Religious people think torture is OK.... from The Maddowblog

[AlbertCat]

?itok=kUp7tQTO

Back in May 2009, the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life conducted surveys and found that the more religious an American is, the more likely he or she is to support torture. More than five years later, not much has changed. Sarah Posner reported this week:
A new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that Americans, by a 59-31% margin, believe that CIA “treatment of suspected terrorists” in detention was justified. A plurality deemed that “treatment” to be “torture,” by a 49-38% margin.

Remarkably, the gap between torture supporters and opponents widens between voters who are Christian and those who are not religious.
Right. While many might assume that the faithful would be morally repulsed by torture, the reality is the opposite. When poll respondents were asked, “Do you personally think the CIA treatment of suspected terrorists amounted to torture, or not?” most Americans said the abuses did not constitute torture. But it was non-religious Americans who were easily the most convinced that the “enhanced interrogation techniques” were, in fact, torture.

The results in response to this question were even more striking: “All in all, do you think the CIA treatment of suspected terrorists was justified or unjustified?” For most Americans, the answer, even after recent revelations, was yes. For most Christians, it’s also yes. But for the non-religious, as the above chart makes clear, the torture was not justified.




http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/week-god-122014

[Curmudgeoness]

1. I saw the data on this poll

in the Faith section of my local paper. Ugh. I cannot come to any conclusions as to why this was the case. I do wish that there was some way to determine the reasons for this. The best that I could come up with was that people with no religion are either 1) more moral, 2) more compassionate, or 3) more intelligent. But that makes no sense, does it?

[JDDavis]

2. Religion is the most widespread form of self-delusion and

rationalization for just about any act, from rape, murder, bullying, even flying planes into the WTC (or just for killing and injuring hundreds of children in a school this past week).


Yet we heathens should learn our lessons, as we are told dozens of times a week somewhere else on DU: namely, these horrendous acts have NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH RELIGION.

The story passed down to us for about two thousand years, that a woman gave birth to the lord incarnate without her consent or desire, just because some angel said so, well, who should bother to think about the wishes of that mother? The lord gets what he wants whenever he wants it, and announces what he wants through an imaginary angel, (the act of annunciation,a spoken word that gets thousands of churches named after that act for thousands of years).

Well, I'm just gonna sit here and wait until some lurker-believer reports my post as being worthy of being hidden.

[AlbertCat]

3. Too much religion is like too much television

When you start thinking ridiculous fantasies are true.... rational thinking goes out the window.

Because...like y'know.... torture does not render any usable reliable information. But it always works in a Bond film or on 24! So reality be damned! (plus...we good guys will show the bastards!)

People don't THINK. Religion is a great facilitator of this bad behavior. After all, faith (in gods or torture...or anything) is the end of inquiry.

[AtheistCrusader]

11. In all seriousness, I suspect the 'ability to tell the difference between reality and fantasy'

study factors in here.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-28537149

[rexcat]

14. Thanks for this link...

just shared on my Facebook page. Should annoy some of my family.

[AlbertCat]

15. Hmmmmm...

"Flip side to this equation could be that secular kids are taught to lose their sense of wonder and imagination at an earlier age than their Bible-believing friends."

Since when is believing magic is real synonymous with a sense of wonder or imagination? I mean, did the religious kids make up the magical stories or were they told them?

I also like the "at an earlier age" bit implying EVERYONE loses their "sense of wonder and imagination" at some age....


Since I find reality more interesting and wondrous than anything we could make up, I think it's good to lose the notion that magic is real early on.

[LostOne4Ever]

4. They are all too high in "justified" for my taste

[font style="font-family:papyrus,'Brush Script MT','Infindel B',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal]Ah humanity, just when I thought my opinion of you couldn't go any lower.[/font]

[frogmarch]

5. Maybe they've been conditioned by

the Crucifiction?

[deucemagnet]

6. I find it interesting that the results of this poll are consistent with those of a 2009 Pew poll.

That's pretty damning news. Well, it would be, but the religious who support torture don't give a fuck, and the religious who don't (and their apologists) will dismiss it with a wave of their hands.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. The long-standing torturing alliance between an authoritarian state and moralistic church

Spanish Inquisition, European witch hunts, Salem witch trials ... The moralistic church is now allied with the Republican party, to oppose gay civil rights, abortion, contraception etc., so they'll defend CIA torturing. Though I bet they wouldn't be quite so keen if the victims had been, say, white militia, or Russian Orthodox fighters from Ukraine, rather than Middle Eastern Muslims.

[salimbag]

8. Torture is effective

If your intention is to inflict pain. The punishment of non-believers by the church used tools and techniques designed to inflict pain. Torture is also effective in getting people to say whatever one might want to hear.

[progressoid]

9. So is crucifixion torture?

How'd that work out?

[Joe Magarac]

10. Rather than break it down by denomination, I'd like to see the stats ...

I'd like to see the stats with respect to actual belief in the existence of Hell.

I have the feeling the correlation would be even stronger.

[Bradical79]

12. Well, that lines up with what I've encountered.

Talked to an evangelical coworker the other day. I actually convinced him that we tortured people, and that it was illegal. He just didn't care in the end because the victims were alleged Muslim terrorists and collaborators. It was 100% justified because he believes "those people" want to wipe us off the face of the Earth.

[rexcat]

13. Not surprised with the results...

but the "No Religion" group is a meaningless construct. I would like to have that group broken down into atheist, secular humanist, etc.

[Joe Magarac]

16. I suspect most (not all of course) "No Religion" == "Spiritual not religious"

Just an intuition.