Does religiosity impede moral behaviour?

[Amergin]

The Brain’s Moral Compass

There is a frontal brain network of circuits overlapping and incorporating the rational-sceptical supercircuits I described above. This circuit deals with a number of functions that come under the term ethics or morality. The hardwiring of the circuits is genetic, but the content is learned, absorbed by culture, and taught in various ways. Damage to an area of the pre-frontal cortex of the brain (medial Right more than medial Left) cause a person to behave immorally, antisocially, and break all of his/her moral principles. They know right and wrong but lose the desire to adhere to it. Normally you know it is wrong to lie (or steal, or kill) so you do not. If so then your frontal moral compass is in fine working order. See this link:


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c...0117EDT0426.DTL

I think that it is also tied in with the emotional Limbic Lobe. We feel bad if we do wrong. That bad feeling for wrong behaviour is GUILT. The rational circuits evaluate what is right (adaptive) and wrong (maladaptive). They use reason, analysis, and sceptical evaluation to discard error, bollocks, and harmful acts. This Prefrontal Moral Compass has many connections to the Rational-Sceptical system, long term memory circuits, AND the LIMBIC LOBE. My reason is that Atheists and Agnostics are more rational, sceptical almost by definition. Religious believers are more gullible and have less rational input to their thoughts and actions. In the USA Christians are 85% while Atheists are 5-8% of the general population. In US prisons, Atheists are only 0.2% of the inmates. So why are Atheists so UNDERREPRESENTED in prison? Why does hyperreligious America have a homicide rate of 10/100,000 but Netherlands, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Scotland, England, and Iceland (with 40-60% unbelievers) have homicide rates from 0.9 to 2.3/100,000?

Atheists have a 19% divorce rate compared to 29% to 45% Christian fundamentalists in America. I think it is because Atheists have a stronger "moral compass" about keeping their word, loyalty, and not cheating on a spouse to whom they have pledged their loyalty. I think the connection is also based in the Pre-Frontal Cortex of the Brain. This complex area is where impulses are inhibited (fornicating in the Shopping Mall.) In a deeper portion there is the driving stimulator for religious experience. It turns on the religious supercircuit of the brain. But the higher and more anterior inhibitory executive areas “keep a lid on it” so the person does not go over the brink into a religious psychosis.

In the case of sceptics, I think this pre-frontal executive area is more “efficient,” more multisynaptic, and with more extensive circuitry. Its inhibition of immoral behaviour encompasses inhibition of all irrational ideas. Therefore it also inhibits religious belief by rejecting it as irrational. It doesn’t mean that Atheists/Agnostics are better people but they are more constrained by moral inhibitions (conscience). That type of morality is more demanding of a person than the fear of some invisible punisher. Perhaps the invisible punisher isn’t looking all of the time. Neurobehavioural morality is also more demanding of a person than one who is moral only because an odd book says what is right. Religious based morality alone is faulty because of the delusion that God erases your sins if you are “saved.”

Atheists know that they cannot reverse evil acts. The guilt is lifelong. Once having experienced this guilt, the Atheist/Agnostic is emotionally pushed to follow his/her hard wired neurological morality. We know that we will feel bad if we do wrong.

Religionists (Christian Catholics and Fundamentalists) have moral compasses that are based on less reason and less intuitive morality. They are based mostly on an unsupported assumption of a God and a religion that offers loop holes to immoral behaviour. The loop holes are Catholic Confession, and Fundamentalist “getting saved” erases all sin and all guilt. He/she can do wrong (steal, kill, lie) believing that he can get it erased before he/she dies. Moral responsibility is fragmented.

Amergin

 

[Amergin]

The Brain’s Moral Compass

There is a frontal brain network of circuits overlapping and incorporating the rational-sceptical supercircuits I described above. This circuit deals with a number of functions that come under the term ethics or morality. The hardwiring of the circuits is genetic, but the content is learned, absorbed by culture, and taught in various ways. Damage to an area of the pre-frontal cortex of the brain (medial Right more than medial Left) cause a person to behave immorally, antisocially, and break all of his/her moral principles. They know right and wrong but lose the desire to adhere to it. Normally you know it is wrong to lie (or steal, or kill) so you do not. If so then your frontal moral compass is in fine working order. See this link:


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c...0117EDT0426.DTL

I think that it is also tied in with the emotional Limbic Lobe. We feel bad if we do wrong. That bad feeling for wrong behaviour is GUILT. The rational circuits evaluate what is right (adaptive) and wrong (maladaptive). They use reason, analysis, and sceptical evaluation to discard error, bollocks, and harmful acts. This Prefrontal Moral Compass has many connections to the Rational-Sceptical system, long term memory circuits, AND the LIMBIC LOBE. My reason is that Atheists and Agnostics are more rational, sceptical almost by definition. Religious believers are more gullible and have less rational input to their thoughts and actions. In the USA Christians are 85% while Atheists are 5-8% of the general population. In US prisons, Atheists are only 0.2% of the inmates. So why are Atheists so UNDERREPRESENTED in prison? Why does hyperreligious America have a homicide rate of 10/100,000 but Netherlands, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Scotland, England, and Iceland (with 40-60% unbelievers) have homicide rates from 0.9 to 2.3/100,000?

