How do Athiests Stack Up? (Morally)?

[ITR_champion]

Thought one: I would expect that people who attend religious services regularly are much less likely to commit crimes. The religious demographic skews towards women and the elderly, while the criminal demographic skews heavily towards men and towards young adults and teenagers.

Thought two: On the other hand, maybe the population of convicted criminals would have a disproportionate number of Christians. Almost every church has one or more programs that do outreach to those in prison and those trying to rebuild their lives after being in prison, since Jesus commanded it. Atheists have no such obligation, and I’ve never seen any atheist organization helping out in prison. (I’m not saying it’s never happened, just that I’ve never seen it.)

Thought three: Definitions of morality will vary widely and affect the outcome of any research. For instance, in counting murderers, does abortion count as murder? In counting thefts, does distributing copyrighted material online count as theft? For certain, common crimes such as assault, rape, and armed robbery are more common among the poor. But some (including me) believe that much of what politicians and corporate executives do is criminal, even if it’s currently legal. Such issues will probably prevent us from agreeing on a common standard of morality.

[Revenant_Threshold]

@ITR_champion

Thought one: I would expect that people who attend religious services regularly are much less likely to commit crimes. The religious demographic skews towards women and the elderly, while the criminal demographic skews heavily towards men and towards young adults and teenagers.

Actually, there’s a bit of a problem with this line of reasoning, and it’s that the religious vastly outweigh the irreligious. Even accounting for the religious who are not regular attendees of services, the really quite significant difference in total population means that a small percentage of one can in reality be a considerably large group. The amount of men and young adults who attend religious services regularly alone is pretty much bound to be bigger than the total amount of atheists.

Thought two: On the other hand, maybe the population of convicted criminals would have a disproportionate number of Christians. Almost every church has one or more programs that do outreach to those in prison and those trying to rebuild their lives after being in prison, since Jesus commanded it. Atheists have no such obligation, and I’ve never seen any atheist organization helping out in prison. (I’m not saying it’s never happened, just that I’ve never seen it.)

I too have never heard of any atheist organizations helping out in prison. But “Almost every church”? I find that highly unlikely. I rather fear this particular thought is putting the cart before the horse; the existence of outreach programs unfortunetly doesn’t imply the success of those outreach programs, either in converting or in rehabilitating.

Thought three: Definitions of morality will vary widely and affect the outcome of any research. For instance, in counting murderers, does abortion count as murder? In counting thefts, does distributing copyrighted material online count as theft? For certain, common crimes such as assault, rape, and armed robbery are more common among the poor. But some (including me) believe that much of what politicians and corporate executives do is criminal, even if it’s currently legal. Such issues will probably prevent us from agreeing on a common standard of morality.

This is a good point, though. The very nature that of the groups we’re comparing against means they likely will have some moral system differences.

[DanBlather]

@Gbro

I am a Christian and a sinner. I believe in the Cross and everything it stands for. And I am still a sinner!
For those of you that don’t understand that, I will pray for you.

Thank you. I will think for you.

[Der_Trihs]

@Gbro

For me the sacrifice of Christ on the cross for the sins of the world is a very humbling thing.

It’s one of the sillier and more disgusting aspects of Christianity. A meaningless and brutal sacrifice that was wholly unnecessary, even if you buy the idea that there is a God ( of course, the reality is that it was the brutal ( supposed ) killing of a lunatic by imperialist thugs ). There’s nothing grand or profound about it. Even if God existed, he could have “forgiven” us at any time, no sacrifice necessary. And Jesus dying doesn’t absolve anyone, anywhere of anything.

@ITR_champion

Almost every church has one or more programs that do outreach to those in prison and those trying to rebuild their lives after being in prison, since Jesus commanded it. Atheists have no such obligation, and I’ve never seen any atheist organization helping out in prison. (I’m not saying it’s never happened, just that I’ve never seen it.)

