Thread: I'm going to heaven no matter what I do

SEATTLE (CBS Seattle) — Believing if you are on a “highway to hell” could impact whether or not if you commit a crime.

A study published in the scientific journal PLoS One by University of Oregon’s Azim Shariff and University of Kansas’s Mijke Rhemtulla finds that people who believe in hell are less likely to commit a crime while people who believe in heaven more likely are to get in trouble with the law.

The two professors collected data for belief in hell, heaven and God from the World and European Values Surveys that were conducted between 1981 until 2007 with 143,197 participants based in 67 countries. They compared the data to the mean standardized crime rate in those countries based on homicides, robberies, rapes, kidnappings, assaults, thefts, auto thefts, drug crimes, burglaries and human trafficking.

“[R]ates of belief in heaven and hell had significant, unique, and opposing effects on crime rates,” Shariff and Rhemtulla found in the study. “Belief in hell predicted lower crime rates … whereas belief in heaven predicted higher crime rates.”

They also found that a recent social psychological experiment found that Christian participants who believe in a forgiving God gave themselves more money for the study.

“Participants in the punishing God and both human conditions overpaid themselves less than 50 cents more than what they deserved for their anagrams, and did not statistically differ from the neutral condition, those who wrote about a forgiving God overpaid themselves significantly more-nearly two dollars,” the study found.

Shariff and Rhemtulla believe that the study raises “important questions about the potential impact of religious beliefs on global crime.”
Study Finds People Who Believe In Heaven Commit More Crimes « CBS Seattle

Similar Newsgab Articles:

• Boy Band Allegiances: Why They Matter
• Ovechkin says 'it doesn't matter' if he's benched
• A Pressing Matter of State
• How much will Windows security matter?
• Does Size Matter?

Okk.........

I see a big flaw who could believe more in heaven and hell then clergy. There is the crime part and for the overpaid Televangelists.

It looks like they used what people said instead of hard data. What people say and what they actually practice in life are two every different things.

Originally Posted by computer2slow

I see a big flaw who could believe more in heaven and hell then clergy. There is the crime part and for the overpaid Televangelists.

It looks like they used what people said instead of hard data. What people say and what they actually practice in life are two every different things.

Hear, hear,