Atheistic countries have the most healthy societies?

The atheistic propoganda brigade is claiming it all the time: 

Atheistic countries have a very high level of societal health and success. Just look at Scandinavian countries like Denmark and Sweden, for example!

 Their favorite source is Phil Zuckerman and this list (Table 1 on the web page) of his.  But let’s look closer at the list. (We don’t want to unquestioningly believe everything we hear, do we?)

If you look at the entry on top, Zuckerman claims that Sweden has 46-to 85% non-believers. If so, why put it above Vietnam, with 81% non-believers? Why not take the average and say “approximately 65,5%”  unbelievers? Why use the higher number? The same goes for Denmark, with (according to Zuckerman) between 43% and 80% unbelievers. (That in itself will change the top 5 unbelieving countries, even with Zuckerman’s numbers, to 1) Vietnam 2) Sweden 3)Japan  4)Denmark  5)Czech Republic.) It seems that Zuckerman’s statistics for Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland (each with about double as many unbelievers in Zuckerman’s high estimate than his low estimate) is very unreliable.

Okay. It seems Zuckerman has a rule of thumb: “When in doubt, use the highest estimate.” But is  this his rule of thumb? Not quite:

Several sources list the non-believers in China, North Korea, etc. higher* than those in Sweden, Denmark, etc. (For example, “Operation World’s 1993 handbook lists the non-religious in China at 59,1%, in North Korea at 68%, and in Cuba at 30,9%. They list the non-religious in Sweden as 34,9%, in Finland as 9,8%, in Denmark as 7,5%, and in Norway as 4% of the population.) (Another source, “The demand for Religion: Hard core atheism and Supply side theory” lists the amount of unbelievers –including those unbelievers who feel there “might be a God” and “might be a life after death” – in Norway as 16,9%- only a half to a quarter as many as Zuckerman suggests. In another peaceful, wealthy country, Austria, the page suggest that those “unbelievers” are only 8,3% – less than half, to less than a third, of what Zuckerman say. In Russia, however, the 30,8% of this page is well within Zuckerman estimates.)

Zuckerman may have had a reason to work that way, but readers should question his methodology before jumping to conclusions on his results. With his numbers instead of someone else’s, the results would be very much biased towards associating rich countries with atheism.

Another problem with using those numbers to devalue Christianity is that Christians do not claim: Religiosity, any religion, is better than non-religiosity. The Christian claim is: Actual commitment to Christ and his teachings (as opposed to merely following some religion, or even calling yourself a Christian) makes the world a better place.  You cannot counter Christian thought by showing how the Scandinavians are better off than the average “religious” nation. You would need to compare the least religious peoples (which are probably not the Scandinavians) with the nations who are most committed to Christ.

Some other problems include: Correlation is not causality. Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Norway are all countries where the Lutheran Church closely associated with the state. The statement “Unbelieving countries (like Scandinavia’s) are successful” may have no more or less cause and effect to it than “countries where even the state officially support the church (like Scandinavia’s) are successful.”

And it could be questioned whether you can really call their societies all that healthy. Is their success sustainable in the long term? Many people say no. Are their children growing up in happy, stable two-parent family environments? Very few of them are. Do their numbers on suicide, heavy drinking and depression give the impression of happy countries?

In summary, the few countries and societal indicators Zuckerman selects cannot, seriously, lead to any conclusion about societal unbelief compared to societal health in general, in all countries everywhere. To try and use it as a statement against a particular religion, for example Christianity, would be even worse. Using other statistics than Zuckerman’s, we should rather regard Vietnam, North Korea, and China as the world’s most atheistic nations. These will be better indicators of the level of societal health in non-believing countries.

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* Some of you may observe that, for example, the Chinese or North Korean governments would not be realistic sources for the amount of believers in those countries. True, but we do have at least some other information on the religious beliefs in those nations. Operation World specializes in collecting these statistics. Voice of the Martyrs makes it their job to speak to underground believers in countries where there is no religious freedom. Their conclusions about numbers of believers will be less than 100% accurate, but it is still a mathematical estimate, and not a totally uninformed “guesstimate.” Zuckerman may have unreliable statistics for these areas, but his statistics for places like Sweden and Norway is also obviously unreliable. Yet, he apparently treats his unreliable data in two opposite ways, seemingly using the highest possible number of unbelievers for successful Scandinavian countries, and the lowest ones for unsuccessful communist countries.

