Jim Davies
The Conversation
Originally posted July 24, 2018
Here is an excerpt:
Experimental evidence suggests that people’s opinion of what God thinks is right and wrong tracks what they believe is right and wrong, not the other way around.
Social psychologist Nicholas Epley and his colleagues surveyed religious believers about their moral beliefs and the moral beliefs of God. Not surprisingly, what people thought was right and wrong matched up pretty well with what they felt God’s morality was like.
Then Epley and his fellow researchers attempted to manipulate their participants’ moral beliefs with persuasive essays. If convinced, their moral opinion should then be different from God’s, right?
Wrong. When respondents were asked again what God thought, people reported that God agreed with their new opinion!
Therefore, people didn’t come to believe that God is wrong, they just updated their opinion on what God thinks.
When you change someone’s moral beliefs, you also change their opinion on what God thinks. Yet most surveyed still clung to the illusion that they got their moral compass from what they think God believes is right and wrong.
The information is here.
