September 28-October 4, 2008 Issue |
Posted 9/23/08 at 10:30 AM
Atheists
often claim to be “just as moral” as religious believers. Christopher Hitchens,
for instance, in God Is Not Great,
offers his rather vague and subjective assertion that no statistic will ever
find that atheists “commit more crimes of greed or violence than the faithful.”
Yet, when comparing the morals of
believers and nonbelievers, neo-atheist authors are careful to tiptoe around
the issue of charitable activity. The reason that atheists studiously avoid the
question of generosity is that study after study shows an overwhelming
difference between believers and non-believers. Not surprisingly, the believers
come out on top every time.
In the year 2000, researchers at
U.S. universities and the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the
University of Connecticut undertook the massive Social Capital Community
Benchmark Survey, drawing 30,000 observations from 50 communities across the
United States. The survey questioned individuals about their “civic behavior,” including
their giving and volunteering during the year preceding the survey.
Analyzing the data, professor Arthur
Brooks of Syracuse University divided respondents into three groups. He
referred to the respondents who reported attending religious services every
week or more often as “religious.” This group made up 33% of the sample. Brooks
called those who reported attending religious services less than a few times
per year or explicitly saying they have no religion as “secular.” These people
made up 26% of the sample, leaving those who practice their religion
occasionally to make up the remaining 41% of the sample.
Brooks found the variance between
“religious” and “secular” giving to be dramatic. Religious people are 25
percentage points more likely than secularists to donate money (91% to 66%) and
23 points more likely to volunteer time (67% to 44%). In real dollars, this
translates into an average annual giving of $2,210 among the religious as
compared to $642 among the secular. Regarding hours volunteered, religious
people were found to volunteer an average of 12 times per year, while secular
people volunteer an average of 5.8 times. To put this into perspective,
religious people are 33% of the population, but they make 52% of donations and
45% of times volunteered. Secular people make up 26% of the population, but
they contribute 13% of the dollars and 17% of the times volunteered.
Interestingly, these data show that
the determining factor in predicting charitable behavior is not so much one‘s
particular religion, but rather the seriousness of one‘s religious commitment.
For example, among those who attend worship services regularly, 92% of
Protestants give charitably, compared to 91% of Catholics, 91% of Jews and 89%
from other religions.
Another indicative finding of the
study relates to giving to nonreligious charities. It turns out that religious
people are more generous than secular people with nonreligious causes as well
as with religious ones. While 68% of the total population gives (and 51%
volunteers) to nonreligious causes each year, religious people are 10 points
more likely to give to these causes than secularists (71% to 61%) and 21 points
more likely to volunteer (60% to 39%). As examples, religious people are 7
points more likely than secularists to volunteer for neighborhood and civic
groups, 20 points more likely to volunteer to help the poor or elderly, and 26
points more likely to volunteer for school or youth programs. Across the board,
religious practice is directly correlated to generosity with both time and
money.
These results are only surprising to
someone with an ingrained anti-religious prejudice. Even the deist Voltaire —
no friend to Christianity — felt obliged to admit the great benefit of religion
to organized charity: “Perhaps there is
nothing greater on earth than the sacrifices of youth and beauty, often of high
birth, made by the gentle sex in order to work in hospitals for the relief of
human misery, the sight of which is so revolting to our delicacy. Peoples
separated from the Roman religion have imitated but imperfectly so generous a
charity.”
In
his analysis of charitable giving and faith, Brooks ends with a look at
religion‘s pedagogical influence over giving and volunteering. “Houses of
worship might teach their congregants the religious duty to give and about both
the physical and spiritual needs of the poor. Simply put, people may be more
likely to learn charity inside a church, synagogue or mosque than outside. If
charity is indeed a learned behavior, it may be that houses of worship are only
one means [albeit an especially efficacious one] to teach it.”
Neo-atheist tracts such as God
Is Not Great rely almost exclusively on anecdotal evidence to make
their case against religion. In asserting the superiority of atheism over
religious belief, they simply string together vignettes showing horrible things
done in the name of religion, in the hope that their stories will disgust
readers enough to turn them away from religion. Yet, wherever a real comparison
can be made between religious people and unbelievers, the statistical evidence
always favors believers.
Whether
we speak about the evils and bloodshed of atheist regimes, the generosity and
charitable giving of religious people, or simply the happiness derived from
religious faith, religion beats atheism hands down in every area. This fact
alone will give pause to any unbiased observer.
Legionary of Christ Father
Thomas D. Williams
()
is Vatican analyst for CBS News
and author of, most recently,
Greater Than You Think: A Theologian
Answers the Atheists About God
(New York: Hachette, June 2008).
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