A study of religious societies found that belief in hell correlates with better moral behavior than belief in heaven alone. The speaker connects this to California's $900 theft threshold, arguing that removing punishment deters people less effectively than the threat of damnation.
Academics did a study. They were not even religious. They did a study of societies and communities that believed in hell versus societies that only believed in heaven. And hey, we're shocked. People acted better in the communities where there was belief in hell than in the communities where there was belief only in heaven. Yeah, it's, it's pretty obvious, right? As California is a living example, there's no punishment if you steal $900 worth of goods from a store. So there's a lot of stealing of $900 worth of goods from stores. Isn't that— isn't that— that is really Unexpected.
Life, Legacy, and a Dangerous Mission in the Soviet Union | Sunday Fireside Chat
