Another story from our “religious hypocrite” file.
This one is comes from CNN. You know how Jesus preached all that do unto others stuff. You know how Christians love to spout Jesus’ word to anyone who will listen. Well apparently the more people go to church to hear the “good word”, the more likely they are to disregard it completely and support torture.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.
The Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture rallied on Capitol Hill in March 2008.
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.
The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small.
See results of the survey »
The president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Leith Anderson, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The survey asked: “Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified?”
Roughly half of all respondents — 49 percent — said it is often or sometimes justified. A quarter said it never is.
The religious group most likely to say torture is never justified was Protestant denominations — such as Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians — categorized as “mainline” Protestants, in contrast to evangelicals. Just over three in 10 of them said torture is never justified. A quarter of the religiously unaffiliated said the same, compared with two in 10 white non-Hispanic Catholics and one in eight evangelicals
So several religious people, especially the more fanatical ones like Evangelicals, contend that atheists essentially are without a value system because they do not believe in God. Atheists are hedonistic beings that have no soul. Apparently without a big scary father figure threatening bad things to happen to you if you don’t fall in line (insert snide remark about Obama and his ever expanding footprint of government in people’s lives), people would be raping, covetous, thieving murders.
Well apparently those that have no religious affiliation are more likely to not want to simulate drowning on a prisoner. The results of this survey were not surprising to me at all. Rational individuals in general evaluate the probable efficacy of torture and a good many realize that there are better and more effective ways of finding out information. Religious individuals are spoon fed their thoughts and values and are quick to make a likely irrational decision based on emotion and not fact… which is how we ended up on this whole war on terror overseas contingency conflict anyway.
