Older children, usually those with a longer exposure
to religion, “exhibit[ed] the greatest negative relations”.
The study also
found that “religiosity affects children’s punitive tendencies”. Children from
religious households “frequently appear to be more judgmental of others’
actions”, it said.
Muslim children
judged “interpersonal harm as more mean” than children from Christian families,
with non-religious children the least judgmental. Muslim children demanded
harsher punishment than those from Christian or non-religious homes.
At the same time,
the report said that religious parents were more likely than others to consider
their children to be “more empathetic and more sensitive to the plight of
others”. …
The report was “a welcome antidote to the
presumption that religion is a prerequisite of morality”, said Keith Porteus
Wood of the UK National Secular Society.
“It would be
interesting to see further research in this area, but we hope this goes some
way to undoing the idea that religious ethics are innately superior to the
secular outlook. We suspect that people of all faiths and none share similar
ethical principles in their day to day lives, albeit may express them
differently depending on their worldview.”
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