(Pew Research Center) Many major religions have clear teachings about good and evil in the world. For example, the Abrahamic traditions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – use concepts such as God and the devil or heaven and hell to illustrate this dichotomy.
It may be somewhat unsurprising, then, that highly religious Americans are much more likely to see society in those terms, while nonreligious people tend to see more ambiguity, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.
Overall, about half of U.S. adults (48%) say that most things in society can be clearly divided into good and evil, while the other half (50%) say that most things in society are too complicated to be categorized this way. However, there are stark differences in opinion based on respondents’ religious affiliation and how religious they are.