Thing is, atheists don’t agree on anything besides atheism. It’s a single belief, not a belief system. Get a bunch of atheists together, and there will be everything from let-the-prisoners-all-free anarchists, to shoot-em-all fascists, and a whole lot in between. A group that gathers together just because they are atheists probably won’t do something like a prison outreach program because they could never agree to do so; it would be like expecting a chess club or the SCA to do so. It’s a single interest group with little in common besides that one interest. There are quite possibly organizations that are majority atheist that do “prison outreach” programs; but those aren’t “atheist organizations”, just organizations of another purpose that happen to have a lot of atheists.

As I understand it, to the extent atheists are involved in prison “outreach programs”, it is to oppose them as unconstitutional, since they largely consist of attempts to coerce a captive audience into religion. “Join this religious program and we reduce your sentence” sort of thing.

[lissener]

What gets me about this perennial argument is that it suggests that Christians NEED an external authority, like a god, or else, they seem to imply by insisting that it’s necessary, they would not be moral. While atheists are perfectly content to be moral without such external authority. This suggests Christians are innately less moral than atheists. Which, you know, fine by me. Usually plays out like that anyway.

[tomndebb]

@DanBlather

Thank you. I will think for you.

A bit too close to the line for this Forum. Let’s not get carried away.
= = =

Gbro, this Forum does permit religious (and even atheist) witnessing. However, this thread has a particular topic that is really not amenable to such witnessing. You have made your point. I suspect that any further repetition of the point might be superfluous and appear to be a hijack of the thread.

if you need to post your testimony, you might wish to open a separate thread to do so.
(I will note that this is a rough crowd.)

[ /Modding ]

[Walker_in_Eternity]

@lissener

What gets me about this perennial argument is that it suggests that Christians NEED an external authority, like a god, or else, they seem to imply by insisting that it’s necessary, they would not be moral. While atheists are perfectly content to be moral without such external authority. This suggests Christians are innately less moral than atheists. Which, you know, fine by me. Usually plays out like that anyway.

Exactly, you beat me to it and put it much better I might add.

Anything that relies on fear or coercion to gain compliance is not a true moral code IMHO, it merely relies on the adherent not wanting to be punished.

As an atheist since the age of 11 (27 years ago now) I regard myself as a reasonably moral person, I don’t steal, don’t murder, rape or harm others. But I do this because I choose not to do those things, not because I’m afraid of God’s judgement. Although there may be an element of being afraid of earthly punishment, but that’s a different debate altogether.

Ultimately I have the courage to stand by my convictions, if I turn out to be wrong and there is a god I will just have to accept whatever he/she/it does to me, but it won’t make me conform to the ideology of any religion, nor would punishing me for non belief make me a better person.

I am not claiming to be perfect, none of us are, as this christian obsession with being a sinner proves. The difference is that I maintain that atheists will choose to attempt to be a better person for the right moral reason whereas a believer (of any sect) will do so only because he/she is told to.

[glee]

I would look at the religions.

Some preach that other religions must be attacked and that it is God’s will to do so.
This can also apply to different sects within a religion: certainly there have been massive casualties between Protestants and Catholics in the past.

As an atheist, I can see the benefits of behaving well in this life (it’s all there is).
If I were religious, I could be told that I should kill in this life in order to achieve Paradise in the next.

[What_Exit]

@Shodan

On the other hand, most of the greatest mass murderers in history were atheists. Cite.

A high degree of religious practice seems to correlate with many or most positive social outcomes - lower rates of depression, personal happiness, lower divorce rates, greater likelihood to avoid poverty, lower crime rates, etc. (Cite.).

Regards,
Shodan

Funny how that list fails to mention four Popes that started Crusades or the Jewish Pogroms started by the Christian Churches or the Occasional Holy Wars in the name of Allah. All Cecil’s article really shows is that in the last 100 years, Fascist and Communists account for most of the large genocides.

I find it interesting your other facts contradict the reality of Northern Europe where religion is less prevalent than in the US and Africa and Latin America and yet they actually do the best job of avoiding violent crime & poverty in the world.

Jim (not an Atheist, but I also don’t follow any religion.)

[sqweels]

@Shodan

We were discussing those with high levels of religious practice, not merely religious affiliation. It is rather hard to argue that religion causes people to engage in one kind of behavior if it doesn’t cause them to do anything else - like go to church.

