I've read this study and I am not surprised at all. If you grew up in a Christian family, especially an evangelical one, then you know these people do not have empathy. In fact it is the thing that I first noticed about my relatives as a child observing them and my cousins as they went about 'life' in general. Even now, my MAGA troll evangelical relatives show no sympathy for the people who have had their children taken away at the southern border nor for the children that have died. I just can't with them or with people who cannot display sympathy at minimum. So, I've always felt that religion, Christianity in particular, is the 'cover' bad people use to pretend they are good and empathetic when they're really not.

We went through all this before. The study was retracted.

[cell.com]

The new sciences of Anthropology and Archaeology have produced material and found living evidence that civilization, as WE understand it, obstructs empathy and other native healthy drives. No surprise to me. Of the roughly 200,000 years our kind has been around, less than 5% of our time here has been in an externally imposed, pathogenic process WE know as "civilization"

I am not sure about that. I would say how the parents raised them can be good or bad.

That’s very interesting, but actually not too surprising. I was raised without religious influence aNd free to decide on my own what to believe. I did the same with my two sons. All three of us are very empathic towards others. I just don’t see the need to have some greater being try to control what I feel or think on anything!

I tend to concur with the Professor's counter to the article. We Atheists tend Pat ourselves on the back too quickly in an attempt to contrast ourselves vs. believers.