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.

IANS