75 percent of Americans are God--fearing Christians; 75 percent of prisoners are God--fearing Christians. 10 percent of Americans are atheists; 0.2 percent of prisoners are atheists.
Correlation doesn't mean cause and effect, of course, but it's a striking difference. If it's true. He doesn't give a source for these numbers.
The available evidence does not indicate a strong correlation between irreligiosity and criminality. Some studies have found that religious beliefs inhibit criminal behaviour, but systematic studies do not indicate that atheists or agnostics commit more crime. It is worth noting that only 0.2% of the US prison population identify as being atheist. Globally, there is a strong negative correlation between religiousity and homicide, although this is substantially confounded by levels of economic development.
> 99.99% of religious people have never committed a violent crime
At least in the US, the rate of "violent crime" (murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and "gang violence") is 383 per 100,000, or ~0.38% (2017). The numerator isn't people, so this isn't exactly right, but the order of magnitude is larger than 0.01%. Most Americans are religious, and there's no reason to believe religious people commit crimes at different rates from atheists. (In fact, criminals in prison are more religious than non-prisoners[0].)
Something like 99.62% of religious people have not committed a violent crime this year. Lifetime figure ("never") would be lower.
Yeah, I'd love to see some data to support that theory. I know atheists are much less representative of the prison population and things like teen pregnancy - all things I would think would be strongly correlated with an unhappy population.
1. I don't think the data actually exists. The commonly cited figure of 0.2% atheists is extremely dubious.
2. There are too many confounding factors and hidden variables. A plurality of Hindus speak Hindi, but believing in Hinduism neither causes, nor is caused by speaking Hindi. Likewise, if atheists are underrepresented in prisons, there are just too many simple demographic explanations to draw any conclusions about morality.
You are the one picking data. The reality is that non-religious, even restricting to the more tightly defined atheist, people are responsible for more death and suffering than religious people. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. End of discussion.
Religious people are happier and more moral. They are less intelligent, for sure, but there is no correlation between intelligence and morality. Furthermore, since there are far more religious people in the world than non-relgious people, in absolute terms there are more intelligent religious people than intelligent non-religious people.
Good times are to be had outside the anti-religious bubble most people swim in here, you should come on out.
I live in a very dominantly atheist country, and this whole paragraph seems completely made up if I compare it with my experience and statistics. Here is way less violence than in any country with more religious people - and we're speaking about the country that inspired the protestant movement and was the target of two crusades.
People can go towards atheism these days (and strangely few do for such a modern western country), but a cultural bias (that those people that ended in jail are somehow inherently bad and must be punished in life) is less easy to shake off -- even when the original cultural leaders of the country (WASPs) have been superseded by a much more diverse population.
(Part of the Politically Correct movement have that protestant dynamic in play too, as does the obsession with "evil", and this or that thing or person being it).
the fact that many Americans are so religious is just utterly strange, and somewhat frightening
Why?
Speaking as somebody from the UK I can guess one reason. In this country, and the other European countries I've visited, religious views are generally part of people's private, rather than public, lives. I no idea of the religious views of most of my friends. It's not part of the public persona of whether somebody is "good" or not. Their actions define that.
So in this context the only people who are public and outspoken in their religious views tend to be the extreme ends of the religious spectrum. Either in viewpoint (the gays are evil nutjobs) or because their religion encourages them to get out there and convert folk.
These tend to be folk that you don't want to hang out with - whether you are religious or not.
It one of those odd internal dials that I have to turn in my mental model when I visit the US - that people within the "normal" range of religious views will come up to you and talk religion.
Religious people commit less crime, get and stay married more, use less illegal drugs, donate and volunteer more
References? By that logic more secular countries and areas would have higher crime/drug rates and lower volunteer rates... and the opposite seems to be true if anything. In the US anyway the percentage of atheists in prison is way lower than the percentage in the general population.. but maybe that meets atheists tend to be smarter criminals :-)
I think the population of atheists (and near atheists) is at or above 10% in the US. Judging from my perspective in North Carolina, the population of devout Christians is at least 10%.
I wonder what this model would say about ideas that oppose each other.
If what you are saying is true, then predominantly atheist countries (or societies) are mainly unethical and immoral (exaggeration).
Children of atheist parents will grow to be rapists psychos (also exaggeration).
Well, in the US, most people believe in God, regardless of political affiliation. The % of Democrats that are also atheists is larger, but it's still under 15%.
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