This is just one of the many findings contained in the Faith and Belief in New Zealand report released last month.

The 67-page report contains a massive number of statistics and many easy to understand infographics.

Here just are a few examples of the information contained in the report.

Of those who took part in the study:

• 26% are warm towards Christianity
• 31% are cold towards Christianity
• Their attitude towards Christianity is most likely to be shaped by their parents and family (57%)
• The main blocker that stops them from engaging with Christianity is the Church's stance and teaching on homosexuality (47%)
• Almost as many are influenced by the idea that a loving God would allow people to go to hell (45%)
• Church abuse has the greatest negative influence (76% massive/significant negative influence)
• 69% think Christians do not practice what they preach
• 25% know fewer than two Christians
• 9% of these don't know any Christians
• 22% know nothing at all about the Church in New Zealand
• 60% know a little or a moderate amount about the Church in New Zealand
• 56% don't know their local church well at all
• 51% take a neutral stance regarding the impact of the church in their local area
• They appreciate the work the Church does in helping those in need
• They most value the work of the Church and Christian organisations in providing disaster relief
• Two-thirds value the Church and Christian organisations' work in looking after people who are homeless, offering financial assistance/food relief programmes and providing aged care facilities.

The report was commissioned by the Wilberforce Foundation. It explores attitudes towards religion, spirituality and Christianity in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

The research was undertaken during March and April 2018 by mccrindle, a research company based in Baulkham Hills, Australia.

The research employed qualitative and quantitative methods to explore Kiwi perceptions and attitudes towards Christianity, the Church and Jesus.

These methods included a nationally representative survey of Kiwis, a series of focus groups with non-Christians and analysis of Census data from Statistics New Zealand.

Read the report

Source

nzfaithandbeliefstudy.files.wordpress.com

Two teams of researchers in the United Kingdom and the United States grew embryos until they were 13 days old.

The embryos were kept alive and active beyond the stage when they would naturally implant in a mother's womb

The longest that human embryos had previously been grown in the lab was nine days.

The latest research comes close to the 14-day limit for growing donated embryos that is long-established in law in many countries.

After the 14-day point, such laws usually state that the embryos must be destroyed.

In response to the latest research, L'Osservatore Romano published a front-page article in its May 10 edition by bioethicist Laura Palazzani.

The bioethicist lamented the use of human embryos as "guinea pigs of progress".

Arguing that the 14-day limit is arbitrary, Palazzani said that some researchers could find pretexts for far later limits, whether prenatal or postnatal.

All human beings are in a state continuous development from the moment of fertilisation, she continued, and embryos of whatever stage, without expressing consent, are being "destined to death" for the sake of scientific research.

The 14-day stage marks the point when the individuality of an embryo is assured, because it can no longer split into twins.

At about the same time, embryo forms what is called the "primitive streak", a faint band of cells that starts to distinguish the head from the tail.

Introduced in Britain 30 years ago, the 14-day rule aimed to give scientists room to study human embryos, while respecting wider views on embryo research.

Some scientists have called for an end to the 14 day limit in many countries.

Sources

• Catholic World News
• The Guardian
• Image: Caerus Art Residency

Research involving two New Zealand universities has discovered such acts were used by social elites to maintain their power, the Stuff.co.nz website reported.

The study came from researchers from the University of Auckland, Victoria University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany.

They analysed historical data from 93 Austronesian cultures, using methods derived from evolutionary biology.

It was found that practising human sacrifice made societies more likely to be divided into the haves and have-nots.

"Religion has traditionally been seen as a key driver of morality and co-operation, but our study finds religious rituals also had a more sinister role in the evolution of modern societies," said study lead author Joseph Watts.

Human sacrifice was widespread in Austronesian cultures, which include early inhabitants of the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, Madagascar and Easter Island.

Forty cultures included in the study killed humans as part of their religious rituals.

The study divided the Austronesian cultures into three main groups of high, moderate and low social stratification (inequality).

It found societies with high levels of stratification were almost twice as likely to practice human sacrifice as cultures in the moderate category.

Watts said that was because the sacrifices were used by ruling groups to keep the lower classes in line.

"By using human sacrifice to punish taboo violations, demoralise the underclass and instil fear of social elites, power elites were able to maintain and build social control," he said.

Human sacrifice was a particularly effective way of controlling society because it provided a "supernatural justification" for punishment, said Professor Russell Gray, one of the study's co-authors.

"Rulers, such as priests and chiefs, were often believed to be descended from gods and ritual human sacrifice was the ultimate demonstration of their power."

