A famous John Lennon song calls for us to imagine a peaceful world without religion, but according to a new study out of Carnegie Mellon, religion may actually be the key to bringing peace.
According to their paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers posed a moral dilemma to 555 Muslim-Palestinian teenagers: Would you allow a Palestinian man to be killed if it saved the life of five Muslim-Palestinian children? What about for five Jewish-Israeli children?
The teenagers were asked to consider the dilemma from their own perspective, and then from Allah’s.
When viewing the issue from their own perspective, the Muslim-Palestinian participants valued their own lives over the Jewish-Israeli lives. But when considering it from Allah’s perspective, they believed that Allah wished them to value the lives of both groups equally—decreasing the preference toward their own group by nearly 30 percent.
“Our findings are important because one precursor to violence is when people believe that the lives of members of their group are more important than the lives of members of another group,” said Jeremy Ginges, associate professor of psychology at the New School for Social Research at Carnegie Mellon University, in a statement.
“Beliefs about God seem to encourage an application of universal moral rules to believers and non-believers alike, even in a conflict zone,” added Nichole Argo, a research scientist in engineering and public policy and social and decision sciences. “Thus, it does not seem to be beliefs about God that lead to outgroup aggression.
“There may be other aspects of religion that lead to outgroup aggression. For instance, other work done in conflict zones has identified participation in collective religious rituals and frequent attendance at a place of worship to be associated with support for violence. This study, however, adds to a growing literature on how religious belief can increase cooperation with people from other faiths.”
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