America
People blame God for their bad behaviour
Washington, Feb 19
People are most likely to
blame God for their bad behaviour believing that they were born to act
that partcular manner, say the findings of an ongoing project on
spirituality and religion.
The study focused on evaluating how
anger towards God may be related to how people view the cause of their
own moral transgressions.
Researchers found that people find God as partly responsible if they attributed these transgressions to how God created them.
"For
this study, we are identifying another pathway to anger and conflicts
with God," said Joshua Grubbs, a doctoral student at Case Western
Reserve University.
"Our research empirically shows that thinking
as if God set you up to fail leads to conflict with deity, which as per
other studies can predict a lot of negative outcomes," Grubbs said.
Over time, conflicts with God leads to depression, suicidal tendencies, poor recovery from illness and general discontent.
In
the study, participants were asked to consider an example of an
imaginary character in an imaginary world with an imaginary God.
Participants were told to imagine that the character was constantly breaking rules set by the God.
Half
of the participants were told they broke the rules due to a genetic
condition that proved impossible for them to follow the rules. The other
half were given no explanation.
When asked how they imagined the
character felt for God, participants given their genetic condition were
more likely to develop feelings of anger and hostility towards God.
The findings were published in the Journal of Psychology and Theology.