Why Are Atheists Less Likely To Become Criminals?

[Mercy Not Sacrifice]

Er.

I think that some of y'all missed two key stats:

Percentage of Americans who are atheists: 8-16%
Percentage of American prisoners who are atheists: 0.1%

And the OP simply asks, why?

 

[shema]

Athiests are less likely to become criminals because most people who claim to be religious and believe in God are the main ones who don't love God.

 

[Mercy Not Sacrifice]

Athiests are less likely to become criminals because most people who claim to be religious and believe in God are the main ones who don't love God.

That's what we say about the Inquisition and Crusades now, but at the time they considered themselves to be righteous sons of God.

 

[shema]

That's what we say about the Inquisition and Crusades now, but at the time they considered themselves to be righteous sons of God.

Exactly. But not all Christians were part of the Crusades, or the Inquisitions, those were a bunch of men who were not in love with Jesus Christ.

 

[Mercy Not Sacrifice]

Exactly. But not all Christians were part of the Crusades, or the Inquisitions, those were a bunch of men who were not in love with Jesus Christ.

How do you know that?

 

[shema]

How do you know that?

Because those acts were not God's will or something that Christ would do, Christ taught us to love one another and not to judge one another.

 

[Mercy Not Sacrifice]

Because those acts were not God's will or something that Christ would do, Christ taught us to love one another and not to judge one another.

A teaching that many Christians today routinely violate?

 

[shema]

A teaching that many Christians today routinely violate?

unfortunatly that is true. it is very easy for someone to say they are Christian. God knows his children. In the bible, These men who claimed to be christian tried to cast demons out of a man, but the demons said : Jesus we know , Paul we know , but we don'nt know you. and drove those men crazy:yes:

 

[Smoke]

Michigan had 82,000 Baptists and 83,000 Jews in their state population. But in the prisons, there were 22 times as many Baptists as Jews, and 18 times as many Methodists as Jews.

That's enough to make you wonder whether the problem is with religion as such, or mainly with Christianity. Either way, when we talk about religion in the U.S., we're mostly talking about Christianity.

Poor and uneducated people are more likely to be religious, and poor and uneducated people may also be more likely to become criminals. If you can raise the money to pay for a master's degree, you probably don't feel the need to knock over a liquor store. When poor and uneducated people do commit crimes, they're probably more likely to go to prison, too.

But the fact remains that Christianity generally stresses the importance of blind faith over the importance of ethical behavior, and every form of Christianity provides some mechanism that is believed to excuse the sinner from the consequences of his actions. All the Abrahamic religions (except the Bahá'í Faith) also tend to view humanity in dualistic terms; believers are the Sons of Light and unbelievers are the Son of Darkness. This fosters an unfortunate tendency to see other people are being of less importance than oneself, and even as being of a different nature from oneself. None of that seems to conduce to ethical behavior. Some of the Dharmic religions, placing more stress on the oneness of all things and the consequences of actions, probably have an edge on the Abrahamic religions in that respect.

 

[DeepShadow]

Sunstone, I'm surprised that nobody has pointed out the correlation/causation error in this argument yet. Of course there's a higher percentage of theist criminals in prison; prisons historically have proven bad places for criminality research because they fail to account for the criminals who don't go to prison.

A similar thing happened in the 60's when researchers found that male inmates were more likely to have an extra Y-chromosome (XYY aneuploidy). XYY hit the media as the "criminal chromosome" and even got two guys off in court because they were "genetically predisposed to violence" and "couldn't help themselves." After further study, it turned out that the more likely explanation for the prevalence among inmates is not that XYY men are more likely to be criminals, but that XYY criminals are more likely to get caught and sentenced. Their lower intelligence robs them of not only the cleverness to avoid getting caught, but the money for a good lawyer, the judgement to plead out, and other things that would help them avoid jail time.
http://pubmed-central.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1299297
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYY

I'm sure someone is snickering about the suggestion that theists must be less intelligent, but again, this is a correlation/causation fallacy. Less intelligent people are more likely to reject science that the don't understand in favor of superstition. In the United States, superstition masquerades as religion all the time, thus there is a social pressure among low-income less-educated people to become tacit Christians. For all you atheists out there snickering up your sleeves, may I also propose that there is a social pressure among the educated (and pseudo-educated) to be atheist. I'd say that both of these social pressures are detrimental to the individual and society. We all need to find God (or opt not to look for Him) by ourselves.

In short, I think this study of inmates professed religiosity is worthless, except as a study of logical fallacies.

 

[DeepShadow]

But the fact remains that Christianity generally stresses the importance of blind faith over the importance of ethical behavior, and every form of Christianity provides some mechanism that is believed to excuse the sinner from the consequences of his actions.

I don't think you have cause to lump Christians together like this, especially when it comes to the consequences of actions. Every lesson I've ever had on God's forgiveness has stressed that we still need to live with these temproal consequences.

All the Abrahamic religions (except the Bahá'í Faith) also tend to view humanity in dualistic terms; believers are the Sons of Light and unbelievers are the Son of Darkness.

Again, I don't think you can say this about all Abrahamic religions. My religion certainly doesn't separate people dualistically. We've got many divisions in the afterlife, with plenty of glory for nonbelievers. Where are you getting these generalizations from?