Meeting the Hitchens challenge? Easy!

The Hitchens challenge is misleading, since the only valid type of answer sounds inadmissible at first glance.

Prison atheist statistics: What do the forms look like?

There is another thought that popped into my head regarding the atheists in prison statistics. What does the form look like that produce these numbers?

Suppose, for instance, that, on being admitted to a British prison, a new convict have to fill in a form with tick boxes under the heading “Religion.” There are tick boxes for “Christian”, “Muslin”, etc., and the last tick box say “None.” Below all the tick boxes, there is a line with the wording: “Other (specify)” Suppose that there is no tick box for “atheist”, and the atheist could choose whether he want to tick “Religion: None” or write in “atheist” on the last line. Most would do the simpler thing: Tick “None.” If that is the case, it would explain why the “no religion” group is so large compared to the “atheist” group in both the British and American statistics.*

This hypothesis can only be tested by knowing what the forms looked like at the spot where religious view had to be entered. So, please, if anyone has access to the forms that produced the American data in this link, or the forms that produced the British data in this link, could you please tell me: What religious possibilities did they have tick boxes for? What, exactly, is the wording and possibilities you could choose from in that section of the form?

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If this hypothesis is wrong, and the non-religious who do not define themselves as atheists are really and fairly concluded to be much more criminal than atheists and believers alike, it would be another reason why militant atheists should not ask for religion to be abolished. A world with no believers would not abound with “high church atheists,” actively denying God’s existence. It would be filled with “non-religious people”, who do not think about God, and are, statistically speaking, more likely to give in to their criminal proclivities.

Yep- Sharing the Christian faith with your children is not child abuse

I already wrote a pair of articles (here) about the (unscientific) Dawkinsian notion that religious instruction to children amounts to child abuse. But there are more evidence than I mentioned, from larger test groups. Here, Tom Gilson points out what a large study concluded. He believes this should “cast serious doubts” upon the credibility of Dawkins’s best seller, “The God Delusion.” (Another author who casts serious doubt upon Dawkins etc. is Vox Day, who’s book ”The Irrational Atheist” is downloadable free of charge here.) Gilson also asks, here, why no scientist took the Oxford “Professor for the public understanding of science” to task for his anti-science conclusion. Are scientists being consistent?

Child abuse???

Vocal atheists try, these days, to convince people that religion is bad for children. Richard Dawkins go as far as calling it “child abuse.” Obviously, these anti-religious campaigners quote no studies. They back up their prejudiced views by emotionalism, sophisticated word choices, and whatever negative anecdotes they can find.

Now the question is: Does the New Atheists claims about child abuse have any basis in reality?

To study this, I would start with the known fact that child abuse has a negative effect on children. Apart from physical pain and injury, it is likely to have a negative influence on a child’s self esteem, school work, happiness levels, ability to relate to others, etc. If teaching children about God amounts to a form of child abuse, negative results would show up in studies on the effect religious training has on children. For that reason, I attempted to compile a real list of studies that compare, statistically:

 

a1) children who believe the Christian claims, or often have to go to church,

against

a2) those who do not

and

b) measures results generally regarded as good (like improved school marks, staying away from drugs, less depression), even by unbelievers.

Studies like that conclude that religious participation, Biblical beliefs, and having parents who talk about God with their children, all contribute very positively towards a child’s emotional well-being. (To shorten this post, I put a few of those studies here.) 

 My questions and comments to people tempted to believe Richard Dawkins on this:

 

What would you call something that makes children:

a) feel safer at home?

(b) less prone to depression or suicide?

(c) believe their lives have meaning?

(d) more likely to have a happy marriage later in life?

(e) less prone to crime, drugs or alcohol?

(f) more likely to do well in school?

 

I am unsure what to call it, but the term “child abuse” seems highly unsuitable.

