I don’t see a link to the study in the piece. I would like to see the criteria for inclusion, the questions asked and if multi-choice questionaires and/or Likert scales were employed.

That has been my experience.

But of course!

All gestures done out of concern and respect for your fellow man are far more morally superior to those done out of fear that a God will punish you, or reward you.

People who raise their children this way are far more likely to focus on teaching them the human consequences of their actions.

I don't know about that. I was raised without religion. It took me a long time to truly understand empathy and I still suck at it sometimes. The best I can do is to try to be better.

All i know is that theyre smarter

The study has been retracted.

[cell.com]

See discussion below by TheMiddleWay

Outstanding stuff to hear

If I had any more empathy I'd have been incapable of functioning. lol

So I guess it's a good thing my parents indoctrinated me?

Yes. They are less judgmental.

I love seeing that since it is how I raised my children.

I am not sure whether this is very accurate. The mother of my children and I raised our two daughters, 4 years apart, without any exposure to religion within the home. We even appealed to the school that they would participate in religious education. Unfortunate my elder daughter was the only child in the entire school. Later she changed to another school and participated in the silly subject. It was mainly colouring in of Jesus pictures etc. I visited the classes and the just a benign waste of time without much toxic indoctrination. I don't think my daughter, in their early years, ever participated in any religious ritual.
Long story short: my elder daughter became a Christian and later devolved even further to become a JW. My younger daughter remained normal and kind, perhaps even a little too kind for the harsh society we navigate in.
We often talk about what went wrong in her sister's brain. She is an extremely selfish JW bitch.

Yup