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God On Trial: Are Our Moral Judgments Different Based On Whether We Are Judging God Or Humans?, Ben Kok Leong Ng

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Past work in moral psychology has demonstrated that individuals’ judgments of other humans in hypothetical moral scenarios can be influenced by variables such as intentionality, causality and controllability. However, while empirical studies suggest that individuals similarly hold nonhuman agents such as robots morally accountable for their actions to the extent that they are perceived to possess humanlike attributes important for moral judgments, research is scant when God is introduced as a nonhuman agent. On one hand it is proposed that because people anthropomorphize God, our moral intuitions of humans and God tend to show similar effects. In this case, both …