The Bible Pumps You Up – To Kill!

I saw this study over on Game Politics. The run down on the study is basically that, given varying amounts of violent materials, people will become more aggressive as they are exposed to more violence. I have but one thing to say to that: Duh.

It is curious to note the circumstance of this study, though, and the parallels it has to video game violence studies.

This study compared two groups of people. One group had been given a verse from the old testament that was violent and told that it was a passage from an ancient scroll. The other group was given the same passage and a second passage where God had sanctioned violent retribution and told that both passages were from the Bible. This struck me as not being that... well, scientific. There is no proper control group, one that was either not given any passages, or given a non-violent passage from the Bible.

A moment about the test subjects themselves. Just over half of the subjects came from Brigham Young University in Utah (a Church of Christ and the Latter Day Saints joint). The remainder came from Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Of the subjects from BYU, 99% said they believed in God and the Bible, while only 50% from VU said they believed in God and 27% said they believed in the Bible. Did they find any correlation between high levels of belief in God and the Bible and aggression levels? In a word, yes. It was apparently not a large increase, but it was there.

That being beside the point, I am fascinated by the aggression testing methodology. I would have expected that there would be some kind of intense psychological evaluation going on here, interviews and written tests taken before and after. I would be very wrong. Precisely, test subjects were put into groups of two and each was given a 'weapon'. Nothing fun, just a button to press in a reflex test. Yes, a reflex test in which the "winner" gives the "loser" a blast of sound via headphones at a volume of their own choosing, the loudest being somewhere near a fire alarm.

I guess I can see how that could measure aggression. I can also see how that could measure someone just being a dick, too. Could we be seeing a Milgram experiment kind of action going on here? How did the person giving the experiment act? Can the subjects playing this 'game' see each other? Do they realize that they are causing the other discomfort?

The people doing the study of course say that these passages are taken completely out of context which is why something from the Bible – which is otherwise chock-a-block of peaceful, loving messages and nothing else – could ever cause someone to become aggressive. Only when taken out of context of the rest of the Bible could passages denoting murder, rape, beatings and God giving the green light for some violent retribution make anyone more aggressive.

Sure, sure. I believe that. Which is why the people at BYU, 99% of whom say that they believe in God and the Bible, would be more aggressive when they are given passages out of a book that they should be familiar with. I will be the first to admit that I do not go to church, I do not follow any western religions. From what I have seen about how churches handle the bible, I would be very concerned about these findings. How often does a sermon cover the entire Bible in one sitting? Just the entire Old Testament? Never perhaps?

Why did it not click in these kid's heads? They would go 'Oh! That passage is Genesis 4:8!' and then context would, conceivably, flood into their minds and they would be filled with love and peace.

That being said, it is the same for video games. One might say that it is the context of the game, that everyone else is trying to kill you via violent means, there is no other choice for the character that you control, but many games do not fall into that category. In Grand Theft Auto, you can kill whoever you want, and you suffer consequences for it. Just like in the Bible!The important thing is that these things are taken in context of reality. The understanding that committing acts of violence against real people for whatever reason is not OK has to be present. Not even if God gives you the go-ahead.