Noteworthy Items
Check out Mike D's blog The A-Unicornist.
What percentages of atheists vs Christians are in prison? Who's better now?
Check out Dan DeMura's blog Discussions of Doubt.
James McGrath writes a note about the Christian troll DM.
What percentages of atheists vs Christians are in prison? Who's better now?
Check out Dan DeMura's blog Discussions of Doubt.
James McGrath writes a note about the Christian troll DM.
4 comments:
Since religious affiliation is likely self-reported or self-identified, I have to question the number of 'atheists'. Remember that many of these persons hope to impress a parole board. What, to their mind, would better impress such a board? Religious conviction and the ersatz morality that accompanies it, or atheism - which has been conflated by the christofascists with immorality?
The results of the prison population breakdown are misinterpreted. The data is 13 years old for the prison population and not stated for the general population. I would assume data for self identifying atheists in the general population is available for 1997 but those numbers surely would have been much smaller than the 16% figure stated. We don't know whether 20% of the prison population was obstinate the day they were questioned or agnostic and the lack of a break down for the general population claim is disingenuous at best and obfuscation at worst. Almost 20% of the prison population is unknown and of the 8% - 16% of the general population considered to be "atheist" how many self identify as such? Do you really think that one in six (16%)Americans would self identify as atheist or even one in twelve (8%)? How many of the almost 20% of the prison population of 1997 that did not self identify as religious would have claimed "no religious affiliation"? Atheists may be underrepresented in prison populations but this data doesn't show it.
I'll join the prison dog-pile :)
In addition to the points raised by nathan and DKKross, there are several other complicating factors. In some prisons, declaring a religious affiliation will grant you extra priviliges which may include extra activities (eg: mass, worship time). It may not sound like much but if there's nothing else to do, I'm told this can be a big reward. If only a few prisons offer this, it can still be enough to skew the figures.
There may also be other complicating factors, such as income and education. Atheism is strongly correlated with education so what we could be seeing is the sad fact that prisons generally target the poor, indigent, and uneducated which are likely to contain more believers. Because this is such a strong effect, it too can easily drown out any genuine moral difference which may or may not be present.
Finally is a more general problem with using this stat. It's undeniable that blacks are grossly overrepresented in prisons. If anyone tried to point to this stat and say "Who's better now", I would hope there would be a huge outcry. I don't want to engage in that same behaviour without being sure that we're seeing a real effect.
BTW: with all this attention to trolls, do you know if Blogger offers any way to ban users? I don't have a big problem with haters but spam & threats cross even my liberal boundaries.
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