Look at how you talk, you cuss more than anyone in here and why? You lack morals and values, mommy and daddy didn't have much of a brain when it came to teaching you, did they? Actually, people who are *NOT* religious are actually the worst ones in society, if they thought about God and Jesus, they would think twice before they did something wrong or something stupid.
riiiight.. because christians NEVER do anything wrong and/or stupid...
Sorry, dude. once again you ******* fail.
hell, i'll even let your mention of my family slide given how fubar'ed this thread is.
Real Christians, not pretenders, are truly religious because real Christians don't repeatedly do something they know to be wrong, they haven't really accepted the Word of God if they did. You can't go one day in your entire life without cussing, that shows a lack of discipline as well.
Lacking discipline would apply if there were anything inherently damaging about offensive language. In reality, people who get offended by naughty language need to lighten up and reevaluate their priorities. Cursing all the time is only negative in that using the same word all the time reflects a lack of vocabulary.
The laws you live under today in the US are based on religious principles. More religious principles means more values and morals for society. The lack of morals and values would lead to a more chaotic society.
Actually they aren't. Being an atheist doesn't mean one has no morals, it's very hard for the delusional to understand that.
They are too, they're based on the Ten Commandments mostly, atheists have nothing upon which to base any morals and values, thats why wahtever morals and values they do have are derived from religious sources.
It'd be more accurate to say that we all inherit some of our values from a time in which fewer people were openly/actually atheistic. However, simple logic is the real direction from which we arrive at moral facts. Why is it bad to murder? Because when everybody agrees to not murder we can live a more secure life. Because by killing somebody we deprive the overall social group of that individual's contribution. The idea that killing is wrong because God owns lives is counterproductive to morality. Why? Well first the bible condones killing when God says so. When god says so? How can you distinguish between god telling you to do something and being insane when it comes to killing somebody? You certainly can't tell the difference and I would argue there is no difference.
Buttwipe.....listen.....you are the perfect example of what the Bass is talking about, you despise religion because following religious morals and values prevents you from living your sinful anything goes lifestyle.
actually, I despise religion because of the nutbat fuckwads it produces. Go look in the mirror if you want to spot one. Your opinion of sin means two things to me: jack and shit. As does your opinoin about cultural moral standards.
ahhh yes.. it's a good time to hemorrhage followers like a severed carotid artery, eh dude?
Look at how you talk, you cuss more than anyone in here and why? You lack morals and values, mommy and daddy didn't have much of a brain when it came to teaching you, did they? Actually, people who are *NOT* religious are actually the worst ones in society, if they thought about God and Jesus, they would think twice before they did something wrong or something stupid.
And it's so much better to replace real curse words with infantile epithets like "buttwipe,"
They are too, they're based on the Ten Commandments mostly, atheists have nothing upon which to base any morals and values, thats why wahtever morals and values they do have are derived from religious sources.
Im an atheist, yet i do not commit murder nor do i have any desire to. There are countless "god fearing" people in prison who HAVE murdered, raped, assaulted, robbed, etc. Every man on deathrow prays to your god.
Why the **** would i need that dumb ass book of yours to know the difference between right and wrong? You are so god damn clueless.
Based on what I've seen of your posts, you obviously need someone to teach you some manners.
There are also atheists in prison who have murdered, raped, assaulted, robbed, etc. What's your point?
Probably at a lower rate than the general population though. However, I should say this might have more to do with religion being a defense mechanism for despair. If you're not doing well, you grab for a safety blanket and suck on it.
There are few studies on atheism in prison populations. But even from a highly conservative vantage-point atheism is less prevalent in prisons than the general population. In the below quote, atheism of the general population in 1990 is compared to atheism in prisons in 1997. The rate of atheism in the general population (1990) was double that of prisons (1997). I am assuming you know atheism increased between 1990 and 1997. Thus this is likely an underestimate.
The actual proportion of atheists [, i.e. active disbelief in God,] in the United States is about 0.5% (half of one percent). This is the figure obtained from the largest survey of religious preference ever conducted: the National Survey of Religious Identification (Kosmin, 1990), which polled 113,000 people. The religious preference questions were part of questioning completely unrelated to religious preference (consumer preferences, entertainment, etc.), so the frequent retort of atheists that their numbers don't like to admit to atheism, and hence are undercounted, is unlikely.
Still, if one accepts as accurate the estimate that 0.209% of federal prisoners, this is still an incarceration rate only one half of their numbers in the general population
.
Prison Incarceration and Religious Preference
There is a negative correlation between atheism and incarceration, NOT a positive one. America, for example, has among the highest rates of religiosity and incarceration in the industrialized world world.
As to the OP, if religion is so necessary for morality, then why is it that secularism isn’t strongly correlated with social ills, including but not limited to incarceration? Actually, the opposite may be true.
This following study might be an oversimplification, but shows slight negative correlations between religiosity of countries and bad behavior (indicators = homicide, abortion, suicide, STD incidence, teen pregnancy). America, the most religious country in the study, always did poorly and often did the worst of the nations listed.
Journal of Religion and Society
Atheistic countries like Sweden, Japan, France and Norway tend to do better than theistic countries like America and Portugal. I'm not going to call that proof that religion is bad, but it does illustrate that religious belief is not a significant factor in improving the moral health of a nation.
For my undergrad sociology thesis I analyzed data in the General Social Survey (random American adults outside of institutions) to find that religious integration (e.g. church attendance) improved happiness, but that religious belief has no effect (slightly negative for women, very slightly positive for men) when you control for religious integration. Yet a peer of mine used the same data to show a robust relationship between religious integration and philanthropy. I believe the following link offers a good explanation for all I have discussed:
The latest research on the correlation between religion and niceness. - By Paul Bloom - Slate Magazine
The positive effect of religion in the real world, to my mind, is tied to this last, community component—rather than a belief in constant surveillance by a higher power. Humans are social beings, and we are happier, and better, when connected to others. This is the moral of sociologist Robert Putnam's work on American life. In Bowling Alone, he argues that voluntary association with other people is integral to a fulfilled and productive existence—it makes us "smarter, healthier, safer, richer, and better able to govern a just and stable democracy."
The Danes and the Swedes, despite being godless, have strong communities. In fact, Zuckerman points out that most Danes and Swedes identify themselves as Christian. They get married in church, have their babies baptized, give some of their income to the church, and feel attached to their religious community—they just don't believe in God. Zuckerman suggests that Scandinavian Christians are a lot like American Jews, who are also highly secularized in belief and practice, have strong communal feelings, and tend to be well-behaved.
American atheists, by contrast, are often left out of community life. The studies that Brooks cites in Gross National Happiness, which find that the religious are happier and more generous then the secular, do not define religious and secular in terms of belief. They define it in terms of religious attendance. It is not hard to see how being left out of one of the dominant modes of American togetherness can have a corrosive effect on morality. As P.Z. Myers, the biologist and prominent atheist, puts it, "cattered individuals who are excluded from communities do not receive the benefits of community, nor do they feel willing to contribute to the communities that exclude them."
The sorry state of American atheists, then, may have nothing to do with their lack of religious belief. It may instead be the result of their outsider status within a highly religious country where many of their fellow citizens, including very vocal ones like Schlessinger, find them immoral and unpatriotic. Religion may not poison everything, but it deserves part of the blame for this one.
