The Fake & Fraudulent Prophets Around the President
September 4, 2026 |
Daniel Henderson
For years, we’ve been told that religion is the bedrock of morality. Without Sunday School, veggie-themed Bible cartoons, and the looming threat of eternal damnation, how could a child possibly know not to stab their classmates or hoard all the glue sticks?
Turns out, pretty easily.
Back in 2015, a global team of researchers—led by University of Chicago neuroscientist Dr. Jean Decety—decided to poke that sacred cow. The study observed children from various religious and nonreligious households using a sticker-sharing game as a measure of altruism. The results? The more religious the family, the less generous the kid.
Cue gasps from the pews.
Kids from nonreligious homes shared an average of 4.1 stickers. Their Christian and Muslim counterparts? A modest 3.3 and 3.2, respectively. The more devout the household, the stingier the child. Nothing says “love your neighbor” like hoarding Paw Patrol stickers.
This wasn’t just about stickers—it was about the assumptions we tie to faith and morality.
Nonreligious kids weren’t being forced to give. They shared because it felt right. Religious kids, on the other hand, were marinating in a morality stew seasoned with guilt, divine surveillance, and the lurking fear of a God who apparently tracks sticker counts like Santa on meth.
Religious kids weren’t just less generous—they were more judgmental. When asked to assess harmful behaviors, they brought the hammer down harder than their secular peers. The harsher the faith, the harsher the verdict.
Why? Because religion, especially of the fundamentalist flavor, doesn’t teach empathy. It teaches rule-following. Morality becomes a checklist, and compassion is optional unless it’s part of the assignment. You don’t love your neighbor because you care—you love your neighbor because you’re terrified of hell.
And kids absorb this. Instead of developing an internal compass, they learn to play moral referee. Judge others. Police behavior. Make sure nobody’s coloring outside the lines of orthodoxy.
Now, before Karen from the church book club fires off an email: yes, the study was later retracted in 2019. The researchers admitted they’d used “country of origin” as a flawed statistical variable. But even after correcting the data, they noted that religious households still showed less sharing overall. The main takeaway? It wasn’t the religion itself—it was how rigidly it was applied.
Retraction or not, the generosity gap didn’t disappear—it just got harder to blame on Jesus directly., the sticker stinginess persisted. Translation: fundamentalism doesn’t make your kids nicer—it just makes them more insufferable with a moral superiority complex.
What this really exposes is how performative religion has become. It doesn’t form people—it formats them. Kids raised in rigid faith systems learn to toe the line, not to think deeply about ethics. They memorize verses but miss the message. They become fluent in guilt, conversational in shame, and illiterate in grace. At camp, I had a student who’d march down during altar call to narc on someone for praying with their eyes open—then got busted stealing from another camper. That’s not moral formation—it’s moral cosplay.
And if you’re wondering where those little rule-keepers end up? Look around. They’re the ones screaming “groomer” at librarians while hoarding forgiveness for themselves and demanding punishment for everyone else. In church circles, I saw more concern over whether kids remained pure than whether they were kind.
Of course, not all religious folks raise judgmental little monsters. Some genuinely model compassion, grace, and selflessness. But let’s be honest: the more dogmatic the household, the more likely those values get buried under a pile of rules, shame, and junior theology police badges.
So the next time someone tells you that atheists can’t raise moral children, ask them how many stickers their kid would give away. Chances are, Baby Jesus is weeping—and not because Starbucks left the nativity off their cups.
