in shortly. However, unlike your ice cream example, the correlation in the study does make sense.
Humans tend to behave better when they know there is a high risk of getting caught. In most religions, the deity is believed to be all knowing, or at least with the potential to divine truth from lie. Thus it is a given that people with a strong religious belief know that what they do in life will be on their report card in the afterlife.

If the belief then has the concept of divine punishment such as hell (or perhaps in some cases not so much punishment, as not being saved from hell) it stands to reason that religious people who believe in the concept of hell -in general in a large sample group- will behave more in line with the laws of their religion, which all tend to include things like not killing or stealing.

Note that I am not talking about individuals, but tendencies in a large group.