secular-knight 69

To Fiach,

Where did you obtain your info about atheist population in science, prison, and level of education?

secular-knight 69

I guess I posted at the same time as scigirl

sandlewood

Why would God need to insert a specific piece of biology in order to communicate to people? Couldn’t he just communicate directly? In other words, if God is going to manipulate the temporal lobe by some unknowable supernatural way, and that frontal lobe in turn is going to communicate to the rest of the brain, then why wouldn’t he simply manipulate the rest of the brain by some unknowable supernatural way? Then he wouldn’t need the temporal lobe thing.

Fiach

http://www.objectivethought.com/atheism/iqstats.html

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/sci_relig.htm

http://members.tripod.com/humphrys2/....religion.html

The information on prison statistics came from a Lawyer in Colorado Spings, CO, USA. He is John Patrick Michael Murphy who also has a radio talk show that on one program discussed the issue of prisoners in US prisons classed by religion. I have an audio tape summarising the following studies on prison religious affiliation.

STUDIES: ATHEISTS, AGNOSTICS, NON-BELIEVERS
MAKE UP ABOUT 10% OF THE U.S. POPULATION,
BUT SUPPLY LESS THAN 1% OF PRISON POPULATIONS

http://mypage.uniserve.ca/~tfrisen/m...ts/prisons.htm

Sent to AANEWS by Wayne Aiken, North Carolina.

The Author is Dale Clark

It's surprising how many people remark to me, "You're an Atheist? You must have no conscience about committing crime then." Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, if we examine the population of our prisons, we see a very different picture.

In "The New Criminology," Max D. Schlapp and Edward E. Smith say that two generations of statisticians found that the ratio of convicts without religious training is about 1/10th of 1%. W.T. Root, Professor of Psychologyat the University of Pittsburgh, examined 1,916 prisoners and said,"Indifference to religion, due to thought, strengthens character," adding that Unitarians, Agnostics, Atheists and Free-Thinkers were absent from
penitentiaries, or nearly so.

During 10 years in Sing-Sing, of those executed for murder 65% were Catholics, 26% Protestants, 6% Hebrew, 2% Pagan, and less than 1/3 of 1%non-religious.

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

Surveyed 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 1 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 0 unbelievers.

In the East, over 64% of inmates are Roman Catholic. Throughout the national prison population, they average 50%. A national census of the general population found Catholics to be about 15% (and they count from the diaper up). Hardly 12% are old enough to commit a crime, and half of these are women. That leaves an adult Catholic population of 6% supplying 50% of
the prison population.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

See also: http://www.atheists.org/nj/html/body_prisons.html

The Federal Bureau of Prisons does have statistics on religious

affiliations of inmates. The following are total number of

inmates per religion category:



Response Number %

---------------------------- --------

Catholic 29267 39.164%

Protestant 26162 35.008%

Muslim 5435 7.273%

American Indian 2408 3.222%

Nation 1734 2.320%

Rasta 1485 1.987%

Jewish 1325 1.773%

Church of Christ 1303 1.744%

Pentecostal 1093 1.463%

Moorish 1066 1.426%

Buddhist 882 1.180%

Jehovah Witness 665 0.890%

Adventist 621 0.831%

Orthodox 375 0.502%

Mormon 298 0.399%

Scientology 190 0.254%

Atheist 156 0.209%

Hindu 119 0.159%

Santeria 117 0.157%

Sikh 14 0.019%

Bahai 9 0.012%

Krishna 7 0.009%

---------------------------- --------

Fiach

secular-knight 69

Thank you for the data.

Fiach

The biggest Fundamentalist and Christian lie told over and over is that Atheists cannot be moral because only fear of a vengeful god prevents us from sinning or faith deters sin.

The multiple studies show that comments by the fundies and other theists about atheist immorality are a blatant lie, unless it is from dim witted ignorance. I'll let them decide which it is.

How can one explain 10% Atheists in the US population accounting for 0.209% of criminals, one should conclude:

1. Atheists are more moral than Christians.

2. Christians get preferential treatment, early parole for faking christianity, which and intelligent atheist might do but we have no way to trace that.

3. Morality based on personal integrity and responsibility of Atheism is superior to Christian morality based on fear but easily erased by confession and being born again, and again, and again, and again, and again. Or they believed that once "saved" their sins are "free", a licence to sin.

Fiach

Keith Russell

Greetings:

Doesn't the article commit a fallacy?

It establishes a link between religious hallucinations and this particular brain disorder.

But, it also tries to claim which causes the other...

Keith.

King's Indian

My latest thoughts on this are to be found on the last three or four posts on the "Why I am a hard determinist" thread, under the Philosophy heading (as a result of my kicking a few ideas around with Kip, the eponymous HD).
I'd be grateful if you could cast an eye over it, even if only to say something like, "Nah, this couldn't work, because...(add appropriate ugly little fact)". Don't be too hard. It's still a fun approach to the problem, and I'm filling a few odd moments with meretricious* over-generalization...
I'm blushing a bit at my presumption.

Take care,
KI.

*...and a happy new year! (It was funny when Gore Vidal said it)

Refractor

Not necessarily. Maybe God isn't sending any messages at all, or, God is sending messages but they are getting misinterpreted. There are other possibilities......but I only suggested that the biological hardware is *there* for communication to be possible. In other words, the lobe might represent the infamous "6th Sense".


Similar anatomically, but not necessarily *functionally*.


Maybe, maybe not. Completely non-religious people also behave in complex ritualistic patterns. Complex ritualistic patterns are not unique or exclusive to religious belief. Whether or not dogs, cats, or any other animals have temporal lobes that function in any way that is even remotely similar or equal to humans is completely speculative.


Refractor

Hawkingfan

The "hardware" is most certainly NOT there. We use 100% of our brains. That is a scientific fact. There is no location whatsoever that represents the "6th sense". That is bunk.