http://globalhealth.washington.edu/docs/Bezruchka%202.pdf

Draug, here is a pdf of the paper oscar cites. It looks legit. As for abortion rates, I can't find the paper I saw, so I can't prove it to you at this time. However, this does not prove the converse, and the null position defaults to rates being equal (i.e. the burden of proof is on you to say atheists abort more).

YJ, nothing "looks legit" about that paper. Looking at a bunch of very different countries, arranging them by one independent variable, and then attributing differences in a bunch of categories to that variable is one of the most basic and worst errors one can make in econometrics.

It's appalling that the paper got published, although it was in an open-access journal that has nothing to do with economics or statistics, so it's at least understandable.

"HJow convenient that the article is in an atheist website and the study it cites returns an error 404. Find me the study"

Hey, Draugnar, guess what? I'm not your research bitch so fuck off and type the title of the article into Google yourself. Or are you to stupid to do that?

Way to keep up with the thread, Oscar.

Semck, I don't mind the content of the article being criticized, but I can't condone Draugnar ordering me around as though he is my boss.

Anyway, here's another one. This one published in Sociology Compass, a peer-reviewed scholarly web journal.

http://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/Zuckerman_on_Atheism.pdf

A little quote from that: "Furthermore, although there are some notable exceptions, rates of most violent crimes tend to be lower in the less religious states and higher in the most religious states (United States Census Bureau, 2006). Finally, of the top 50 safest cities in the world, nearly all are in relatively non-religious countries, and of the eight cities within the United States that make the safest-city list, nearly all are located in the least religious regions of the country (Mercer Survey, 2008)"

Sorry, Oscar, but this paper commits exactly the same methodological mistake as the other paper, as the passage you quote makes clear. (I did skim the paper). You can't simply do a big correlation study, without even trying to control for conflating variables. It's egregiously bad methodology.

The paper is still more interesting than the last, since it describes the research in a lot of other papers along the way (which have indications both ways on the question under consideration).

Don't be sorry. I'm just linking these to inform the discussion and because someone asked for links. I'm not convinced by these papers that religiosity leads to crime, if that's what you're thinking, nor was I the one that brought up that point. I agree with your criticism of the methodology. I wouldn't go as far as calling it egregiously bad though. Instead I'd just say you'd have to be very careful drawing conclusions from this, especially those of the causal type. I suspect the motivation for their methodology is the (lack of) available data to analyze for further variables. Nonetheless, if your hypothesis is that religiosity leads to moral behavior then data that was available doesn't seem to support that.

@oscar - If you can't support your argument, you aren't worth the sperm and egg you came from. I didn't male a claim you did. You have to back it up. I'm not *your* research bitch. So fuck off.

Also, I never claimed atheists were less moral or more criminal. I only said your stated position that Christians were must be backed up. I don't believe either side is more or less criminal in that debate.

No Draugnar, Yellowjacket made that claim, not me. I just linked an article by someone that agreed with Yellowjacket. Good to know that you can't even keep up with who said what. Hard to take you seriously that way though.

Hi Draug, OK, thanks. I didn't say Christians were more so any of these things, only that they were no better than atheists. It seems we are in agreement on this so there's really no reason for me to have provided citation anyways, right?

@Semck, I didn't read it in depth, just skimmed. The journal is peer reviewed and is written by somebody with a modest background in the area, hence my, "looks legit." Your claim that failing to control for various other potential factors may be legitimate to some degree, and it is true that correlation does not equal causation. I accept at face value that economic concerns may very well be the true cause of both religiosity and infant mortality in many countries, for example.

I don't feel inclined to press the issue further, since I personally am not actually claiming that religiosity makes people more violent. I only that say that claims that religiosity makes people less violent are unfounded - so if you can accept that claim we can let it lie at that.

"On a side note, please do remember that whether or not a person believes morality is subjective, they are equally likely to act against their own morale dictates. In other words, Christians rape, murder, and abort at the same rates as atheists. "

Seems you *did* claim what you now deny. That's your usual way, isn't it. Make a statement then claim you didn't make it. Problem is, those statements are available for all to see.

You made an assertion then tell me to do my own research to prove your assertion. I may agree with it but the burden of proof is on you.

I really don't get the appeal of fixed and unchanging moral absolutes. It seems like a significant disincentive to either compromise or work for social change. Why bother changing if morality is fixed for all time? Why bother accepting anybody who disagrees with you as having any kind of valid claim to a point of view?

That's right Putin. And in addition Christian morals aren't absolute at all which is quite obvious from them having changed so much over the course of history.

