Now we’re getting somewhere. When religious people are not thinking about their religious principles, they sink into the same immoral muck as atheists. But remind them of what really matters, and the halo comes out. Two big complications: The first is that in a lot of these studies, implicit religious primes make atheists more prosocial as well. After all, you don’t have to be a Christian to decide that the Sermon on the Mount has good parts. But as a more informative complication, while prosociality in religious people is boosted by religious primes, prosociality in atheists is boosted just
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