 

 Do the New atheists want to take children from their parents for teaching them about God? And if they take children from a loving home with a positive influence (1), where will they place them? Do Dawkins suggest prosecuting parents for their positive influence? This sentence from his book, “the God Delusion” make it sound that way: “… we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible … than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out or lock them in a dungeon.” Since the New Atheists apparently suggest prosecuting parents for religious instruction to their children, their view of religion as child abuse seems to be dangerous hate speech. This view should not be tossed aside lightly. It should be tossed aside with great force.

 

                                                 Conclusion:

 If you are a parent, please work hard on teaching your child Christian values. Read up on how to best teach it, to a generation who might even misunderstand basic words like “truth”, “judgment”, “God’s love” etc., due to their cultural conditioning.

If you are a Sunday school teacher/ youth worker/ Good News Club (2) teacher, please be encouraged: Do even more to teach real Christian values- not watered-down-for-kids versions of Christian values! Teach it, because your children need it. They need it spiritually, but also intellectually (3) and emotionally and socially and physically. (4)

 

Whoever you are, if you meet or read the sort of bigoted campaigner who try to tell you that teaching kids about God “corrupts their innocent minds,” or “is a form of child abuse” or whatever, tell them to their faces that they are being ridiculous. Inform the readers/listeners that hears such campaigners that the charges have no substance: These loud atheists are trying to “protect” children from a world view that apparently gives purpose, lessens anger and disappointment with life, improve their school marks, protects young people from drugs and keep them away from suicide.

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 (1) “Positive influence” is not just an opinion here. I statistically made my point about how positive religious training is, on average, for the child.

(2) This link is to an American article, but CEF and Good News Clubs are active worldwide.

(3) Intellectually: They will be likely to have better school marks, and concentrate better.

(4) Physically: They will be less likely to use drugs, and less likely to hurt others. The former protects themselves and others, the latter physically protects those around him. Religious people also live longer and are healthier, on average.

 Other notes:

1) Rich Deem makes a similar argument here, and MikeGene makes a similar argument here.

2) This is a reworking of a piece called “Christianity is good for kids, says the statistics” that used to be on this blog, and replaces it.

Child abuse??? The statistics

(This post is the “boring”-numbers-part of a two-part feature. The point of the story is actually here.)

First example :

From the page I linked to, I get this quote:

“Positive Life Outcomes

Religious participation seems to be having a positive effect on youth… “In general, for whatever reasons and whatever the causal directions, more highly religiously active teenagers are doing significantly better in life on a variety of important outcomes than are less religiously active teens.”…………Data suggested that, compared to their less religiously active peers, more religiously active kids were less likely to: engage in illegal substance abuse; use the Internet to view pornography; get lower school grades ; get suspended or expelled from school; be described by parents as fairly or very rebellious; lie to parents; or to have engaged in sex before marriage. Less religious involvement also correlated to a poorer self-image, greater sadness and feelings of depression. Conversely, Smith and Denton said, the more religiously devoted teenagers were, the less likely they were to believe in relativistic morality, and the more likely they were to say they cared about the needs of the poor and the elderly, as well as “about equality between different racial groups.”

While admitting that other factors may enter into this equation — such as personality types — the researchers stated: “Something about religion itself causes the good outcomes for youth. By general implication, teens who increase their religious involvement should, net of other factors, reduce their chances of experiencing negative and harmful outcomes,” and vice versa.”

 

Second example:  

 In a report called Third Millenium teens, brought out by the Barna Research group in 1999, the following statistics was found:(1)

“Research shows that when young people lack a basic biblical belief system, it negatively affects their attitudes.(2)

As a result they are:

225% more likely to be angry with life

216% more likely to be resentful

210% more likely to lack purpose in life

200% more likely to be disappointed in life.

The research also shows that our young people’s failure to adopt a foundational Christian belief system negatively impacts their behavior. They are:

48% more likely to cheat on an exam

200% more likely to steal

200% more likely to physically hurt someone

300% more likely to use illegal drugs

600% more likely to attempt suicide.”

