[Vision2020] Highly religious people are less motivated by compassion than are non-believers

[Chasuk]

There seems to be a bit more aggression here than is warranted. Of
course, I've been gone for a few years, so maybe things have been
brewing that I don't know about.

Yes, I expressed skepticism without providing any reasons, which -- as
Art Deco kindly noted -- any fool can do. However, as I'm sure Art is
aware, any fool can also express skepticism while providing reasons,
as can any credulous idiot.

I have no faith when it comes to questions of fact. I mean questions
of fact in the courtroom sense, in which the claim must be answered
primarily by reference to facts and evidence. That's a little
long-winded, so I used the word "skeptical" instead.

I actually should have written, "I'm skeptical that motivation can be
empirically measured," as it more accurately reflects my actual
meaning.

Why am I skeptical  that motivation can be empirically measured?

Motivation cannot be observed. It can be inferred from experimental
results, at least theoretically. When inferring something as
subjective as the reason that one behaves in a certain way, I can
fathom no method of avoiding the pollution of these inferences with
one's own reasons for behaving in that certain way. I'm not saying
that such methods don't exist, only that it is reasonable that they
are thorough explicated before I judge them.

These researchers used three experiments to come to their conclusion.
My alternative suggestion is this: all three experiments seemed to
concern American adults, and, in America, many Christians mistake the
phrase "God helps those who help themselves" as a biblical quote. This
suggests, to me, not that the highly religious are less motivated by
compassion, but that their compassion is countermanded by their
allegiance to the faux-Christian virtue of a non-biblical phrase.