Ed (05 Oct 13 - 07:04 PM), I was replying to the parts of your messages where you addressed me, about the experiment. Scientific experiments have no "face value", just their metal content. My own conclusion was that there is probably some correlation between religious faith and honesty, but it is very probably far weaker than Pete claimed before his post of 05 Oct 13 - 12:23 PM.

Certainly religious belief and (self-declared) church membership are distinct notions, and have always been so. Still, we can reasonably assume that they correlate strongly. It is of course possible that the honesty correlation stems from other aspects of church membership, but I do not see any plausible ones.

Note that a correlation, particularly a weak one, does not imply a causality. Honest believers are not necessarily honest because they are believers. In my opinion, as I wrote on another thread, someone who does good for the sole reason of being rewarded in Heaven, will go to Hell for selfishness.

It looks as if Pete has changed his opinion dramatically, possibly without being aware of it.