According to the skin-conductance tests, the atheists found asking God to harm them or others to be just as upsetting as religious folks did. The researchers also compared the reactions of the atheists when making statements like “I wish my parents were paralyzed” and “I dare God to paralyze my parents.” Atheists were, like believers, more bothered by the latter statement, if you believe the skin-conductance tests, even though both declarations would be, in theory, equally empty if there were no heavenly overseer.

 
Very few of us would argue that “it’s OK to kick a puppy in the face.” That’s not a nice thing to say. Here’s an even less nice thing to say: “I wish my parents would drown.” Maybe they never got you the sweet BMX bike you begged for, sticking you instead with that banana-seat Schwinn, but desiring their terminal submersion is a bit much. If there are advocates for kicking puppies and drowning parents, they (wisely) tend to keep those foul opinions to themselves.

Now consider this statement: “I dare God to make my home catch fire.”

It’s a little different, right? You’re still imagining a terrible event, but this time you’re invoking the supernatural. If you believe in God, and you believe that he answers your prayers, then you might worry that the Almighty would reduce your bungalow to cinders. But what if you don’t believe in God? You wouldn’t give it a second thought, right? Bring it on, Fictional Deity!

In a forthcoming paper in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, titled “Atheists Become Emotionally Aroused When Daring God to Do Terrible Things,” researchers asked subjects to make the horrible statements mentioned above. Some statements were offensive (puppy kicking), some were malevolent (parents drowning), and some dared God to do awful stuff, to the subjects, their friends, or their families. Of the 29 subjects, 16 were self-described atheists and 13 were religious. It’s important to note that the study took place in Finland, which has a much higher proportion of atheists and agnostics than the United States has. According to one estimate, most Finns don’t believe in God; contrast that with the United States, where less than 10 percent of us are heathens.

In the study, subjects were first asked to rate the unpleasantness of those statements. Not surprisingly, believers said they were more bothered than atheists were by the thought of daring God to burn down their houses or afflict them with cancer. Then subjects were asked to read aloud the statements while hooked up to a skin-conductance meter, which basically measures how much you sweat. The idea is that the more you perspire, the more worked up you are about a particular statement. (Such tests have been around for a long time. Here’s more about them if you’re curious.)

This is where it gets interesting.

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