What is the relationship between psychopathy and religion?

originally posted by: maria_stardust
a reply to: edward777

It almost sounds as you're referring to someone who's amoral. I've always viewed such people as rather selfish and ego-centric with nary a charitable thought to their fellow man. In such cases, their arrogance would pretty much guarantee that they dwell in a religious vacuum.

In some ways a psychopath might be considered amoral as they do not feel guilt or internally bad if they do something against a set of values in a society. However, a psychopath may indeed have ethics due to their belief in God. They merely see rules and commandments in the context of a cost-benefit analysis, i.e. sleeping around is dangerous as you can get someone pregnant you want nothing to do with or you can get a disease. They see it more like not doing them anything positive as opposed to "thou shalt not...".