Faith and laughter: Do atheists and practicing Christians have different senses of humor?

Abstract

This paper treats the stability of two superposed gravitating streams rotating about the axis transverse to the horizontal magnetic field. The critical wave number for instability is found to be affected by rotation for propagation perpendicular to the axis about which the system rotates. The critical wave number for instability is not affected by rotation when waves propagate along the axis of rotation. The critical wave number is affected by both the magnetic field and the streaming velocity in both cases. Both the magnetic field and the rotation are stabilizing, while the streaming velocity is destabilizing.

Does religion shape people’s sense of humour? A comparative study of humour appreciation among members of different religions and nonbelievers

“…As indicated above (section 4.2. ), the analysis of our data allowed us to replicate our earlier study that compared the humour appreciation between Christians and Atheists (Schweizer & Ott: 2016). This is even more noteworthy because the mode of recruiting participants (a college-centred social media outreach in the 2016 study versus MTurk here) and the type of jokes (complex literary passages versus simple jokes and cartoons) was very different.…”

“…Instead, our study adds to the modest but growing body of research about shared humour sensibilities (e.g. Yue 2011;Braun & Preiser 2013;Abrams et al 2015;Schweizer & Ott 2016). Specifically, this study provides empirical answers to the question whether, collectively, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Agnostics, and Atheists demonstrate observable and statistically relevant differences in their appreciation of humour, including their reaction to irreverent jokes.…”

“…Our earlier comparative study about humour appreciation among Christians and Atheists (Schweizer & Ott 2016) found that these two groups largely agreed in their basic humour appreciation, with two exceptions: highly offensive religious jokes were significantly more funny to Atheists than they were to practicing Christians, while Atheists were less amused than Christians by good-natured religious jokes that were predicated upon faith. In the present study, responses from Atheists and Christians were also undistinguishable when the two groups responded to non-offensive jokes.…”

What Makes Things Funny? An Integrative Review of the Antecedents of Laughter and Amusement

“…Other studies show that stronger commitment to a norm, such as the sanctity of Christianity, decreases the extent to which people are amused when the norm is threatened. For example, Christians rated sacrilegious jokes as being less funny than atheists, even though Christians and atheists perceived similar levels of funniness in nonreligious jokes (Schweizer & Ott, 2016). Similarly, participants who regularly attend church were less likely than nonchurchgoers to be amused by a story in which a church that raffles off a Hummer to recruit new members (McGraw & Warren, 2010).…”

Linguistica Silesiana

“…There are scholars who claim that religion and humor are completely incompatible because they exclude each other (Morreall 1983(Morreall , 2001. As shown by Schweizer and Ott (2016), the category of religion-related jokes may be perceived by believers as improper or blasphemous even if both believers and non-believers may manifest a similar sense of humor. One of the reasons for that situation may be the fact that some of the jokes that refer to religion use God's name, which belongs to taboo subjects, as the Bible forbids using his name in vain: anyone who does it commits blasphemy and deserves punishment (see Exodus 20: 7).…”