Check out this headline: ”Studies say atheists, believers both do good, but for different reasons.” Well, no shit. Ya mean atheists don’t just run around kicking babies and stomping on puppies? Well I’ll be kajiggered!
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley conducted three experiments that show less religious people perform acts of generosity more from feelings of compassion than do more religious people. The findings were published in the current issue of the online journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Their results challenge traditional thinking about what drives religious people to perform acts of kindness for others.
And get a load of this quote:
“We find that nonreligious people do feel compassion for others, and that those feelings are strongly related to whether they choose to help others or not.”
So it’s an amazing discovery that nonreligious people actually feel compassion for others? For fuck’s sake! It’s like they’re studying some sort of brand-new species or alien life form: the nonbeliever with a sense of right, wrong, and compassion.