@YJ,

" I only that say that claims that religiosity makes people less violent are unfounded - so if you can accept that claim we can let it lie at that. "

I don't know if they're unfounded or not, as I haven't looked into it. This paper doesn't militate one way or the other. Such claims seem modestly unlikely to me, but I just haven't looked into the argument that much.

@Putin,

"Why bother accepting anybody who disagrees with you as having any kind of valid claim to a point of view? "

Well, what does this mean, exactly?

You might think they have a right to an opinion in the sense that they shouldn't be persecuted for their dissenting opinion (though of course, that hasn't always been the path either the church or secular states have taken).

Or you might be saying their opinion is just as valid as yours. Which nobody who really believes something thinks -- certainly not you.

Oh, and YJ -- this journal was "peer reviewed" too.

http://thatsmathematics.com/blog/archives/102

I have a hard time believing moral absolutists believe in the right to dissent since under such conditions morality cannot be validated by a majority vote. So while absolutists might believe in non-persecution that's rather meaningless because they don't believe their opponents have a right to implement their dissenting views if they prevail. Somebody tell me how to prevent the majority from implementing a decision without repression and prosecution?

They also don't believe they can learn anything from their opponents or that morality could change, so compromise is out of the question.

Moral absolutists are anathema to any democracy. If absolutists claim they are democrats there is a multitude of reasons to be skeptical of their professed commitment.

Anybody else find it rich that the very people (theists) who tend to deny the existence of marital rape, or who talk about "legitimate rape", or "non-violent rape", are the ones giving the lectures about how rape has been unambiguously morally evil for all time?

Yeah Putin, I find that rich too. Take for instance Judges 19:22-24 which basically says that in order to prevent some people from having gay sex it is okay to let them instead rape your virgin daughter. How's that for those awesome absolute 'morals' of Christianity?

"They were having a good time, when some worthless men of that town surrounded the house and started banging on the door and shouting, “A man came to your house tonight. Send him out, so we can have sex with him!” The old man went outside and said, “My friends, please don't commit such a horrible crime against a man who is a guest in my house. Let me send out my daughter instead. She's a virgin. And I'll even send out the man's wife. You can rape them or do whatever else you want, but please don't do such a horrible thing to this man."

Oh settle down, Draugnar.

Yes, I did make a prima facie assertion that Christians and atheists are equally likely to do these things. Yes, it would have been more reasonable to instead say that claims otherwise are unfounded (defending the null hypothesis) but I really didn't expect any serious objection to the claim itself (and still haven't gotten any).

I only said the burden of proof is on you if you claim that atheists are more likely to do bad things. It is not on you if you agree with me, or if you make no claims at all, or if you just say my claim is unconvincing and you want evidence.

So while the burden for my initial claim is nominally on me, you've already said you accept that argument, so then why are you demanding proof? I am not providing evidence, but why is that relevant if you agree with me? Seem trite. What exactly are you trying to accomplish here?

-----

@semck that's good enough for me, and is basically the way i see it too.

@oscar - Judges isn't Christian. It is Jewish. Christ brought us a new covenant that replaced the law of the OT making Judges moot in the eyes of Christians just as the Italians aren't responsible for Rome's atrocities or modern egypt for pharaoh's crimes.

"Or are you to stupid to do that?" Love it when someone asks someone else if they're stupid and can't spell 'too' themselves.

Hahahaha! Hey evryone! Com look! Somone maid a typpo on some intermet forem! Is amasing!

In other news: Maniac is a fucking waste of bandwidth.

@Draugnar

"Judges isn't Christian. It is Jewish. Christ brought us a new covenant that replaced the law of the OT making Judges moot in the eyes of Christians"

That just plain wrong. Firstly, the old testament is part of the Christian Bible so it's not just Jewish. The new testament didn't replace it, it was just added to it. So there's that. Secondly, the new testament asserts that the old testament is to be followed quite literally. See for instance Matthew 5:17-20 quoted below. Note that "the Law and the Prophets" refers to large parts of the old testament in which rape is condoned on multiple occasions.

"Don't suppose I came to do away with the Law and the Prophets. I did not come to do away with them, but to give them their full meaning. Heaven and earth may disappear. But I promise you not even a period or comma will ever disappear from the Law. Everything written in it must happen. If you reject even the least important command in the Law and teach others to do the same, you will be the least important person in the kingdom of heaven. But if you obey and teach others its commands, you will have an important place in the kingdom. You must obey God's commands better than the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law obey them. If you don't, I promise you will never get into the kingdom of heaven."

@ Oscarjd - a spelling mistake is not a typo.

If you want to call people stupid, do try not to show your own ignorance.