Stumpjumper

:rolling:

That's gotta be one of the funniest things I've read here in a while. Thanks for the laugh.

ligesh

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_morality
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* If prison statistics in the USA are reliable, religious people are imprisoned by at least 40 times the rate of atheists.
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http://www.skepticfiles.org/american/prison.htm
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During 10 years in Sing-Sing, of those executed for murder 65 percent were Catholics, 26 percent Protestants, six percent Hebrew, two percent Pagan, and less than one-third of one percent non-religious.

Steiner and Swancara surveyed Canadian prisons and found 1,294 Catholics, 435 Anglicans, 241 Methodists, 135 Baptists, and one Unitarian.

Dr. Christian, Superintendent of the N.Y. State Reformatories, checked records of 22,000 prison inmates and found only four college graduates. In "Who's Who," 91 percent were college graduates; Christian commented that "intelligence and knowledge produce right living," and, "crime is the offspring of superstition and ignorance.

A survey of Massachusetts reformatories found every inmate to be religious.

In Joliet Prison, there were 2,888 Catholics, 1,020 Baptists, 617 Methodists and no prisoners identified as non-religious.

Michigan had 82,000 Baptists and 83,000 Jews in the state population; but in the prisons, there were 22 times as many Baptists as Jews, and 18 times as many Methodists as Jews. In Sing-Sing, there were 1,553 inmates, 855 of them (over half) Catholics, 518 Protestants, 117 Jews, and 8 non-religious.

Steiner first surveyed 27 states and found 19,400 Christians, 5,000 with no preference and only 3 Agnostics (one each in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Illinois). A later, more exhaustive survey found 60,605 Christians, 5,000 Jews, 131 Pagans, 4,000 "no preference," and only 3 Agnostics.

In one 19-state survey, Steiner found 15 non-believers, Spiritualists, Theosophists, Deists, Pantheists and one Agnostic among nearly 83,000 inmates. He labeled all 15 as "anti-Christians." The Elmira, N.Y. reformatory system overshadowed all others, with nearly 31,000 inmates, including 15,694 Catholics (half) and 10,968 Protestants, 4,000 Jews, 325 refusing to answer, and no unbelievers.

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Some more...

http://www.holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm


Conclusion: God encourages Crime. But that's sort of a truism. I didn't know people didn't know that actually.



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:: Ligesh :: http://ligesh.com

Stumpjumper

If prison statistics in the USA are reliable, religious people are imprisoned by at least 40 times the rate of atheists.

Well considering that somewhere around 90% of the US population believes in some God or another, I think your answer is found in demographics.

Anyway, regardless of these nifty little statistics, that prove absolutely nothing BTW, I am pretty sure that without God crime would still be possible. Take into account that every one of those that committed a crime violated both the law of the land and the law of their religion, I doubt that belief in a higher power had much to do with their crime.

Classical

And what does this have to do with prayer?

Besides, I second the motion that these statistics have very little value because the United States is predominantly christian.

ligesh

I said God encourages crime, not actually cause it. I said "without God crime MIGHT as well be impossible". God is necessary for crime, just as God is necessary for war. Without God, both crime and war would be too risky ventures for a logical person to engage in.

"God prevents crime" is a layman belief, which has been proved wrong too many times. In fact, my theory on God is an explanation for the why believers commit more crimes, and are generally much more intolerant than atheists, which I call as moral paradox of religion

I have lot of statistics that show that on the whole atheists tend to be more moral than their theistic counterparts, but they all are semi-official. Somehow this seems to be so counter-intuitive that it becomes difficult for a layman to comprehend this, and actually I have solved this puzzle here.

http://ligesh.com/article.php?q=/phi..._argument.html

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:: Ligesh :: http://ligesh.com

ligesh

We have taken that into consideration. Atheists represent around 4-10% of the society but form 0.2% of the prison population. See? This is called as under-representation. So the statement actually says atheists are 40 times less likely, and which means that the actual percentage of atheists are already taken care of. We are not simply saying that Prison population is majority Christian, but rather atheists percentage in prison is 40 times less than their percentage in normal society.

For a theory that can trivially explain this:

http://ligesh.com/article.php?q=/phi..._argument.html



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:: Ligesh :: http://ligesh.com

Stumpjumper

I don't know ask ligesh

Stumpjumper

I know you did and I still think it's funny and incorrect.

I never said God prevents crime and if you think atheists are more tolerant you haven't hung around here often enough :grin:

ligesh

I still don't understand you people? Atheists are 'under-represented' in prisons. You can't understand that term? That is there is very strong positive correlation between belief and crime. And prayer of course, all this happens through prayer. Criminals ask God for protection, and it is the belief of the power of prayer that actually gives them the courage to commit the crimes. See?

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:: Ligesh :: http://ligesh.com

Stumpjumper

Correlation does not equal causation!

See?

Logic you have now abandoned in your attempt to catch the religionists red-handed.

I rhyme too :grin: