Sin is in the Eye of the Beholder
Bruce Tomaso reports on the puzzling results of a survey on Americans' notion of sin. For example, 63% think it's a sin to not speak up if a cashier gives you too much change, but only 52% think it's a sin to underreport income on your tax return.
Humans tend to conform to conventional morality, by and large, even if they can't explain it. It's possible that it was the evolution of morality that enabled homo sapiens to exponentially expand its population and range and dominate the planet. That morality is still more instinct than reason explains why survey responses can be as illogical as appears here.
2 comments:
Pretty simple justification for the 52 percent. To one degree or another they either have a moral problem with their income being taken, or they have a moral problem with what it's being spent on -- e.g. the war in Iraq, welfare, corporate welfare, the war on drugs, or what have you.
Lots of Americans think that businesses overcharge just like the government does. Yet they still feel obliged to pay in full at the store. Perhaps, as you say, it is the involuntary nature of taxes that ticks people off. Still, there are enough other inconsistencies that I doubt that most people think these issues through.
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