Study Reveals How Criminals Co-Opt Religion to Rationalize & Justify Their Crimes
Wednesday, February 20th, 2013In my in-depth piece about ponerology, I devoted a great deal of real estate, including, for instance, this section, to explaining how any ideology or religion – even one whose actual teachings would seem antithetical to “evil” – can be hi-jacked by pathological people who then use it to cloak their malicious activity. This is a very important point to understand. Pathological people often draw sympathy and support from others by espousing admirable sounding ideals, even while flouting those very ideals with their behavior.
A new study, described in the Vancouver Sun, touches on this interplay between ideology/religion (in this case, specifically religion) and harmful activity.
The study, led by Volkan Topalli, a criminal justice professor at Georgia State University, was published in an article entitled “With God on My Side: The Paradoxical Relationship Between Religious Belief and Criminality Among Hardcore Street Offenders” in the journal Theoretical Criminology. (more…)