The OP simply refered to “religious types”. Avowed atheists are apparently subject to considerable prejudices that even the most casually religious (like me) are not. The litmus test these days is that you simply beleive in some sort of Higher Power.

And the same problem exists with your cites about the US pregnancy rates vs. other developed countries as with the atheist countries who have murdered large numbers of their citizens. If you are going to argue “the US is more religious than Japan and has higher pregnancy rates”, then you can argue with equal plausibility “the Soviet Union was less religious than the US and killed some tens of millions of its own people”.

You can’t simply cite the same handful Comminist regimes over and over. The Soviet Union was not evil as a result of how atheistic the Russian people were. Communism saw religion as a rival ideology and imposed its own highly developed ideology in a top-down manner.

We’re talking about individuals and the fabric of society, not governments.

[Dante]

@panache45

The problem is that “atheist” describes what a person ***doesn’t ***believe, not what he ***does ***believe. There’s no reason why a serial killer or terrorist can’t be an atheist.

I’ve always been of the opposite opinion regarding my own atheism. It’s not that I don’t believe in god. I firmly believe there is no god.

I don’t know if that’s semantics or not, but there it is.

[Lord_Ashtar]

I don’t think it’s semantics, as there seems (to me, anyway) to be a difference between the atheist who lacks belief in God/god/gods and the atheist who firmly believes there is no God/god/gods. I think it makes more sense to refer to the later as an anti-theist, and some already do.

[JThunder]

@Dante

I’ve always been of the opposite opinion regarding my own atheism. It’s not that I don’t believe in god. I firmly believe there is no god.

I don’t know if that’s semantics or not, but there it is.

It’s also the definition of atheism that’s traditionally used in works such as The Encyclopedia of Philosophy – not to mention every single dictionary that I’ve consulted so far.

[Revenant_Threshold]

@JThunder

It’s also the definition of atheism that’s traditionally used in works such as The Encyclopedia of Philosophy – not to mention every single dictionary that I’ve consulted so far.

I seem to recall that Merriam-Webster includes the “lack of belief” definition along with the positive belief version. Though I don’t have one to hand, i’m afraid.

[A_shameful_cracka]

@UnwrittenNocturne

They also note the following numbers on divorce rates from the same site:

Jewish: 30%
Born-Again Christians: 27%
Other Christian: 24%
Atheist and Agnostic: 21%

I don’t think that’s a fair statistic, because there are more reasons to get married for religious people than there are for Atheists. If an atheist gets married, it’s probably because they either honestly want to spend their lives with their mate or they want to raise children with that person. A religious person may get married for reasons that would not be good reasons to an atheist, like they are pressured to by their church, or because they feel guilty about premarital sex. I’d like to see the statistics showing how many people are in long-term live-in relationships within marriage and without marriage divided up by religion.

[sqweels]

@Dante

I’ve always been of the opposite opinion regarding my own atheism. It’s not that I don’t believe in god. I firmly believe there is no god.

I don’t know if that’s semantics or not, but there it is.

But you didn’t join an organization whose past luminaries incluse the likes of Josef Stalin, nor are you a strict adherant of the doctrines laid out in the Big Book of Atheism. I suspect you’re just an independant thinker.

[erislover]

I consider myself an atheist.

I see no way to create selection criteria in such a way that I could encounter a being and say, upon inspection, “Yep, this is God.” Therefore the word “god” has no place in my language, except as a stand-in for what other people use the word “god” for, though I also strongly suspect they have no such criteria, and in fact that such criteria cannot exist, though a proof of that will likely always be lacking for fascinating reasons due to the limits of language. If “god” has no place in my language in that way, I can hardly believe in it, nor disbelieve in it.

What that has to do with morality is a question I have been unable to answer. How do eggs stack up, morally? A better question is, what the hell do eggs have to do with morality?

eta:The last paragraph there is a bit more dismissive than I meant it. I am not claiming that atheism has nothing to do with being moral (or not). I don’t see what it has to do with morality, it seems to me to have nothing to do with morality, but I am not against examination of the question to find some kind of link, though my guess is that it is correlated to some other condition which is primarily responsible for moral/immoral behavior.

[Gbro]

@DanBlather

Thank you. I will think for you.

