Danger of Too Much Exposure to Evil
TNRTB Archive – Retained for reference information
An American team of social medical researchers has employed a new statistical technique to demonstrate the biblically consistent principle that exposure to pernicious evil will seriously compromise one’s moral fortitude. The study compared juveniles who had been exposed to gun violence with juveniles who had not. Results showed that the former group was three to four times more likely to commit acts of violence. In response to the criticism that the correlation might disappear when other factors are considered, the team performed “propensity analysis.” That is, they isolated individuals from both groups who shared a possible mitigating factor such as alcohol use, truancy, ethnicity, illiteracy, physical abuse by a parent, single parent family structure, drug abuse, and thirty other factors. Allowing for the mitigating factor, the group exposed to gun violence was still at least twice as prone to violence as the unexposed group. Thus, experimental evidence now exists that what the Bible teaches about moral behavior is accurate.
- J. B. Bingenheimer, R. T. Brennan, and F. J. Earls, “Firearm Violence Exposure and Serious Violent Behavior,” Science 308 (2005): 1323-26.
- https://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/308/5726/1323
- Constance Holden, “Controversial Study Suggests Seeing Gun Violence Promotes It,” Nature 435 (2005): 1230-40.
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