How has Nature's Phillip Ball arrived at this would-be statement of fact? Did he interview God and ascertain his sworn non-involvement? Or did he find a sure-fire, absolute proof of God's nonexistence? And what is a publication like Nature doing weighing in on a theological question? I guess it's now good to conflate science and religion — but only as long as the religion is atheism?

Into this bitterly contested arena comes a new paper by psychologists Ilkka Pyysiainen of the University of Helsinki and Marc Hauser of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They point out that individuals presented with unfamiliar moral dilemmas show no difference in their responses if they have a religious background or not.

In other words, people have the exact same moral intuition (at least as far as the study went) whether they are from a religious background or not.

I cite this study as a nice illustration of a problem which appears over and over when atheists attempt to talk coherently about religion: many of them haven't the faintest idea about the belief system they think they're disproving.

Rather than refuting Western religious claims about morality, the result above would, to the contrary, instead prove a core Christian doctrine — that all people have been given a common moral framework. (For example, Paul asserts in Romans 2:15 that all people have God's core moral requirements written onto their hearts and conscience.) The study would have disproved the Christian view of morality only if it had found there was no evidence of a common, built-in "moral grammar." (No doubt that also would have been taken as proof religion was false. It must be nice to live in a realm so free of disprovable beliefs.)

Even more embarrassingly, the study also doesn't confirm Ball's other assertion: "If we follow the authors' line of thinking, religious people are no more likely to be moral than atheists."

This is, sadly, a colossally stupid leap. Consider the human body: We're all born with common physical frameworks, too. Our hearts and lungs work about the same, as do our nerves, skeletal systems, and muscles. Yet if we follow the authors' reasoning, we would therefore conclude there can be no consistent difference in fitness or strength levels between those who visit the gym regularly and those who don't.

That is, obviously, a dumb thing to say. But that's precisely what the authors are saying, if we replace physical capabilities with moral ones: since we're all born with a common moral framework, we must be making the exact same choices on a day-to-day basis. If your conscience tells you something is right to do, you will always do it. There is, apparently, no such thing as choice, and religion or culture can have no significant influence. Since Pol Pot and Mother Theresa shared an inbuilt "moral grammar", there cannot have been any significant difference in their resulting moral behavior.

Yet, to the contrary, numerous studies have shown that religious people give more to charity (even secular charities), volunteer more time, are more compassionate to strangers, are more likely to return money mistakenly given by a cashier, and are generally happier than the non-religious. While we may all be born with a sense which tells us the right and wrong things to do, it appears religious practice does indeed have some influence on behavior. There is, believe it or not, a difference between having a moral sense, and doing what is moral. Our author seems profoundly uninterested in (or ignorant of) this rather extensive body of research. (Don't confuse him with facts!)

The problems don't end there. Because people have an inbuilt moral sense, the author says they are "good by nature." This is question-begging: how does he know that moral sense yields "good" results? Because his moral sense confirms its own goodness to him? And where is the evidence that moral sense always or even mostly translates into "good" moral actions? The study only asks people for their views on right and wrong — it didn't observe their behaviors.

And while asserting religion has no influence on morality, the author inadvertently undermines his narrative: "These tests present dilemmas ranging from how to handle freeloaders at 'bring a dish' dinner parties to the justification of killing someone to save others. Few, if any, of the answers can be looked up in holy books." This a huge problem, and the author is apparently blind to the contradiction: If the situations posed are not those covered by a faith, then how can he say he's testing the influence of that faith?

Having taken the moral sense test myself, I can tell you that it doesn't allow for the kind of situations a religious faith is likely to address. You're asked if it's moral to push a person onto a railroad track to save a group of people. You're not allowed to suggest that you could throw yourself on that track instead, and it certainly doesn't come close to testing whether you'd do it. (The author subtly admits this later, but doesn't connect the dots, as though altruism was utterly unimportant to morality.)

Grand gestures aside, the questions addressed by religion are also those which are common in real life. We don't often have to deal with highly artificial situations involving railroad tracks, bridges, fat men, and innocent people on the tracks. We more often have to love our enemies, pay a debt on time, be honest, give away something we might need, or remain faithful to a spouse — and the more important litmus test would be, again, whether the concerted practice of certain faiths are effective at helping us act morally, especially in situations where our own self-interest is at stake.

Finally, while the author is at it, he can't resist yet another demonstration of his own superior morality: "Certainly, religious moral doctrine sometimes displays such inconsistency that you have to suspect it is being shaped by unspoken prior judgements [sic] — rather than religious tenets as such. Take, for example, the Catholic church's early opposition to in vitro fertilization, which sat alongside an otherwise fierce prohibition of any hindrance to procreation."

I'm not Catholic, and don't feel any need to defend these particular doctrines (which he misstates), but his reasoning is, again, stunningly idiotic: a bit like saying that if one loves dogs, one must also be in favor of puppy mills. Since he cannot see any nuances* (and apparently doesn't want to hear of any), they must not exist! More hilariously, he's again contradicting his own assertion, by saying Catholicism causes people to embrace moral stances inferior to his.

(* I expect a Catholic would point out that many fertilized human embryos are destroyed for each one which survives, meaning there are many extra deaths for each life produced.)

Now I'd like to see some research put towards the question of what it is about a dogmatic materialistic worldview which leaves people — even those billing themselves as "scientists" — unable to reason clearly. Ball fails to take time to even learn the basics about the positions he thinks he opposes, and makes huge, illogical leaps (if we a share an inbuilt sense, we must all act the same). Most ironically, he contracts his own narrative by repeatedly implying his own moral stances are superior to many of those held by stupid religious people — while simultaneously arguing that religion (or lack thereof) can have no impact on one's level of goodness!

Where does Nature find such a person? If this is "science" we're going to be living in caves soon.