 

Third example:

 According to Patrick Fagan, 2006, teens from families with frequent religious attendance:

• averaged fewer sexual partners when compared to peers with low to no religious attendance
• were the least likely to have ever run away

 Patrick Fagan also says that teens from intact families with frequent religious attendance:

• were the least likely to have ever been drunk (22.4 percent) when compared to (a) their peers from non-intact families with frequent religious attendance (24.5 percent), (b) peers from intact families with low to no religious attendance (33.4 percent), and (c) peers from non-intact families with low to no religious attendance (41.2 percent).
• were least likely to have ever used hard drugs (8.5 percent) compared to (a) their peers from non-intact families with frequent religious attendance (9.5 percent), (b) peers from intact families with low to no religious attendance (14.6 percent), and (c) peers from non-intact families with low to no religious attendance (20.1 percent).
• were least likely to have ever gotten into a fight (27.1 percent) when compared to (a) their peers from intact families with infrequent religious attendance (32.1 percent), (b) peers from non-intact families with frequent religious attendance (34.3 percent), and (c) peers from non-intact families with infrequent religious attendance (43.5 percent).

 

Fourth example: 

According to John P. Bartkowski, children of parents who more frequently attended religious services:

• exhibited higher levels of cognitive skills than those whose parents attended church less often (according to teachers’ reports)
• were less likely to exhibit behavioral problems at school
• were less likely to act impulsively or to be overactive at home
• were less likely to have internalizing behavior problems (in terms of anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem, and sadness)
• tended to have a higher level of self-control while under parental supervision in their homes, according to parents’ reports.

Bartkowski also says children whose parents had more frequent discussions about religion with them:

• exhibited higher levels of cognitive development
• decreased in the likelihood that their children would exhibit problem behavior in school
• were less likely to act impulsively or to be overactive at home

 

Fifth example 

According to a George Barna study with 8-12 year-olds:

a) there is a correlation between them claiming that the church have positively affected their life, and them doing well in school

b) Born again Christian children 8-12  (Children on whom “religious abuse” – by the New Atheist definition – had an impact, remember?) are more likely to feel safe at home, and to trust their parents. (I would call that rather unusual for “abused” children.)

c) The born again children were also much more likely than non- born again tweens to possess an upbeat life perspective.

 

And the effects in later life? It seems that highly religious people (often people whose parents “abused” them with ”religious indoctrination” when they were little, and who still continue this “pattern of abuse” by believing in God and praying) are healthier, happier and more happily married.

 

Go back to the “Child abuse???” post.

——————————–

(1) These numbers are quoted in Josh McDowell’s book, “The Last Christian Generation.”

(2) “Having a Biblical belief system” of course, goes a lot deeper than merely professing Christianity. Thus, the mere fact that a child calls himself a Christian do not mean he is necessarily this much better off in statistical terms.

 

 

There are times in the Bible when God orders the killing of people. Is that cruel? Does it contradict “thou shalt not kill”?

To understand my answer, take the following situation: An artist buys some expensive watercolor paper. He tells his young children not to cut it or draw/paint on it. Some days later, he himself take the paper, cut it up into the sizes he wants, and paint on it. Was he then “unfair” or “not practicing what he preach?”

No, he was not. The reasoning behind “do not draw on this paper or cut it” was not: “This paper has to remain in this condition forever.”

It was: “This paper is set aside for a purpose. I can use it for that purpose. My children cannot.”

 

Similarly, God made humans for a purpose. If we disobey God and kill, we kill people whom God could still have used. When God chooses to end a life, it is his perfect time. He made humans, he can take them into another realm when the time is right.

 

Superficially, preschoolers drawing a paintbrush over paper, and a skilled artist making a detailed painting, are both painting.

Superficially, God killing and humans killing are both doing the same thing.

But in both cases, only one of the two has a master plan.

Lies, damned lies and atheists in prison

There are some statistics that atheists love to repeat. One of them is this: “About 8-16% of America’s population are atheists, but only 0.21% of the prison population are.”

This page is apparently their source for that. It gives the numbers for prison inmates, and their reported religious groupings, on 5 March 1997. (I wonder why do no atheist ever mention a more recent study? Is this particular 11-year old study the one with results that best match their agenda?)

But wait a minute. These numbers apparently also say that 19,7% of the prisoners population chose not to answer this question, or was perhaps not asked. Now, the prisoners that were not asked are probably not much different from anyone else. We do not know how many of those were numbered in the sample.

But the prisoners who chose not to answer? It make perfect sense that an atheist will be less likely to honestly answer that question. (It may indirectly affect his chances for parole, for instance.)