That is quite alright, I have the Lord to assist me in any thinking I do. I will say a prayer prior to doing a job, or anything that I do. Like hunting Elk last month, my prayers were for peace and safety. I did not pray for success in filling my tag as that is only a bonus of the hunt.

I wasn’t like this a couple years ago. I have a past that I am not one bit proud of. I worked in a cesspool of graphic obscenity.
I am so very happy that Jesus is in control of my life.

I have seen some very repulsive statements on this board and have walked away for weeks at a time. But as long as I pray for those that find satisfaction in being vulgar, just as I was before, I stay for there are so many great things to learn here:)

[Fish]

We can’t have this discussion until we agree upon some things.

Does Buddhism count as atheism? It is a belief system. There are probably more Buddhists in China (official statistics disagree) than there are people in the U.S. How do we rate them? A lot is at stake; perhaps fifty million people died during the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward. And if we count religious belief in Japan, we have Imperial Japan’s occupation of China in 1945.

Were the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition inherently moral? Were the people doing God’s will, and therefore their mass murders were acceptable to God, and therefore don’t count? In modern figures, the death tolls may not be impressive, but as a percentage of the known world at the time, they were pretty bloody ambitious wars.

What about war in general? World War II had the greatest number of deaths of any war in history we know of. Does it magically “not count” because we had God on our side? (I note that the U.S. Army practically requires religion in the trenches; read up about the non-promotion of atheist non-coms.)

What about the Ancient Romans and Ancient Greeks? They believed in gods, it’s true, just not the God, and yet they invented the legion, the phalanx, and other instruments of mass death. The Romans enslaved and crucified people, and yet they were religious.

What about slavery in general? The U.S., a very religious country, was among the last to abolish it, in a deeply religious South. Moral or not?

What about epidemic? Do we blame the highly religious Columbus for the death of possibly 20 million Native Americans, because he brought epidemics from Europe? Or does he get a pass because it was an accident?

How about the bombing of Nagasaki? I bet that pilot was religious.

Irish Potato Famine, anyone? Or even British imperialism in general: the Boer Wars, the occupation of India, and so on.

Human sacrifice practiced by the god-fearing Aztecs?

What about the Catholic Church burning scientists at the stake such as Giordano Bruno? I suppose that was moral, too, because the Church ordered it. Same goes for the Salem Witchcraft Trials; doesn’t count because their hearts were in the right place. Can’t blame 'em for killing innocents; they were aiming for Satan and missed.

And if we’re going to count the Holocaust because an atheist ordered it, what about all the massive amounts of manpower it took to make it happen? I suppose they must all have been atheists too, and you can prove it, right? And if they were Christians, they get a free pass because they were only following orders.

Yeah, if you simply want to look at death and oppression, religious people don’t have a glowing record of purity either.

[Gbro]

@Der_Trihs

It’s one of the sillier and more disgusting aspects of Christianity. A meaningless and brutal sacrifice that was wholly unnecessary, even if you buy the idea that there is a God ( of course, the reality is that it was the brutal ( supposed ) killing of a lunatic by imperialist thugs ). There’s nothing grand or profound about it. Even if God existed, he could have “forgiven” us at any time, no sacrifice necessary. And Jesus dying doesn’t absolve anyone, anywhere of anything.

I will disagree with you there.
Everything that was done was according to scripture! If you read the Bible(I am a beginner) You will see the reason Jesus had to die for us.
It is hard for us to comprehend the character of God.
The book of John is a very good starting point.
“The premier book of the Gospel” IMHO “Good News” Jesus Died for “US”.

What is hard for me to understand is, How can someone disregard the gift of “Grace”. What is in you that compels you to think life(mortal) is the end. That when you die that is it.(maybe I don’t know what you believe) But for one to say that he believe in the cross, That Jesus died for our salvation is the ticket to eternal life! You are not obligated to go to church and give money or anything. That is for those that choose to build in their faith because they so choose to.

I was scared deeply from my youth as a Roman Catholic. All the ritual that goes on didn’t do it for me.“I pray now for those too”.
One needs to find a comfortable church that meets your needs. If you need to find fellowship in a church.