ligesh

You have to give me statistics for that. That was the first no-true-scotsman fallacy. WTF? Are we again going around in circles? Saying that a religous person was actually an atheist while committing crime is the no-true-scotsman fallacy. Actually, the biggest problem with arguing with you is that you forget all the past exchanges.

You have to show me the actual transformations are common, and you have to show the actual psychological aspect where a person can change from atheist to a believer in prison. Actually, the onus is on you.


Mafia movies are a fictionalized account of a lot of people's experiences, and they represent a romanticized version of what happens in the criminal world. The point is that, the actual account might be untrue, but the general characteristics of the people are smack on, and one of the fundamental properties is that most of them are believers. In fact, Movies aren't entirely correct, and suffers from the same problem that afflicts you too. That is, we EXPECT religious people to be good, and we EXPECT the villains to be non-religious. In a movie, if there is a believer, then it is the protagonists, who imbibes courage from their faith.

So movies would have acted against my theory, but in Mafia movies the heroes are also criminals, and they paint them to be believers. And that's another point. NO ONE considers their own actions to be criminal. There are a million ways you can justify any heinous crime, and Godfather is proof for that. Of course, I trust the account as told by a third person and generally accepted by the masses rather than YOUR personal accounts which has no relevance. I can just tell you my own personal anecdotes, which wouldn't make any sense either. So please don't think YOUR experience to signify some kind of universal phenomena.


Larceny includes a broad range of off most of them minor, and it is even possible that in Japan, more activities are charged as larceny, than in Greece. Which would explain why just for larceny, the number simply jumps up. We are concerned about grievous offenses that will put the criminal in serious jeopardy. IN the US, if you take back YOUR own car from the mechanic by force, it is a larceny. Again what we need is the percentage of religious/atheists in prison. And if the statistics in UK is right, we have yet another strong disparity to account for.

ligesh

The last thing you can trust is yourself. I trust the majority judgement of other people than my own experiences. I am not saying that they are always right, but generally I consider objective judgements of others to be better than my own take on anything, which is always skewed by my beliefs, but when we average the same inference over billions of people we can assume that either the phenomena is real, or the billions of people have some peculiar mental apparatus that makes them believe so, and in either case, it is something worthy to be analyzed.



This is a problem. What exactly are the non-religious. Do they believe in God, yet not affiliated to any religion or are they real atheists.

But all this is irrelevant. Just check the link below. Theoretically we would expect a theist to be more moral than than atheists, but the empirical data seem to indicate otherwise. So even if the total number of believers in prison were same as the atheists, we will need a theoretical explanation for this. I actually said this initially itself. Even if the number of atheists in prison was only slightly less than the theists, it is counter intutive, and contradictory to argument from morality. You can





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_morality


The above is actually a counterargument against the morality from God proposition. But even this says that 'morality doesnt ONLY come from the fear of God", and thus even they accept that fear of God's wrath should act as ANOTHER moral force, and thus we should at least expect the believers to be MORE moral than atheists. So whatever way you present the statistics, we have a puzzle to solve. The fact the believers commit AS MANY crimes as non-believers is itself something that needs explanation, since the argument from morality states that believers should be more selfless.

There are statistics based on college students, and about whether they would engage in cheating during the examination, and they found only slight difference, in favor of atheists.

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

newtype_alpha

To be frank, it's a little like trying to prove creationism wrong. No matter how many flaws I point out in the very premise of it, you'll simply ignore it and keep talking.

newtype_alpha

I don't think you even know what the no-true-scottsman fallacy is.

Repeating myself, once again: the numbers we have are the numbers of people who have been convicted of a crime; meaning they are IN prison. We do not know what their religious affiliations (or lack thereof) were BEFORE they comitted the crime or before they were convicted. Therefore, one possible explanation for your discrepency would be people who come to believe in God AFTER comitting the crime.

Meaning he was not a believer at the time the crime was comitted. He BECAME a believer after entering prison. The definition of a believer in this case is "someone who believes in God/higher power." You either believe or you don't; there's no "true believer" qualifier in this.

Prison conversions are actually fairly common, ligesh. There are alot of reasons for this, including the fact that "I found Jesus!" looks pretty good to a parole board, but also the fact that alot of rehabilitation services in prison are religious in nature. One example is the case of David Knight who, after being convicted for beating his stepdaughter within an inch of her life and stealing about $700 worth of electronics, converted to Catholicism after about two months in prison (previously had been an atheist).

THAT prison conversions happen is not in question. What needs to be determined is how often they happen. Either way, it's only an answer to the question of what else could explain the statistics, and in fact, a number of things could.

Interesting...

They're still fiction. And it's not a good idea to try and support a hypothesis using examples in fiction.

Even in movies, you will find very few characters who actually deploy the use of faith in a higher power to assist in comitting crimes. Unless the film has specific religious overtones, faith is almost non-existent to the plot itself.

Godfather is a work of FICTON. You're really not getting this, are you?

So my experience in the real world is irrelevant, because Mafia movies are SO much more reliable...

That just gets funnier every time I see it.

Such as?

newtype_alpha

So do I. Hence my belief that moderate Muslims (the majority) are in a better position to interpret their own religion than fanatical Muslims/fanatical anti-Muslims (the minority).

As I mentioned to TomboyMom, there's no way to be sure. I strongly believe that both the number of deists and actual atheists are underrepresented in the general population, while the number of Christians is severely overrepresented. I'm not sure where deists would fit into your hypothesis since, as far as I know, Deists generally do not pray.

Exactly. So we can conclude that theists are NOT more moral than atheists, and put that theory to rest. I've already explained the key reason why (inasmuch as western Christianity is concerned) this is the case.

