A new study shows a link between one’s concept of God and the strength of one’s inclination to cheat.

The study, Mean Gods make Good People: Different Views of God Predict Cheating Behavior, showed that those who viewed God as compassionate and loving were more likely to cheat than those who saw God as harsh and punitive, The Los Angeles Times said.

The study was conducted by Azim F. Shariff, a psychologist from the University of Oregon, and Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia. It was published in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, UPI said.

The researchers said that they conducted the study in order to contribute to a larger understanding of the role that religion plays in lending adherence to moral behavior, according to UPI.

The study pointed out while ethical behavior does not vary between believers and nonbelievers in God, there is a wide difference in ethical behavior linked to how one perceives God, the Los Angeles Times said.

Those who adhere to the concept of a loving and compassionate God showed a greater tendency to cheat than those who saw God as punitive, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Shariff told The Register-Guard that he was not surprised by the findings of the study, which he said fell in line with a “supernatural punishment hypothesis” that societies have long recognized.

Shariff told The Register-Guard, “Rulers have known for a long time that God is an incredibly effective way of keeping people in line.” He was, however, surprised at the finding that students who see God as forgiving and compassionate have a larger inclination to cheat.

Shariff said, “It almost gives people license to act in an immoral way because they have a supernatural agent who will forgive them regardless of what they do. They’ll think, ‘It’s OK to do this because I won’t be judged too harshly because my God is a forgiving God,’ ” The Register-Guard reported.

However, Shariff told The Register-Guard that those who believe in a harsh God may internalize fear of punishment and this can direct their behavior. “They’ve made that decision at some point already, so they don’t have to make it every single time.”

Methodology

The survey was administered to 100 college students. In the first part, 61 students were asked to rate God on 14 traits, for example half punitive, half loving, highly punitive and highly loving, The Register-Guard said.

Immediately after, they were asked to do a math test. However, the math test was designed to be tedious, and the ability to cheat was deliberately easy so that students would be encouraged to cheat, according to The Register-Guard.

In the second part of the experiment, 39 students were asked to fill the same questionnaire about their belief and concept of God. However, to further boost against “priming,” the students were made to wait several days before taking the same math test, UPI reported.

The survey also corrected for ethnicity, religious affiliation and personality traits which might influence the survey results, the Los Angeles Times said.

The findings of the study showed that 60 percent of the students were “low cheaters,” compared to 40 percent who were “high cheaters,” The Register-Guard said.

Shariff said that most studies, including this one, show that there is no gap in terms of moral behavior between people who are religious and those who are atheist, The Register-Guard reported.

Absolutism vs. relativism

Paul Froese, author of America’s Four Gods-What We Say About God and What That Says About Us, said of Shariff’s study, “More wrathful images of God are related to moral absolutism, while people with benevolent, loving images of God tend to be moral relativists,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

Shariff told The Register-Guard, “College students typically are less religious than the population as a whole, so it’s possible that the cheating gap between believers of a loving God and believers of an angry God is actually understated compared to what might be found in the larger society.”

A study from a Chicago university discovered recently that there is a link between middle-age obesity and regular church attendance.

The study, Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults, was conducted by fourth year student Matthew Feinstein of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, The Daily Mail said.

The paper concluded that there is a 50 percent higher likelihood that regular churchgoers will become obese by middle age compared to those who are nonreligious, according to The Daily Mail.

The study was included among a number of other reports that had been presented at the American Heart Association’s  Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism/Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention 2011 Scientific Sessions in Atlanta, The Los Angeles Times said.

No explanation was given for the findings, although it was pointed out that oftentimes many churches allow eating during service.

Methodology

The study looked into the lives of 2,433 people who came from Minneapolis, Chicago, Alabama, Birmingham and Oakland, California, according to The Daily Mail.

The test group was followed for 18 years and were ranked by their church attendance in the following categories: High (weekly to more frequent church attendance), medium (regular but not weekly church attendance), low (rare church attendance) and none, The Los Angeles Times said.

The findings noted that young adults ranging in age from 20 to 32 who were on the high category regarding church attendance were 50 percent more likely to be obese when they reached middle age, compared to those who never go to church, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The findings remained consisted even after the researchers made adjustments for race, sex, age, income, education and the person’s body mass index from the start of the study, according to the Los Angeles Times.

By the second year of the study, a profile of those participants who tended to be in the high level of churchgoers indicated that they tend to be black females with a higher BMI, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Historical link?

Feinstein did not give definite reasons to explain why high church participation is linked to obesity. He did say in a news release, “It’s possible that getting together once a week and associating good works and happiness with eating unhealthy foods could lead to the development of habits that are associated with greater body weight and obesity,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

Courtney Parker, catering manager of the Apostolic Church of God (20,000 members) in Woodlawn said that historically, church services were very long, and so people were allowed to eat while hearing the gospel, The Daily Mail reported.

Parker told Sun Times, “[T]he first thing you do is go eat, and then you go to sleep,” according to The Daily Mail.

Upshot of study

Feinstein told the Los Angeles Times that there is an upshot to the study, “[T]hese findings highlight a group that could benefit from targeted efforts at obesity prevention,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

In fact a number of religious groups have engaged in exercise programs including jazzercise, belly dancing, zumba and pole dancing (see http://theundergroundsite.com/index.php/2011/03/former-stripper-teaches-pole-fitness-for-jesus-class-16294).

