The problem is that religion is portrayed as us against them. Good against evil. When you indoctrinate people in that way it makes them feel superior and less attentive to the needs of society in general.

Interesting isnt it? .. religious people say the world would be better if we put religion back in school.. not realizing/admitting that it just hid the problems

There are two kinds of non-religious households. In one type the parents are highly educated, well-off people who have broken away from traditional religion and declared themselves to be either atheists or perhaps they are spiritually inclined but not religious. It is totally understandable that children raised in such households would be more empathetic.

But what about the other type of non-religious household? Did they include families where the parents are are alcoholics, drug addicts or perpetual criminals? I know of a few non-religious families that live mainly on welfare, and frankly their children don’t seem all that empathetic.

Here's another slant on this viewed from the biological imperative. Non-kinship altruism is rare in nature. Most animals will help their own offspring, but not babies of an outsider. This would go against Dawkin's selfish gene theory. Animals are programmed to care about only their own genes so helping a stranger diminishes your own offspring's chances.

There are a few exceptions to this, however. A young gazelle will “smolt”, that is hop alongside a hunting lion so as to discourage the lion from attacking. It's quite beautiful to watch if you've ever seen it. It's like they're hopping on springs.

Another example is the prairie dog on guard duty. When it sees a coyote in the distance it lets out a loud bark. This warns the others to go hide in their bur-roughs but also lets the coyote know when he is. You can bet that the females will reward him with a chance to pass on his valiant genes.

If we look at history we see many cases of religion completely annihilating compassion or empathy – in ancient time and now. In ancient Phoenicia during hard times of famine, a mother was expected to throw her baby in Baal's fire pit and if she cries she gets thrown in with the baby. It seems like the stupider the religion the more cruel they are, the ancient Egyptians, for instance. How many slaves died building the pyramids? All so the pharaoh could get some service in the afterlife.

How about Ghanghis Klan with this underground treasury. All the slaves that worked on the tomb were sacrificed to keep the location secret.

Also, most of the good deeds and acts of love and compassion motivated by religion were not out of love or empathy but by the hope of a reward in heaven.

True belief in a religious dogma means bigotry against all who do not share the addiction.

I wonder if the results would be similar if you changed the poll criteria to wealthy vs not wealthy or conservative vs. liberal. I'm sure I have read that both liberal and middle/ lower class households are more open to "empathetic" behaviours.

Someone else posted on here about this study recently. The study has a lot of critics. Some who say that the study didn't really show any statistically relevant deviation, debate the if other factors are not accounted for such as parenting style, and who question the validity of the methods used to define altruistic behavior ( they used the dictator game, where kids are asked to share stickers ). There are also studies that seem to conflict. The best we can say is that kids are all just as altruistic regardless of upbringing.

They must have counted me.

I suppose it only confirms what most of us suspected,

I actually don't find that surprising