Compared to general population they are underrepresented. The chances that a self reported atheist enters the federal prison system is about 1/10th the chance of general population. That last sentence is about all we can conclude from the federal study.
Shoot already wrote my response. I did add further detail about possibly reading into the study too much.
Also wanted to add this.
And atheism is correlated with wealth, and wealth is correlated with not going to prison.
Need to stop picking apart my arguments. I like to be honest I guess.
No doubt claiming a religion doesn’t keep one out of jail. Living one might. Claiming a religion is very often like claiming an ethnicity whose associated language you don’t speak, rarely eat the food, don’t dance it’s dances, or whatever. Maybe your parents or grandparents did but not yourself.
The Bible prescribes the death penalty for gay sex, in multiple verses in different books. Some things might have a bit of room for interpretation, but this isn’t one. Whether you want to follow the Bible or not is another story, but there is no coherent interpretation that would allow for gay marriage.
I agree here. I think the prison statistics from atheists are not for showing that religion leads to undesirable outcomes. I am trying to debunk the myth that atheists have lacking morals, and you would think if that were true that they lack morals, that they would be overrepresented in prison, but the opposite is true.
Because they seek to educate us out of our stupidity, I reckon. Which is a sign they really care about what we think and what we think it of the utmost importance to them. We are precious in their eyes and we must adhere to their gospel. You know, like the church of Portland. The god of intersectionality and wokeness. Because you were born irredeemably racist.
Nope, I was one at one time though. Hitler had criticism about atheism, and said he was Christian. Hitler promoted Christianity in fact (kinda a Nazi version of Christianity in which Jesus was Aryan). It seems he did not like the Catholic church after his youth, and he despised the Jehovah’s Witness church.
I don’t think you think this either. Do you think murder is inherently moral or immoral? What if it is murder to save others? Would murdering Hitler be immoral? Is lying always wrong? What if the Nazis are asking about the Jews under your floor boards?
I would say your estimate is a bit high.
But, regardless of religion ‘objective moral values’ do exist, most Christian religion just happens to recommend and basic adherence to them. We have seen the horrors of ‘relative morality’ as a substitute for the objective and I think most agree those historical times where horror shows. We cannot know they were horror shows without some knowledge about objective moral values.
Secular people are not control beyond their will. Western civilization just happened to descend from Christianity. But also, Greek and Roman society. So our roots and knowledge and traditions are founded in our past. So it’s only natural that we adhere, even if loosely to that which we are familiar.
People have tried to shake it off, we have history to inform us of that. But those efforts have widely been a disaster as previously stated. Somehow it doesn’t work. And where God is absent, somehow a religion of some kind still emerges. We can see it happening in real time right now. But without a root in the good, those ‘faiths’ are aimless and continually change so that there is always a bad guy to fight. If there is no enemy, one will be created.
You covered a lot of ground in one post, but I am happy to talk about any of those things.
I have decided not to have an opinion about the Quran. I haven’t read much of it, definitely not enough to know about it and I am not a muslim, so I don’t have and doctrinal understanding of it.
As long as they don’t try to kills us and destroy our way of life, I am content with live and let live.
The existence of God is required for objective moral values to exist. That exists whether or not religion does. At least the 3 major world religions profess adherence to the moral values, they didn’t create them. And objective morality will continue to exist long after a religion disappears or people to adhere to them. They are literally eternal, as they are not bound by time.
Sure, how are we supposed to know what those objective moral values are? I see people interpret holy books differently depending on the flavor of religion. It seems to be subjective depending on how the holy book is read.
Uh, atheists are also over represented in the most vile and evil atrocities the world has ever known. I wouldn’t try to have a moral pissing contest with theists.
And again, with the rise identity politics, an atheist movement, we are seeing the re-emergence of pretty evil atheists.
As long as your atheist group is contained in the sciences and professorships, you are not going to see mass lawbreaking. But with it spreading into the masses, it’s becoming a mess.
Is that why he mass murder priests in the concentration camps. You’re conflating two different periods in his reign. When it was politically expedient, he was a Christian, in the early 30’s when most people seemed to like him and he was Time magazine’s man of the year.
There was a time before Hitler started conquering lands, that many thought the guy was alright.
But it’s hard to profess a savior when you think you are him.
When we look at history, we’re getting the highlight reel. There was a time when the world respected NAZI Germany and only the Soviet Union really hated him and vice versa. No one knew about his crimes in his rise to power at the time.
See this Jesse Owens quote:
“Hitler didn’t snub me—it was [FDR] who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send me a telegram.” ~Jesse Owens, quoted in Triumph , a book about the 1936 Olympics by Jeremy Schaap.
You can see it clearly at the extremes. Start there and work your way in.
I don’t pretend to profess that as you scale in that it doesn’t get murky. But the far ends of the bell curve one can see clear boundaries.
I mean, but for the sake of argument put sentience aside as being necessary for objective morality.
I’m just saying, if there’s nothing inherently wrong with not agreeing to hide them…Or there might even get a reward for actually turning them in…
Why would we talk further? It’s just whatever, whatever you do. The have no inherent rights. You have no inherent moral duties or obligations. Whatever your favorite color is kind of argument at this point.
I doubt that. Maybe in recent history with atheists being prominent in Communist leadership. Before recent history we don’t have data on what many of the terrible leaders actually believed. We don’t even know about terrible past events. Basically we don’t know.
People with and without faith are capable of terrible things.
Does it really matter? Who cares if something is inherent or not, as long as we can agree on a few things like wanting humans to keep on existing, and on something like happiness being important.
If we derive morals from the point of what I mentioned above (wanting survival and human happiness), we could derive an evolving moral code, that can adapt to new information.
You would if you agreed to the things I listed above.
This is a bit of a “no true Scotsman”. The guy claimed to be Christian. I’ll take his word on it.
I guess I don’t care if something is inherit or objective. If we can value human happiness and survival, morality can evolve over time to maximize happiness and human survival. I think we have evolved to value these things.