Other studies have shown definite health benefits that churchgoers enjoy, according to Feinstein. For example, churchgoers smoke less, live longer and enjoy better mental health, The Daily Mail said.

When some 3,000 birds fell from the sky in Beebe, Arkansas on New Year’s eve, it spurred a deluge of internet searches to see if there was a link to the apocalypse and/or end times.

According to GodDiscussion, their article alone, on the rain of dead birds upon a 1.5 square mile area in a town with a population of 5,000, got more than 15,817 views in just 18 hours.

The search terms included “dead birds bible,” and “dead birds dead fish revelation” (as some 100,000 dead fish were found washed up in Arkansas’ riverbank almost simultaneously), and other terms related to the apocalypse, GodDiscussion said.

The Christian Science Monitor said that Beebe City Councilor Becky Short said residents jokingly wondered if it was biblical end times or a UFO crash that caused the inundation of dead birds.

GodDiscussion said the bible doesn’t link dead birds with the apocalypse.

According to the New York Daily News, scientists allayed fears that the 3,000 dead blackbirds and 100,000 dead freshwater drum fish may indicate a toxic threat. Early tests showed no signs the animals were poisoned, the Christian Science Monitor said.

Fireworks, storm

The most likely cause for the bird deaths are the New Year fireworks, The Guardian said, quoting revelers who began to see dead birds fall around them at midnight as the fireworks went off.

One of the red-winged blackbirds hit a woman who was out with her dog. Others fell on pavements, rooftops, fields, yards, driveways, and one landed on a police car, The Guardian said, adding that it was difficult for people to drive on the street.

The Guardian quoted scientists who said the fireworks likely scared the birds and so agitated them that they crashed into each other, homes, cars, or dove straight at the ground.

Ornithologist Karen Rowe of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission told The Guardian, “The blackbirds were flying at rooftop level instead of treetop level” due to the explosions. “Blackbirds have poor eyesight, and they started colliding with things.”

Another possibility is that the birds may have become confused due to storms. John Fitzpatrick, director of ornithology at Cornell University told the New York Daily News, “This is a well-known phenomenon.”

Fitzpatrick said that birds often gather in groups, some up to 20,000 banding together. During a fierce storm, their feathers can get waterlogged and they can be whirled about as though they were in a washing machine, the New York Daily News said.

As for the fish, Keith Stephens of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission told the New York Daily News that the most likely cause is disease, “because it just affected one species. We have fishkills from time to time, it’s not unusual.”

Stephens told the New York Daily News that he saw no connection between the fish and bird deaths. In 2009, some 15 million dead batfish were found on Lake Elsinore, California, killed due to oxygen deprivation.

Environmental cleaners wearing protective clothes and masks rounded up the bird carcasses, and dozens were sent to two different labs for further study, the Christian Science Monitor reported.

Red-winged blackbirds are the most plentiful specie of birds in North America at up to 200 million, and are often bothersome for droppings that sometimes reach up to the knee, the New York Daily News said. Officials often use cannons and shotguns to drive them away.

The Vatican’s most recent statement concerning the link between pedophilia and homosexuality, which was  designed to quell a fire caused by a previous statement, actually caused a new hullabaloo.

Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi tried to douse flames of controversy by releasing a statement intended to lend the Vatican distance from the uproar.

Lombardi said that Church leaders were not trying to make “general affirmations of a specific psychological nature” and offered Church statistics cited by the Vatican’s internal prosecutor, Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna.

The stats said of the 3,000 abuse cases handled in the past decade by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 60 percent involved priests attracted to adolescent boys; 30 percent involved heterosexual relations; and 10 percent concerned pedophilia, or sexual attraction toward prepubescent children, according to The New York Times.

The Vatican’s most recent statement concerning the link between pedophilia and homosexuality, which was designed to quell a fire caused by a previous statement, actually caused a new hullabaloo.

This was in response to comments that were made by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the pope’s second in command, that homosexuality is the ‘problem’ that causes Catholic priests to molest children.

In a news conference in Santiago, Chile Bertone said, “Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and pedophilia, but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia.  This pathology is one that touches all categories of people, and priests to a lesser degree in percentage terms,” according to Reuters.

This elicited a wave of response from many sectors, including Catholics.  The second statement did not quell the fire.

Public response to both the Vatican’s statements, and the Pope’s continued silence, include the following:

• Some pro-Vatican Catholic blogs said more controversy was the last thing the Vatican needed.

• Chile’s Christian Democratic Senator Patricio Walker said that ‘pedophilia is a mental disorder of a sexual nature that affects both homosexuals and heterosexuals.’

• French foreign minister Bernard Valero condemned Cardinal Bertone’s remarks at a news conference in Paris.

• Alessandra Mussolini, a right-wing parliamentarian, said “You can’t link sexual orientation to pedophilia … this link risks becoming dangerously misleading for the protection of children.”

• Rome’s left-leaning La Repubblica in their editorial said Bertone’s comments would end up causing the Church more “harm to itself, not homosexuals.”

• ArciLesbica, Italy’s main lesbian rights group, said the Vatican is using “violent and deceptive statements” to divert attention from its abuse scandal.

• Franco Grillini, a veteran gay activist in Italy, called the link “a huge lie.”