The people who chose not to answer could, fairly speaking, include anything from absolutely no atheists at all to all atheists, without exception. Atheists could, if these statistics were accurate, anything between 0,21% and 19,95% of the prison population in the USA. Since many (probably the mayority of) people who are atheistic- they do not believe in God or the supernatural- fail to identify themselves with the label of “atheist”, you could assume their true number will be higher.(And Catholics, for example, could be anything between 38,16 and 58%. But it is unlikely that someone would hide his religion from prison authorities. I therefore hold that the number of Catholics will be closer to the former.)

 

Apparently the “atheists are 8-16 % of the US population” do not hold up to scrutiny either. Other studies claim that 98% of Americans believe in God, and that only 4% of them have no religion. (Note: Numbers for “no religion” or even “unbelief in God” do not equate, even closely, to self-claimed atheism. Many non-religious disbelievers in God would not label themselves as atheists. Using- and grossly inflating- the percentage of unbelievers in America for atheists in the general population, while using only self-proclaimed atheists for the prison atheists, is intellectually dishonest.)

Statement 1: The percentage of atheists in America is, at most, only 1/4 to 1/8 as many as the statistic users tell us.

Statement 2: The atheists in prison may be up to 95 times as many as reported. (The difference between 0,21% and [19,7+0,21]%)

Conclusion: It seems very hard to conclude that atheists are under-represented in American prisons. They may, or may not, have failed to mention their atheism to authorities. In other words, the statistics are inconclusive.

————

PS: It seems people with no religion are 105% overrepresented in British prisons. In other words, unbelievers in Britain seem to be more than twice as likely to be in prison. And while Christians account for 39.1 percent of the English and Welsh prison population, they make up 71.8 percent of the total English and Welsh population. Christians are, therefore, seriously under-represented, and nonbelievers seemingly very over-represented, in prisons in England and Wales. But those statistics are not necessarily perfect either.

Highlight: 20 February: Anne

I’ve been feeling depressed lately and I thought about having to notice the good things in life.

So, I made a resolution to sometimes mention highlights of my life as they happen.

Yesterday, the highlight was speaking to a Christian giant named Anne. Now, Anne is a widow with 3 sons: One at a private university, one in high school and one in primary school. They do very well. I know her youngest son, who is bright and well-behaved. Anne also runs a preschool and after-school-centre in her neighbourhood, and a Sunday school.

There is something I forgot to mention here, before you get a wrong impression: Anne’s regular income is hardly enough to pay university tuition for her eldest, much less tuition, room and board for him, a place to live for herself and the other two sons, food, etc. She lives in a place – Reahola- that used to be a mine hostel, but is now divided into 405 family units.

Her preschool is not a source of income. The children in her preschool mostly have high school mums who cannot pay her at all. She runs the preschool, the after-school centre, and the Sunday school as a labour of love. She trusts God for funds for her son’s university fee. This far, it came in every month. She was praying to God for money for a fence around her preschool/ after-school study centre. Yesterday, some American Christians phoned and said they will build not only a fence, but a whole playground! The Americans are coming in March.

When I hear about the Checkers “Woman of the year” competition again, I’ll nominate this remarkable woman….

Second biggest highlight:

Anne contacted us some time to give a Good News Club (a weekly Christian meeting for kids) in Reahola. We were there to teach it, and some little kids came to hug us. One little black girl told me: “Teacher, you’re beautiful!” It’s great to hear. As a single woman, people don’t often call me “beautiful.” But I think they are beautiful: All those little black kids who welcome us into their hearts and neighborhood to teach the club. And I wonder if they realize how priviledged they are to have the “beautiful” – not outside, but inside- Anne among them…..

SA’s “Sexual offences and Related Matters Amendment Act” (No 32, 2007): The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Good

1. At least one ridiculously contradictory concept have now been removed from law books:

There used to be a law stating that having consensual homosexual intercourse with someone under 19 is a crime. Then, same-sex marriages became legal. Last year’s Child Act then specified that 18-year-olds can consent to be wed. It would thus have been legal for a man to marry an 18-year-old boy, but intercourse would have been illegal for the couple. (??!!) This not an opinion on same-sex marriage; or age of consent. This is about legal contradictions.