I already gave it. Most people would settle for the APPEARANCE of being moral than the REALITY. Christianity is a religion in which the appearance of morality is extremely easy to obtain without actually internalizing any moral system. The same may be true for prison inmates, since--as I said--"I found Jesus and I want to live the righteous life now!" sounds really good at a parole hearing.

It doesn't seem counter intuitive at all, though it does contradict the argument from morality. We have therefore determined that "belief != morality;" this, again, is consistent with my experiences and the experiences of most people I know, so there doesn't seem to be a problem with it. How you manage to read anything else into this determination is beyond me.

I'm still waiting for you to explain how my explanation doesn't fit the pieces together. In America we are seeing some very real trends of vacuous, self-centered "McJesus" doctrine floating around (Aka "Christianity Light") that is remarkably easy to follow. Since the common myth of "belief = morality" is so prevalent in our society, people who want to appear moral will often gravitate towards belief as a cheap and easy way to fill some kind of moral quota they believe they are expected to follow. If the quota can be filled by simply converting to the right religion, then anything ELSE you can do as moral action is simply icing on the cake.

French Prometheus

The figures you gave are (very) wrong because they consider that people are Christian by default (i.e. as opposed to Muslim or Jewish). The reference survey of religious beliefs in France is that one (French only).

Excerpts:

According to you, the existence of God is:
certain: 24%
likely: 34%
unlikely: 19%
impossible: 22%

Do these terms describe you well?
Christian: 51%
atheist: 33%
agnostic: 14%

ligesh

I am talking with real cognitive scientists on the same subject, and currently trying to device experiments to verify the predictions. As for you, all you have done is vehemently deny that I am wrong. I have in fact, even decided not to press the 40 times, by saying that there could be a third factor.

Anyway, mine is the ONLY fully adaptationist explantion for religion, and as far as Evolutionary Psychology is concerened, it is a major step.

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

ligesh

I actually claim the other way round. I think even avowed atheists will pray to God before committing crimes. That seems to be more likely than the other way round. No one ever thinks he is doing a crime. True repentance does not exist in this world, other than in the minds of self-deluded individuals. Everyone thinks he is doing the right thing.

I even have statistics. If Christian God exists, it is evident that EVERY single human being is going to hell; especially the Christan. But only 4% of the people believe that they are going to hell. And that too they think they will have to spend some time in the purgatory that's all.

See? That itself is proof enough to support my hypothesis. No one ever believes they are doing anything unethical, whatever be their actual conduct.

As a matter of fact, criminals aren't fully to be blamed, even if look at it from a neutral perspective. A lot of the fault is the societies, which fails to rehabilitate or provide them with enough sustenance. Then there is the case of irresistible desires, which is again not their fault. It is easy for everyone to justify their actions, however heinous they are. And that is called as Psychology 101, and I have finally found the actual human trait that facilitates this.



One of the fundamental aspects of Godfather was how religious and family oriented the man was. In fact, he never renounces God or his faith. They may not show the criminals actually praying to God, because again that is contrary to what we would expect, but the Godfather is painted as being a moral person, whose activities are shown to be ethical if viewed from a particular vantage, and the aim of the movie is to show that.

In fact, EVERY criminal thinks that what he is doing is moral. And godfather is proof for that. And I personally know many people who think that way.

Get this: No one really believes that HE is committing anything unethical. Hitler, like Kaiser before him, believed he was doing God's work. Nazis carried a sign that said "gott mits uns", which mean "God is with us". This is true of every damn king in history, who has killed millions of people.

It is certain people's idea of how an idealized crime family would work. And actually it isn't really far from truth. I mean, movies exaggerate, but for a movie to be succesful, it has to capture the essence faithfully, or else, it becomes a pure fantasy. Godfather is not fantasy. Nor are many of the movies. I just quoted you a movie that was suppposed to be a faithful depiction of an average crime family, as a incidental observation.


Your experience are YOUR own. Please stop bringing it up. <edited> I have my own experience which actually proves my hypothesis. But I won't present them, because its like a Christian who comes here and says that he believes because his friend has had a revelation. Please get over that. You can present third party experiences, in whatever manner, as CIRCUMSTANTIAL evidence. Whether movies or books or whatever. In fact, what's depicted in movies and stories, especially the basic natures of the characters is something that is at least close to the truth.

Anyway, please get this into your head. Movies or any media is a more reliable evidence for human psychology than YOUR experience. The value of YOUR experience is zero. Nada. While the value of movies is maybe 0.1 or even less, but whatever it is, it is more than the value of YOUR experience, which is worth absolutely nothing.

You have in fact, been presenting all your arguments as: "Hey I have friends whom I THINK believes in such and such things, and I claim that Mine and my friends' experience represent a universal truth. And everyone all over the world should just accept that."

I have no interest in your friends or your experience. If needed, you can quote from any source which both of us are aware of. But please don't quote your own experience, which I cannot verify.

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

newtype_alpha

It's also an unneccesary step given that a behaviorist explanation works just as well.

ligesh

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articl...9_religion.htm

Read this by pinker. There are no adaptationist explanation for religion, and it is one of the GENUINE puzzles for evolutionists. My theory actually fills that gap.



-----------------------
To sum up. The universal propensity toward religious belief is a genuine scientific puzzle. But many adaptationist explanations for religion, such as the one featured in Time last week, don't, I think, meet the criteria for adaptations. There is an alternative explanation, namely that religious psychology is a by-product of many parts of the mind that evolved for other purposes. Among those purposes one has to distinguish the benefits to the producer and the benefits to the consumer. Religion has obvious practical effects for producers. When it comes to the consumers, there are possible emotional adaptations in our desire for health, love and success, possible cognitive adaptations in our intuitive psychology, and many aspects of our experience that seem to provide evidence for souls. Put these together and you get an appeal to a mysterious world of souls to bring about our fondest wishes.
-------------------------