Time Immortal

We needed a study to tell us that people who attend religious services on a regular basis are less likely to cheat on their partners?

People who identify with a faith group are less likely to cheat on their spouses than those with no religious affiliation, a new study has found. But even among the religious set, the odds vary according to denomination.

“What matters the most is being involved in a religious organization,” says Amy Burdette, co-author of the study and a post-doctoral scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Those who attend church more are less likely to cheat, and those who have more conservative views of the Bible are less likely to cheat.”

Baptists are one-third less likely to wander than those with no religious affiliation, researchers found, and Catholics display similar odds. Moderate Protestants such as Presbyterians and Lutherans have 37 per cent lower odds of cheating than the unaffiliated, while liberal Protestants such as those in the United and Anglican churches are 31 per cent more faithful.

Non-traditional conservative groups such as Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses display no less likelihood of cheating than people with no religious affiliation.

It’s good to see the obvious confirmed with hard data, but did we really need to study this? I suppose next we’ll be surprised that a majority of children under the age of 12 are shorter than the average adult over the age of 25.

I’m reminded of what Peter Sean Bradley once commented on this blog:

Let�s talk about what it would mean to adopt a �scientific� attitude toward love.

Popper�s idea of scientific falsifiability means that a scientific theory can never be said to be proven. Falsifiability means that scientific theories can only be disproven.

If we applied that kind of thinking to love, we would see the application of game theory in a way inimical to human flourishing. Each partner would have an �exit strategy�, they would be selective in sharing information, they would engage in opportunistic breaches.

In other words, we would see the recipe for dysfunctional marriages.

But since we recognize dysfuntional marriages, we can recognize the opposite. Those marriages are based on something other than a scientific approach. That approach, as you note, has more to to do with Deus Caritas Est than game theory.

That’s an analysis from some months back, but it seems pretty consistent with the latest ideas to emerge from the mind of prominent atheist Richard Dawkins. Contrast the above with a typical Christian view of humanity’s sexual nature:

I�ve developed just four themes in this article; allow me to review them. The first is that we ought to respect the principles of our sexual design. Just as those ways of living that flout the bodily aspects of our design sicken and kill us, so those ways of living that flout the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual aspects of our design ruin us and empty life of meaning.

The second theme is that the human sexual powers have a purpose. As the purpose of the visual powers is to see and the purpose of the ingestive powers is to take in nourishment, so the purpose of the sexual powers is to procreate. This purpose is not in the eye of the beholder; apart from this purpose, we would have no way to explain why we have them. Moreover, if we try to make use of the sexual powers in ways that thwart and violate this purpose, we thwart and violate ourselves.

The third theme is that the human design for procreation requires marital and family life. For guppies, it doesn�t; they manage to procreate without them. For us, however, it does. To put this another way, we are made with a view to marriage and family, and fitness for them is one of our design criteria. No one invented them, no one is indifferent to them, and there was never a time in human history when they did not exist.

Even when disordered, they persist. Spouses and family members who are divided by disaster commonly undertake Herculean efforts to reunite with each other. Marriage and family are not merely apparent goods but real ones, and the rules and habits necessary to their flourishing belong to the natural law.

The final theme is that the spousal bond has its own structure, which both nourishes and is nourished by these institutions. Because it has its own structure, it has its own principles. Among these principles are the following: Happiness cannot be heightened by sexually using the Other; conjugal joy requires a mutual and total gift of Self. Feelings of union are no substitute for union; their purpose is to encourage the reality of which they are merely a foretaste. The procreative and unitive meanings of sexuality are joined by nature; they cannot be severed without distorting or diminishing them both.

These principles are the real reason for the commands and prohibitions contained in traditional sexual morality. Honor your parents. Care for your children. Save sex for marriage. Make marriage fruitful. Be faithful to your spouse.

I think it ought to be clear — without benefit of survey data — that Christians (and other religious folk) would make better partners. But evidently people were surprised, including survey co-author Amy Burdette:

“That was a little bit surprising, considering you think of these conservative religious groups as having stricter teachings about sexuality,” Burdette says.

There seems to be this mistaken impression among some elements of society — secular academics are, I find, particularly vulnerable to it — that the less permissive sexual moral standards of religions are, because of their supposedly “repressive” nature, likely to trigger outbursts of rampant sexual infidelity and experimentation among the flocks of the faithful.

But of course, sexual morality — things like the Catholic proscription against artificial birth control — are not actually repressive at all; they are liberating, and serve to both a) diminish the level of mutual objectification between partners that occurs all too frequently in secular expressions and understandings of human sexuality, and to b) increase the probability that a stable relationship will emerge between partners that is not based solely/primarily on sexuality, but on the beauty of the other partner as a child of God.

And again, all this can be determined without benefit of — or need for — empirical data and surveys. Still, it’s nice to know what was obviously true is, in fact, obviously true.