2. Whereas the previous point is trivial, this one is not: It is only fair that the definition of rape have been changed to include other forms of penetration. The definition also changed to the point where a crime against a boy (or man) can be seen as rape too. That was one of the main purposes of the new law, and they seemingly got that one right.

Bad

3. In a previous article, I contrasted laws on rape with provisions in last year’s Child Act. I observed that even consensual intercourse with a 12-year old is rape, yet contraceptives can be given to 12-year olds; with no explicit demand to the contraceptive-giver to make sure what the situation of the child is. They now changed that. By section 15, consensual intercourse with 12-year olds is not rape any more. This way, the contraceptive-giving heath worker is not being indifferent to a most-certainly-raped child any more. She/he is indifferent to a child who is perhaps being raped. [Sarcastic mode on] Ah……, progress! [Sarcastic mode off/]

4. According to sections 15 and 16, teens (under 16) who, with mutual consent, engage in open-mouthed kissing (or anything more explicit), would be guilty of a crime if there is an age difference of more than three years. This means that a 17-year old boy will break the law when kissing a 14-year old girl. We know, nobody is going to actually prosecute them for it. But ridiculous laws cause disrespect for authority. In fact, the “broken windows” theory say that you can significantly reduce serious crime simply by prosecuting each and every crime, even the small ones. By making laws that are next-to-impossible to prosecute, you thus encourage crime.

5. According to section 18, someone who do or say things to a 17-year old with the idea to “diminish or reduce any resistance … to perform a sexual act” is “guilty of the offence of sexual grooming of a child.” That seems much too broad.

Let’s take an example: Joe (19) meets Anne (17). They talk. The next time they meet, they kiss. Later things go further. One thing lead to another, and they have consensual intercourse. You could argue that Anne would not have consented the first day they met. Thus talking to her, kissing her, complimenting her, etc. “diminished Anne’s resistance.” By this definition, Joe is guilty of the offence of “sexual grooming of a child.”

Joe’s pal hear of Joe’s crime, and does things differently: Instead of trying to have a relationship, he goes to a girl and ask her for sex. Oops. By Section 18(2)(b)) , someone who “describes the commission of any act” to a 17-year old with the idea to “diminish or reduce any resistance … to perform a sexual act” is guilty of the same crime as Joe.

6. Joe committed another crime in his relationship: He let Anne see him naked when they did the deed! According to section 22, you may not show your naked body to a consensual 17-year old. So: It is legal to have consensual sex with 16- or 17-year olds, but only in the dark!

Ugly

7. Nowhere in this new law do I find that non-consensual sexual acts (those described with the terms “rape” and “sexual assault”) with a child is regarded in a more serious light than the same acts with an adult. Nothing I can see tells me the prescribed penalty will be any different.

It would seem that nothing in this new law differentiate between for instance

(a) the unwanted fondling of a 28-year-old woman and

(b) similar fondling of a 8-year-old girl.

At first, I even thought that the law do not say anything about under 12’s giving consent to acts they do not understand, but at least that is not true. Although chapter 3 (The “Sexual Offences against Children” chapter) do not mention it, the description under “this act” in chapter 1: “Definitions and objects” mention that children below 12 are not capable of giving consent.

I sincerely hope that this is a case of previous laws already stating this, and those laws still staying the same. However, this sounds unlikely to me: The ages for what used to be called “Statutory rape” changed. (It used to be 13 -15, now it is 12 – 15.) Thus, the age limit on whatever other laws (concerning sexual deeds with younger children) that still exist, cannot stay the same either. If the ages in them do not appear amended in this act, they are probably not part of this country’s law any more.

Conclusion

If that last point is correct, this law is, on balance, very badly written and overall a negative thing by my standards. Please, law-makers, tell me I am wrong about my point 7. I really, really hope I am wrong!

Even if other laws cover the issue in point 6, this “Sexual offences and Related Matters Amendment Act” is not off the hook. The “broken windows principle” mean ridiculous rules like “teen, you may not kiss teens 3 years younger than yourself” or “adult, you may have intercourse with an older teen, but do not seduce him/her and don’t let him/ her see you naked” may be indirectly bad for law and order.