Why Are Churchgoers More Likely to Support Torture?

It is the evangelical right buying into the GOP talking point that waterboarding is not torture…

MKB, you nailed it. It’s correlation, not causation. I am the last person to defend the Christian POV on most matters, but we must beware the kind of muddy thinking generated by these idiotic polls.

I think it’s more like religious people believe that the means justify the ends.

Though one cannot prove causation… me thinks that hell hath hardened them!

As I have said before, they just have no morals. How can anyone who believes that the world was designed and is operated by a mythical being have any basis for morality as we know it? They believe that the mythical being tells them what is right which not surprisingly agrees perfectly with whatever they would want to do. They also believe that at the last minute they can just say they believe in that mythical being and then have an afterlife of playing harp music or 72 virgins or some such no matter what else they have done. How could that possible lead to any type of good moral life respecting and appreciating life and nature?

Yes, belief in God is the ultimate moral excuse for practically any action you wish to partake in. In the end, it utterly demolishes the theistic argument Gods existence from morals.

And atheists can justify their moral beliefs on the simple grounds of “do unto others”, “minimum harm to the maximum number” or similar no theistic moral bases.

I kind of agree with Autumnal Harvest; the difference is probably able to be explained just by the demographics of the groups involved.

If we are willing to look beyond that and play games with motivations that aren’t necessarily evidenced by statistics, you could argue that belief in the afterlife would make you more comfortable with anything done to the body, since what’s a couple hours/days/weeks of pain in an eternal life? Even if you’re innocent by the time you’ve been playing the harp in heaven for 150 trillion years are you really going to care about what happened during that one month on earth you can barely remember anymore?

Great comments. I agree with mkb about fundamental insecurities in their worldview. I also strongly agree with arkonbey about the concept of the “other.”

For the record:

The error on the overall is approx. +/-4%.
The error on the WEP is approx +/- 8%.
The error on the unaffiliated is approx +/-10%.
(all with 95% confidence intervals.)

So, yes, large errors. But note that the gap (on the top two boxes) between the WEP and the unaffiliated is more than 18%, so even with the sample size issues, there’s probably something there.

I’d theorize that those who attend church regularly are more likely to accept the idea of a strongly hierarchical society with leaders who are not to be questioned. Plus the fact that they think that the people being tortured are all going to be Muslims.

The God they believe in couldn’t find any better way to offer salvation than to have himself tortured to death. With this kind of violence at the heart of their belief system, I’m not surprised that they think torture is OK.

I wish this survey had data on other religious groups, not just christian and unaffiliated. What would American muslims say to this question? Jews? Hindus?

I believe the view that the world is just a staging and proving ground for the real deal (= eternal life with god or in hell being punished), lowers their regard for human life in many ways. I also think their bibles support some pretty grim things, such as genocide…as with the slaughter of the people of canaan…which are sanctioned and even commanded by their god.

Their god does some pretty atrocious things in the bible…and their only recourse as humans trying to rationalize this is to somehow justify it. And…if they can justify one group of people killing every man, woman and child in a community…as takes place in their bible…then of course they can justify mistreating a few bad apples.

I wonder if they agree that other nations would sometimes be able to justify the torture of our soldiers? I mean…if they think we have justification…would they not rationally have to give other nations the same kind of consideration?

This isn’t the evidence of a fundamental difference between morals of theists and non-theists that same commentators are trying to make it. Take a look again at those numbers. They say that, roughly 40% of atheists, 50% of Catholics and mainline Protestants, and 60% of evangelicals, support torture. That’s hardly a huge difference. And given the sample sizes the statistical error alone is +-5%.

I think that’s a good point, but whether it’s a correlation or causation, I think it also disproves the claim that being a Christian will automatically make you more moral than the rest of society. As for why specifically those evangelicals would support torture, as already stated, I think it’s because they already have a warped sense of morality as it is. Most of them already believe that eternal torture in hell is perfectly justified although they may deny that it is eternal torture. They also believe that it’s ok for God to do whatever he wants because he’s God and I think many of them wish for a Christian theocracy where they get to rule the world. As for the question if they would allow other countries to do the same, I somehow doubt it. Most fundies consider themselves to be more human than anyone who disagrees with them and that anyone who defies their theology doesn’t deserve the same rights and privileges as them. So while they might think it’s justifiable for them to torture people, I doubt they’d let other people do it to them because they consider themselves to be more important and more deserving than the rest of society.

I have to think FOX news and the show 24 have some sort of connection to this.

You watch the show and you go “hmmm maybe the ends DO justify the means… Jack only has our best interests at heart…” and then if you happen to stay on the channel you get the FOX news… and the next thing you know you are chanting “tie him up, waterboard his ass” after Sunday school.

Because hello….now we finally know what Jesus would do! the whole WWJD bracelet question solved. He would torture people and not to mention that crazy guy would go as far as torturing someone that is just a suspect in a crime…Jesus rules!

