Life would be easier if God didn’t exist. I’d be able to follow my own hedonistic desires and do what I’d like. But I re examined my faith and realised that God indeed exists.
Religious people do seem to need it, that’s right. The prison population is one tenth of one percent atheist despite the proportion of atheists in the unincarcerated population being hundreds of times higher. It’s not like atheists are committing crimes and then start believing in a god after they get locked up, in any significant amount. It’s not even the fact that atheists get extra persecution in prison and are just pretending to believe in prison to get the same perks as the religious - because when the federal prison system allowed atheists to identify as humanists in order to receive some of the same benefits as those who identify with a religion, not very many of them did so.
Please do keep being religious, if you truly believe that you are only capable of caring about the well-being of other humans when under divine threat. Most of us can work out the golden rule and how to be empathetic as children by recognizing the shared human experience in others.
The prison population is one tenth of one percent atheist despite the proportion of atheists in the unincarcerated population being hundreds of times higher.
Starting with United States data makes sense as the incarceration rate is so high there. I’ll leave the state and international prison searches up to you to follow up on if you decide it’s an interesting enough subject. Pew did a summarized study where they lump atheism in with scientology, Satanism, druidism, etc., but it’s still a good read.
You might find that there are also correlations between demographics of the incarcerated, uneducated and undereducated, low income, and religious. One certainly isn’t necessarily a cause of any other, but it is interesting to find a consistent correlation among all of them.
Life would be easier if God didn’t exist. I’d be able to follow my own hedonistic desires and do what I’d like. But I re examined my faith and realised that God indeed exists.
Sounds like you are one of the people that benefits from thinking a god is a real thing. Most of us don’t need something like that to be nice people.
It’s not about being nice people- it’s about the fact we need a Saviour because we aren’t nice people.
Religious people do seem to need it, that’s right. The prison population is one tenth of one percent atheist despite the proportion of atheists in the unincarcerated population being hundreds of times higher. It’s not like atheists are committing crimes and then start believing in a god after they get locked up, in any significant amount. It’s not even the fact that atheists get extra persecution in prison and are just pretending to believe in prison to get the same perks as the religious - because when the federal prison system allowed atheists to identify as humanists in order to receive some of the same benefits as those who identify with a religion, not very many of them did so.
Please do keep being religious, if you truly believe that you are only capable of caring about the well-being of other humans when under divine threat. Most of us can work out the golden rule and how to be empathetic as children by recognizing the shared human experience in others.
Source?
I expected you wouldn’t just Google it, but you can get started with the federal bureau of prisons providing raw data: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xwzrnrwp46v34wp/Prison_Data_Shareable.pdf?dl=0
Starting with United States data makes sense as the incarceration rate is so high there. I’ll leave the state and international prison searches up to you to follow up on if you decide it’s an interesting enough subject. Pew did a summarized study where they lump atheism in with scientology, Satanism, druidism, etc., but it’s still a good read.
You might find that there are also correlations between demographics of the incarcerated, uneducated and undereducated, low income, and religious. One certainly isn’t necessarily a cause of any other, but it is interesting to find a consistent correlation among all of them.