The Atheist Blogger

It has long been said that atheists make up 0.2% of the prison population in the US, even though 10% of the entire US population is atheist. This sounds all very well and good for atheists, as it shows how you can be moral without God (or that atheists are better at evading the law enforcement officers). I haven’t used the argument much in the past since I live in the UK, but I have recently questioned the veracity of this claim.

As far as I can tell, the claim was first espoused by Rod Swift, who wrote it on this website. He claims that he contacted research analyst Denise Golumbaski, who works at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and was sent the following information:

Dear Mr. Swift:


The Federal Bureau of Prisons does have statistics on religious affiliations of inmates.
The following are total number of inmates per religion category:

Response              Number      %
----------------------------  --------
Catholic               29267   39.164%
Protestant             26162   35.008%
Muslim                  5435    7.273%
American Indian         2408    3.222%
Nation                  1734    2.320%
Rasta                   1485    1.987%
Jewish                  1325    1.773%
Church of Christ        1303    1.744%
Pentecostal             1093    1.463%
Moorish                 1066    1.426%
Buddhist                 882    1.180%
Jehovah Witness          665    0.890%
Adventist                621    0.831%
Orthodox                 375    0.502%
Mormon                   298    0.399%
Scientology              190    0.254%
Atheist                  156    0.209%
Hindu                    119    0.159%
Santeria                 117    0.157%
Sikh                      14    0.019%
Bahai                      9    0.012%
Krishna                    7    0.009%
----------------------------  --------
Total Known Responses  74731  100.001% (rounding to 3 digits does this)

This immediately raises concerns, as the information contained in this email isn’t backed up by any raw data, nor is it presented via an official website. The fact that Denise Golumbaski apparently works for the government is of no importance, as it is an argument from authority. Yes, you would expect her not to make up statistics, but we cannot verify the details through this email. Interestingly, this unauthorised and unverified information turns up on many many atheist websites, as well as in the book “The God Hypothesis” by Victor Stenger (paperback page 210, #2 in the Notes section).

So I continued to search. An interesting article was written at a theistic website that brings up the same points I have raised, and also offers “updated” statistics that merge people who did not answer with the “atheists” row. This erroneous data handling brings the percentage of atheists in prison up to just under 20%. Neither article actually links to statistics provided by a government website, and I have yet to find a government website that presents any information; this was after a good hour using Google.

What I did find was details from the UK’s home office, outlining the statistics of March 2000 in English and Welsh prisons, which said that 32% of inmates answered “no religion”. A year later in April the national census was answered by 92% of the UK population, and found that only 15.5% of people had “no religion”. The question about religion was optional and was answered by 92.7% of those asked, so if the remaining 7.3% were atheists who simply didn’t put a religion down, we can estimate that the number of atheists in the UK at the time was between 15.5% and 22.8% of the population.

What I think this shows is that the issue of religion and prisons is far more complex than the 0.2% statistic makes out. Correlation doesn’t mean causation, so a high number of atheists in prison doesn’t necessarily mean atheism is the root cause of their lawbreaking. The number of Christians that are also in prison should be a clear indicator of that. Although I cannot speak for the US, which probably has more factors such as prison conversions and the distrust of atheists (causing some atheists to answer “Christian” on surveys), I think what is clear is that the statistics in the US are dubious at best. A healthy dose of skepticism calls to question the source of the data, and whether it is actually accurate.

My conclusion of the whole thing is simply to not use the argument until some proper facts are shown that show a massive discrepancy between religion and prison population. Then, and only then will such an argument be justified, although I still think we can make better arguments about the source of our morality. Perhaps atheists are underrepresented in American prisons, but why then are they overrepresented in the UK prisons? Perhaps us British atheists are simply terribly bad at avoiding the police. We may never know, but I’d certainly like to see more investigations into religious beliefs before and after incrimination, as it may lead to some interesting results.

Just a funny image I found on the internet yesterday:

I *really* want that as a bumper sticker, or at least as a sign to go in front of my house…or in my window.

After reading Friendly Atheist’s blog post about the “Questions for God” proposed over at Ethical Atheist, I went to go have a read of them. Quite a few of the questions I thought were a bit harsh, and were either presented in a very sarcastic manner, or were extremely stupid. For example:

Do you know how to use email?  Surely you do, right?  Why haven’t you written us yet with all the answers?

and

Why do men and women have the same number of ribs if you stole one from Adam to make Eve?

The first question is just plainly meant as a joke, and the second ignores the biological fact that if a parent loses a limb or bone, the child won’t be affected. In fact, a believer actually pointed this out the the author of the question in their answer.

I think that although the idea of asking questions to God, and allowing his followers to answer is a great idea, because it allows understanding of theist thinking in ways atheists cannot understand. Some of the answers produced are actually quite rational, and only rely on partial support from the supernatural to work. However, whilst the idea itself is good, the Ethical Atheist version of the questions has taken the entire thing as a joke, which lessens the importance of the whole project, and probably accounts for the reason why most of the questions have been unanswered.

Read more…

Due to recent discussions on my blog post Answering “ed”, I’ve felt it necessary to clarify a few of the points I made when responding to the comments made by ed. A lot of the things I wrote were not explained well enough since I hadn’t had the time to sit down and think out my words properly. Before I do this though, I should add this simple “disclaimer”:

I am not, in any way (academically or otherwise) a sociologist and I have never studied sociology. I am however, a freethinker, and as such have formed by ideas on the origins of morality merely on what I have read, combined with my own reasoned thinking. As a freethinker, I invite anyone to criticize and even disprove my points, as long as you have decent enough evidence to suggest otherwise.

Now I’ve got that out the way, I’ll begin.

Christians love to claim that the Bible brought morality into the world, and that without God, we would all be treacherous murdering bastards (to use the term lightly). This is simply not the case, and if it were, we simply wouldn’t be here today. Can you imagine a world without morality? People would kill people simply for the fun of it, we would steal, insult, rape, and torture. Not just certain individuals…but everyone. The outcome? Extinction.

Yet supposedly this world already existed, and not too long ago either. In fact, if we go back about 2000 years, we should find ourselves in the middle of a civil war between every member of the human race. What we do find however, is a relatively peaceful society, prone to the occasional conflict, but on the whole quite sophisticated both socially and technologically. The Bible will not be seen for at least another 200 years or so (in its current format), and yet we see murderers being executed along with thieves. Some form of morality is in place here, so where does it come from?

Read more…

Just when you thought you’d heard of every wacky notion believers have tried to find God, they decide to direct their attention to the Sun. Not Sun worship mind…actually looking at the Sun for hours on end, hoping to glimpse the Virgin Mary. Believe it or not, this is actually what 50 people in Kottayam, India did. Until they all went blind of course.

From the article:

At least 50 people in Kottayam district have reportedly lost their vision after gazing at the sun looking for an image of Virgin Mary.

Though alarmed health authorities have installed a signboard to counter the rumour that a solar image of Virgin Mary appeared to the believers, curious onlookers, including foreign travellers, have been thronging the venue of the ‘miracle’.

…

“The patients show varying degrees of severity. They are mostly girls in 12-26 age group. Our youngest patient is 12 and the oldest 60. Most of them were looking at the sun between 2 and 4 pm, when UV1 and UV2 rays are harshest,” Dr James Isaac said. He added that they could identify the problem as solar retinopathy because they were aware of the local sensation.

I think the bit that really astounds me is this:

There are quite a few people still seeking the miracle, despite the experiences of their unfortunate predecessors and strict health warnings against gazing at the sun with the naked eye.

So much for Intelligent Design.

Thanks to Digg for the link.