I’d guess it’s because of Republican/Democrat affiliation. More Evangelicals are Republican, and Republicans tend to support torture.

However, it does raise questions over whether Evangelicals are also gullible enough to follow whatever policies the GOP espouses, rather than following their own “moral” values. Death penalty anyone? “Thou shalt not kill… unless they deserve it.”

It is a correlation; not causation. It might have something to do with the absolute certitude of their religious beliefs being applied to other social and world problems. There is some connection between this and the stronger play that the Old Testament plays in their world view. A good follow question would be to ask — “In your belief system, how confident are you that your faith will answer all life questions?” Absolutely, Very, Moderately, Very little, None. Then correlate that response to the torture question.

I wonder. Was there also a correspondence between religiosity and support for slavery, back in the 1860’s? It seems possible, because after all, the industrialized North may have been a less religious place than the rural South even back then…

Anyone have the data?

I’m curious about something. If the wording were changed to “confirmed” terrorists instead of “suspected” terrorists how would the results be different? My main objection to the torturing that has been done in the name of the war on terror has so far been that they haven’t first proved them guilty. I’m probably against any torture, but I’m considerably less strongly against torture of somebody who has been proven to be guilty. This is kind of a moot point because there aren’t any justice systems that I know of that are all that good at figuring out who’s guilty and who’s not. So the list of people that have been sufficiently proven to be guilty is a very short list. Even then, you have to factor in the negative impacts on the torturers so I don’t know that it is ever justified. But, my question still stands. How would the poll results be different.

I’m curious about something. If the wording were changed to “confirmed” terrorists instead of “suspected” terrorists how would the results be different? My main objection to the torturing that has been done in the name of the war on terror has so far been that they haven’t first proved them guilty.

But cruel and unusual punishment is supposed to be illegal. The supposed purpose of torture was to get information not to punish.

Most Objectivists I know are atheists and believe torture can be just fine.

Just one more reason to find objectivists objectionable.

I wonder what the geographical distribution of this study was. Lots of the churches in my town have anti-torture banners and messages outside of them. It almost made me stop grimacing when I went past them, for a while anyway, until the banners came down after the election. I suspect it was on the grounds that they thought the problem would be fixed now.

I don’t think the poll questions are useful, but that’s often the case. I would say torture is never justified for suspected terrorists. Also, I have no idea what the “unaffiliated” group represents in these polls, they might as well say “other”.

My understanding of Sam Harris’s opinion on torture, although I might be projecting because it is also my own, is that torture can be justified in a set of extremely rare specific circumstances. If torture works, there is a “ticking time bomb”, there is someone who knows where that bomb is in custody, then it would be moral to torture them to save lives. Although mistrust of government and the improbability of such a circumstance ever arising means that torture should not be legal. He was made out to be a big proponent of torture by some writers, but apparantly once you’re labelled a “new atheist” people can lie about you. I’m quite confident Sam Harris isn’t an Objectivist.

What I want to know is if these people that think torture is justified also think that all of the confessions of witchcraft during the dark ages were legitimate.
I mean, if torture works, then all those people were having sex with demons and flying through the sky and whatnot…and not just forced to say ANYTHING to make the pain stop.

Although there isn’t enough data here to make detailed remarks, these are some general things I think.

I think that it has something to do with fear and also the fact that the torture that most people think about is torture being done to others (who are usually non-whites) so there’s actually a slight prejudicial thing going on. If you asked how people felt about some other country torturing their citizens in the same way, they would most certainly not like or support it and that’s really the only way to know if someone is being hypocritical about their take on an issue.

I however, would like to see this same survey data but showing what the race of the participants were, to see if there really is some bigotry going on here.

Personally, I’m just horrified that our governments have created a society where torture is at all acceptable.

If I were to repeat this study, it’s actually quite likely that I will get opposite results. I’m really surprised that people who don’t believe in God so easily and willingly believe in these statistics, or the generalizations these state make.

bethany, sometimes a captive doesn’t have any useful information, and sometimes she’s just innocent. i don’t know that most statements gained from torture lead to any benefit at all.

you seem to support also publicizing the torture to strike fear into those who would otherwise seek to harm us. we are not modern-day mongols. besides, some people think they wont be caught, and some people are more afraid of displeasing their creator than being captured. when this is the case, torture is no deterrent.

need i remind you, even u.s. xians have no difficulty sinning against their lord who will lovingly set them in a lake of fire forever, so the threat of torture isn’t protecting anyone.

you say torturing terrorists should be okay, but how are you defining terrorists anyway? would you like john walker lind, the american al quaeda, to be waterboarded? what about our own sadistic serial attackers, or charles manson? what good, that you know of, does it do? and how do you know it?

sorry you didn’t get a reply sooner, but you did ask your q pretty late in the game.