Why should I approve comments which are neither relevant to the topic nor have anything to do with me? I do not have the views you seem to assume about atheists, gays or the Bible, and Christians do not believe in talking snakes either, any more than adults believe ventriloquist dummies can talk.

Please learn to actually read before thinking “facepalm”.

If you are an agnostic, you are also an atheist.

If you are an infant, you are an atheist.

There are two broad categories of atheists. Strong atheists, and weak atheists. Strong atheists proclaim god does not exist. This is what christians think of when someone says atheist. Only problem is, this kind of atheist rare. Most atheists are weak atheists. Or simply put, anyone who does not hold a positive belief in god. Everyone was born a weak atheist. Weak atheists make up the vast majority of atheists in the world.

An agnostic is someone who doesnt know if god exists or not. That does not address the issue of belief. But typical, if someone has no knowledge of something, then they dont believe it. Most agnostics are therefore atheists, such as myself.

“(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.”

Unbelief absolutely equates to atheism. You simply have no idea what the term means.

“Many non-religious disbelievers in God would not label themselves as atheists.”

That doesnt change the fact that they are indeed atheists, by definition.

If you dont positively believe in god, you ARE an atheist.

Oh yeah. You didn’t. Cuz you made those numbers. Cuz Christian bloggers have a tendancy to be damnable liars.

If a group that makes up only 2% (maximum) of the population, is up to 19,95% of the prison population, they will certainly not be underrepresented.

Not that I believe they make up that much. I do hold that with so many non-answers, there is no way we can call them underrepresented with any certainty.

(I think with a number that low, the form probably had tick-off responses for most common religions in America, atheism not on one of those blocks, with a block “Other (specify)”, with a blank space beside that block.
The minority who ticked that box either neglected to fill in atheist for the most part, or the data typist neglected to type that word from the form into the computer. Typist sometimes skip what they find insignificant.)

In spite of the fact that I’m an atheist myself, I do believe the reason why there are so few atheists in jail has more to do with the fact that atheists are a minority in the population than with a supposed higher morality from the atheist side. I believe christian and atheist moralities are very similar to each other, they have been shaped by society, not by religious ideology, as much as religious people like to disagree with that.

What CENTURY are you living in? My ex husband brought up in court that he was born again and I was an atheist. It embarrassed everyone there and I was awarded full custody.

Please show me YOUR proof that atheists are less likely to be honest and also include a similar study of the percent of the religions in US prisons that is newer than the one we mention. I’d like to know of one myself.

NONE of this data controls for known variables such as education, socioeconomic background, age, sex, employment, type of crime, family background, community ties, etc.

Anyone quoting some simple %’s of population data and drawing a conclusion from it doesn’t know what they are doing with statistics.

Read up on studies about the populations of African-Americans in prison to see how foolish this is.

If you want to reduce crime you empower your citizens, give them viable opportunities to succeed, find ways to strengthen their sense of community and remove divisiveness.

The whole “good behavior” concept in christianity, as well as other religions, is fear of going to the special place after you die.

No. Christians are motivated by loving Him who first loved us, that is the first thing about Christianity. Love drives out fear.

So, you admit that if christians would not be christians they would just go around stealing and killing people as they wish because the “factor” would be gone?

No. Christians give more to charity, they historically played a great role in freeing slaves, educating the poor, establishing hospitals, starting universities, starting children’s homes, preserving literature during the ages before the printing press, etc. Without motivation to do good, most would probably not have murdered and stole (did evil), but have lived lives closer to morally neutral, without all that good.
2. I don’t think high brow atheism is common in places like Norway. They won’t spend their time discussing atheism and finding arguments against belief if they don’t have believers to oppose. How many Norwegians do you meet in atheism forums?
3. Some “fundamentalist Christians”are not Christians at all by the basic definition of Christ-follower. (See my discussion elsewhere on the No True Scotsman fallacy. This is not that fallacy.)
Some are high brow.
4.

There is an obvious connection in the world between lack of education and belief in superstition.

There is also a correlation between lack of religion and superstition. Wall Street journal reported in 2008:

The reality is that the New Atheist campaign, by discouraging religion, won’t create a new group of intelligent, skeptical, enlightened beings. Far from it: It might actually encourage new levels of mass superstition. And that’s not a conclusion to take on faith — it’s what the empirical data tell us.
“What Americans Really Believe,” a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians….
This is not a new finding. In his 1983 book “The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener,” skeptic and science writer Martin Gardner cited the decline of traditional religious belief among the better educated as one of the causes for an increase in pseudoscience, cults and superstition. He referenced a 1980 study published in the magazine Skeptical Inquirer that showed irreligious college students to be by far the most likely to embrace paranormal beliefs, while born-again Christian college students were the least likely.

I don’t deny that the lowly educated Christians you speak about are there – they are part of Christ’s body. I need them and they need me. Where their faith is abused by religious leaders, I speak out for them and against those leaders. (For example, my writings on so-called “Christian” patriarchy!)

christianity … cannot be applied in practice because it relies on one fact that is not true: that human beings are fundamentally good.

Interesting. Other atheists dislike Christianity for believing humans are basically sinful, and that flaw needs God to fix it!