by Pappy November 22nd, 2009, Posted in: Atheism , Religion

One of the most annoying statements religious people make about atheists is that, without belief in a god or gods, an atheist is without moral character. Sometimes the statements are quite wild, such as “You’re an atheist? You must not have any problems with stealing or even killing then, right?”

Just to set the record straight, then, I give you the results of the following study. Given our (atheist)  relative percentage of the general population, it appears that a religious person is about 100 times more likely to commit a crime that will land them in prison. Either that or we’re just too smart to get caught. Either way, I’m okay with the results…

STUDIES: ATHEISTS SUPPLY LESS THAN 1% OF PRISON POPULATIONS

by Wayne Aiken, North Carolina Director

AMERICAN ATHEISTS

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 Psychology at 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.

Dr. Christian, Superintendent of the N.Y. State Reformatories, checked records of 22,000 prison inmates and found only 4 college graduates. In “Who’s Who,” 91% were college graduates; Christian commented that “intelligence and knowledge produce right living,” and, “crime is the offspring of superstition and ignorance.”

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.

On my, oh my! No sooner did I post this (literally!) I received an email stating these numbers didn’t make sense. So, in the interest of educating the mindless religoids, here they are simplified:

I think that’s enough education. Should you (you know who you are, M.D.) need more, buy the Video Professor’s DVD on MS Excel and plug the rest of the numbers in yourself. I know, I know, that’s math, and math is a science, and science is BIG WOOLY BAD in the religio-fantasy world, but them’s the facts.

Pappy out.

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