Sources

• Stuff.co.nz
• Image: Stuff.co.nz

International researchers, including the University of Auckland's Associate Professor Quentin Atkinson, have published the results of their study in the journal Nature.

They found people who believe their god is more punitive and knowledgeable behave more honestly and generously towards others who share their religion.

The relationship between supernatural beliefs and cooperativeness could not be accounted for by a wide range of other variables such as gender, age, education, material insecurity and number of children.

The research took place across eight communities from Brazil, Siberia, Tanzania, Vanuatu, Fiji and Mauritius.

The religious attitudes of nearly 600 people were surveyed.

Their belief systems ranged from Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism to more localised beliefs in spirits and deities.

Participants included hunter-gatherers, horticulturalists, herders and farmers, and people living in modern economies who earned wages or ran businesses.

The study used behavioural economic games and ethnographic interviews.

The games included elements of random chance and the ability to skew results to benefit either the player, other individuals or groups.

The study found that overall, participants who rated their gods highly as all-knowing and concerned with moral behaviour allocated more money to people who believed in the same god.

This was the case even if their co-believers were strangers from another community.

But it wasn't true for those who shared beliefs in local spirits and deities not considered so "all-knowing" or concerned with moral behaviour.

Dr Atkinson said that the relatively dramatic rise in human cooperation since the advent of agriculture isn't explained by genetic evolution.

"It turns out that putting the fear of god into us may have had a lot to do with it," he said.

"These gods acted as a kind of social engineering so that people who believed in a morally-concerned god were more likely to follow the rules of the game and give money to their fellow believers over themselves and their village."

Sources

• New Zealand Herald
• Voxy
• Image: The Odyssey Online

By sequencing genes from pollen and dust particles on the shroud, Italian researchers have been able to map the type of plants and people that came into contact with the linen.

Their research suggests the shroud was made in India, and travelled the world extensively, moving from Jerusalem to Turkey to France before ending up in Italy.

The DNA was extracted from dust particles vacuumed from parts of the body image on the shroud and the lateral edge used for radiocarbon dating.

Continue reading

The study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, analysed 9000 Europeans who were older than 50.

Researchers looked at four areas: 1) volunteering or working with a charity; 2) taking educational courses; 3) participating in religious organsations; 4) participating in a political or community organisation.

Of the four, participating in a religious organisation was the only social activity associated with sustained happiness, the researchers found.

The researchers, from the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, said it is unclear whether the benefits of participating in a religious organisation are connected to being in the religious community, or to the faith itself.

Continue reading

In her new book, When Boys Become Boys, Judy Y. Chu reports on her two-year study in which she followed a group of boys from pre-kindergarten through first grade.

She concluded that most of what we think of as "boy" behaviour isn't natural or authentic to boys, but is something they learn to perform.

Boys aren't stoic or aggressive or hierarchical; they aren't bad at forming relationships or unable to express themselves.

They pick up all these traditional traits of masculinity by adapting to a culture that expects and demands that they do so.

I interviewed Chu about gender roles, relationships, and how boys become boys.

The primary cultural forces you discuss in your book seems to be the boys themselves and their peer group. So it seems like they become boys through learning from other boys; it's boys teaching themselves to be boys. So where do you see the inauthenticity or unnaturalness there?

It's not as though they're arriving in their interactions having come from an isolated place.

They're hearing messages from older siblings, from media, or some of the boys' parents were more conventional in terms of the messages that they were telling them.

So they were hearing messages about masculinity and bringing them to their peer group context. Continue reading.

Source: The Atlantic

Image: Exposure

The cardinal strongly resisted inquiries by researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who had been commissioned by the United States bishops' conference to study how dioceses handled sex-abuse complaints.

Cardinal Mahony retired in 2011 and his successor, Archbishop José Gomez, has told him "he will no longer have any administrative or public duties" in the archdiocese.

Continue reading

Analysis of more than 1,000 online responses to videos featuring infamous New Zealand race furores involving Paul Henry and Hone Harawira are "disturbing" and illustrative of a "dark underbelly" in New Zealand society according to Deputy director of Victoria University's Centre of Applied Cross-Cultural Research James Liu, who supervised the research.

"There has been a lot of analysis of print media but not much has been done on social media. Social media allows a broader spectrum of opinion and allows people to talk openly and with anonymity.

"This is opening a door to the basement of society and the basement is very dark," said Liu

The research, presented at the Human Rights Commission's National Diversity Forum in Hamilton in Monday

Read article in DomPost
Image:entertainment.msn.co.nz