Good and Evil in Religion: The Interpersonal Context
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Based on an integrative review of cross-cultural literature concerning virtues, moral foundations, and values, we suggest that traditional religions’ common understanding of “the good” centers on self-transcendence, manifest intrapersonally as an emphasis on self-control, and interpersonally as love, or motivation to preserve and promote others’ well-being. Complementarily, we suggest that “evil” centers on self-enhancement, manifest interpersonally as moral compartmentalization, and interpersonally as hate, or the desire to diminish others’ well-being. Not all love is “good,” and not all hate is “evil” within faith traditions, however, and we consider examples of each of these subversions. We also consider the functional role of love and hate within religion, and we suggest that the emotions that accompany love-related episodes may sometimes serve as experiential validation of a faith tradition's claims, and that intentional evocation of strong negative emotions in quasi-religious contexts may buttress an unstable self-image. Finally, we offer broad suggestions for future research.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".