Saturday, May 02, 2009

No-one is righteous 
Although plenty are self-righteous

6 in 10. 6 in 10. 

There is a reason Paul teaches that those who say "Do evil, that good may come of it" are condemned (Romans 3:8). 

No-one ever does evil for its own sake. The cackling Bond villain lives only in films. In the 80s, Private Eye did a spoof called "The Secret Diary of Colonel Gaddaffi", which consisted of "Monday: God up, GOD guided my breakfast, did something diabolical, went to bed. Tuesday: Got up. GOD guided my breakfast, did something diabolical..." and so on through out the week. All men in all places in all times who have committed abominable acts of wickedness didn't do it to laugh manically. They "pursue the good in a disordered way": they will the ends and ignore the means. "I was after a good end" and "I was following orders" didn't work at Nuremberg and will not work here.

6 in 10. The symbol of our faith is a torture device. How can people hear of a man half-drowned or another locked in a box with insects and think "Yes. Of this I approve. Now, I must hurry to Bible study".  


4 comments:

pj said...

You saw the sample size right? And then they are looking at subgroups. Not convinced there's enough evidence for statistically significant differences between groups. Although we can say that Americans are generally pretty pro-torture.

Political Scientist said...

Hello PJ,
Quite agree - the sample size is <800, and then the joy of subgroups means that the differences (IRCC 54% vs. 43% churchgoers vs. non-churchgoers) aren't that persuasive. [Woodchopper on the badscience forums has located the survey data]

My reaction was horror that such a large number of Christians could be consequentialists rather than deontologists.


[BTW, great stuff on the Boots naughtiness. I have quite a long comment on your Terry Eagleton piece stuck in my wordprocessor, which I intended to post last week]

pj said...

Go on - liberate your comment from your word processor.

Political Scientist said...

Done! - the comment form didn't care for the html, so I moved it into footnotes.