Yeah...no. That study is a politically correct, elegant pile of bullshit. The usage of the terms to begin with...Theists? Who are these theists?
... Analysis of the results suggests that theists are more inclined than atheists to endorse moral values that promote group cohesion.
An overwhelming amount of theists in the world do not define themselves as 'theists'. They define themselves as a member of a specific religion. Yes, technically they are theists but with religous that's where it ends because they do not recognise 'theists'. They believe in the 'moral' values, rules and norms of an organised religion as absolutes required to control and dictate people's lives to fight aginst individualism and that's the reason for their tendency towards group choesion. Otherwise organised religion cannot exist. They cannot exists. The point of being a member of a religion is meeting up, being a part of that group. And they do not define theists or other believers equal to themselves.
On the other hand, there are increasing amount of theists who define themselves as believers in a creator, but refuse to be a member of an organised religious system of any sort. They are also divided in two main sub groups and while in one of them people hold the belief that the creator is not interested in his/her creation, people's lives, their deeds...etc., in the other group people believe in various ways the creator intervenes or attends to his/her creation. (I'm not using any other specific term purposefully.)
The second group of theists are the minority group of theists. They -also like atheists- do not control wealth or political power. The first group of theists, organised religious groups are in control of significant amount of wealth and political power and manage resources through their beliefs. And the moment they lose their numbers, they will lose their position. Hence the engagament for group cohesion. Numbers and money.
Meanwhile, atheists are more likely to judge the morality of an action based on its consequences.
There is a problem with this sentence. Judging an action based on its consequences, does not make the judgement rational. If the rational judgement here is doing/chosing the necessary thing for the benefit/profit of the one who makes the moral judgement -because frankly, that's how morality works- then religious people do the same. For example, they're well aware that their sexual orientation or personal lives won't change when gay people or minorities have equal rights, treatment with them. (Extreme voices do not matter in this context.) Their problem is with open exchange, loss of power; and the equality itself, because that's the consequence.
On the other hand, in the last 15 years there has been a visible shift to far right in atheists groups from every age, in every culture. This is to a deegre that almost the only difference is the unbelief status, while these groups share the same 'moral' values with religous groups against nonwhite minorities, LGBTQ groups, women...exactly because of the consequences of equality.
However, atheists and theists appear to align on moral values related to protecting vulnerable individuals, liberty versus oppression,
That's what social acceptance dictates. If somebody asks you a question about this and you answer; 'No, I defend oppression over liberty, and you know what, we should harm vulnerable individuals, why not!' people would think you are either trolling the survey or you are one disturbed individual. Either way, you end up in some extreme tendency group and won't taken into account if the survey is not constructed accordingly.
and being epistemically rational, i.e.: believing in claims when they are evidence-based and being skeptical about claims not backed by evidence.
Religious people cannot be epistemically rational. You don't consider the accumulation of human knowledge as the explanation of human behaviour in/of the actual world and then accept religous 'moral' values. It's an oxymoron. Not even going to get in evidence based, backed...etc. claim. Lets start with finding 5 in 1000 religous people who considered the word epistemology something different/beyond of what was written in a book some hundreds, thousands years ago.
The survey results also provided clues as to why atheists' and theists' moral compasses may be calibrated differently: the distinctions may stem in part from theists' increased exposure to community engagement in belief-based behaviors that would be costly if the beliefs were false (such as attending religious meetings). ...
In atheist far right groups, esp. including the new movements, exactly the same thing goes. It's not just costly once you are in, members are also expected to act and speak in a certain hostile manners and show agressive attitudes to certain groups to be noticed and initiated into those groups.
These findings suggest that the widespread idea that atheists are immoral may arise in part from their weak endorsement of moral values that promote group cohesion and their consequence-based, case-by-case moral judgment of actions.
That is a religious value, not an idea. It doesn't have any validity. It's widespread because there have always been more believers than nonbelievers. It's a commercail line of '...is a religion of peace' or '...is the best beer in the world'.
Ståhl adds: "The most general take-home message from these studies is that people who do not believe in God do have a moral compass. In fact, they share many of the same moral concerns that religious believers have, such as concerns about fairness, and about protecting vulnerable individuals from harm. However, disbelievers are less inclined than believers to endorse moral values that serve group cohesion, such as having respect for authorities, ingroup loyalty, and sanctity... It is possible that the negative stereotype of atheists as immoral may stem in part from the fact that they are less inclined than religious people to view respect for authority, ingroup loyalty, and sanctity as relevant for morality, and they are more likely to make moral judgments about harm on a consequentialist, case by case basis."
If that was true, there would be atheist terrorist groups bombing places here and there, and secular/atheistic societies would suffer from extreme crime stats. However, there are no atheist terrorist groups in the world, while international and domestic terrorism have almost become synoymous with organised religions. And atheistic/secular societies do not just have the least crime, they have the highest crime charges in certain type of crimes because people are not afraid, and also have the highest social justice and equality.
Because fuck morality, it is ILLEGAL to kill, harm, torture, enslave, sexually or psyhologically abuse people. It's ILLEGAL to attempt to kill elected officials after a lost election, It's ILLEGAL to force people to live according to some arbitrary set of rules.
Forget terrorism, do you know any atheist or even secular mafia? Any kind of orgnaised criminal group? No. But then from Yakuza to Italians, Russian to Turkish mafia, they are all pretty religous and strongly attached to their cultural traditions of the sort, aren't they?