Atheists have a 19% divorce rate compared to 29% to 45% Christian fundamentalists in America. I think it is because Atheists have a stronger "moral compass" about keeping their word, loyalty, and not cheating on a spouse to whom they have pledged their loyalty. I think the connection is also based in the Pre-Frontal Cortex of the Brain. This complex area is where impulses are inhibited (fornicating in the Shopping Mall.) In a deeper portion there is the driving stimulator for religious experience. It turns on the religious supercircuit of the brain. But the higher and more anterior inhibitory executive areas “keep a lid on it” so the person does not go over the brink into a religious psychosis.

In the case of sceptics, I think this pre-frontal executive area is more “efficient,” more multisynaptic, and with more extensive circuitry. Its inhibition of immoral behaviour encompasses inhibition of all irrational ideas. Therefore it also inhibits religious belief by rejecting it as irrational. It doesn’t mean that Atheists/Agnostics are better people but they are more constrained by moral inhibitions (conscience). That type of morality is more demanding of a person than the fear of some invisible punisher. Perhaps the invisible punisher isn’t looking all of the time. Neurobehavioural morality is also more demanding of a person than one who is moral only because an odd book says what is right. Religious based morality alone is faulty because of the delusion that God erases your sins if you are “saved.”

Atheists know that they cannot reverse evil acts. The guilt is lifelong. Once having experienced this guilt, the Atheist/Agnostic is emotionally pushed to follow his/her hard wired neurological morality. We know that we will feel bad if we do wrong.

Religionists (Christian Catholics and Fundamentalists) have moral compasses that are based on less reason and less intuitive morality. They are based mostly on an unsupported assumption of a God and a religion that offers loop holes to immoral behaviour. The loop holes are Catholic Confession, and Fundamentalist “getting saved” erases all sin and all guilt. He/she can do wrong (steal, kill, lie) believing that he can get it erased before he/she dies. Moral responsibility is fragmented.

In summary, morality, the evolved, socially selected, inherited, influenced by scepticism and emotion/guilt.

Religion give a sinner a get out of Jail free card for sin, removing the guilt. Guilt acts as a deterrent to futher sin. With Guilt being permanent, the rational non-theist is more careful not to sin. The Christian's guilt is weak becauce it is not permanent. It can be forgiven by confession free and clear, or simply erased by adhering to Fundamentalism (accepting Jesus into your heart.)

For the Christian it is not enough deterrent to sin with church laws and societal laws being weak in comparison to knowledge of permanent guilt and sceptical view that wrong is wrong in its own right. Wrong is not simply a violation of an arbitrary commandment. It is rationally wrong. Every national crime comparisons to religious affiliation in Europe, Japan, China, then South Africa and the USA show that religiosity varies directly with crime rates and rates of imprisonment.

Yet ignorant believer lie about it and claim Atheists are not as good as Christians. They claim falsely that Atheists commit more sin.

Amergin

 

[Amergin]

There are intuitive moral values and immoral inhibitions, species specific and moulded by evolution. I am an Agnostic Evolutionist. Intuitive Morality is genetic and entirely brain based. Genes programme the hardware structure of the Moral Compass in our brains. Our culture provides the soft-ware data coding of our social contract morality, so that we can make moral decisions. Behaviour is thus acted upon by our hardware structure that makes many things intuitively right or wrong. It is necessary to be taught moral principles to reinforce and further define behaviour.

Memory tells us how bad we feel when we hurt someone or otherwise do wrong. Affect-emotion associated with the anticipated action and memories of past action join with learned morals and intuitive (Neurobehavioural) morals. Those circuits connect to the Pre-Frontal Moral Compass and the Frontal inhibitory system. This is what makes us inhibit (resist) temptation to do wrong if the behaviour fails the scrutiny of the rational-sceptical circuitry. That rational-sceptical module, our emotional input, and the processed final decision is what we now call our Pre-frontal Moral Compass.

The Intuitive Rational-Sceptical and Emotional hardware is better “designed” in some people than others. It is better or more effectively programmed in some (good people) than others (bad people) by their culture (parents, church, and civil laws.) Yet we all have an intuitive "knowledge" that murder apart from killing in self/family defence is wrong. We know that theft is wrong. We know that killing any baby is wrong now as it was in the time of Deuteronomy (when God ordered it.)

We KNOW that spousal abuse, rape, deprivation of personal freedom (slavery), lying, child molestation, fraud, persecution of dissent, deprivation of freedom of/from religion, and robbery are wrong, now and always wrong.

Some Christian Bible and Islamic Qur’an believers think that killing babies was alright if God ordered it. It was alright if God killed the babies (Egypt and Noah's Flood). God is never condemned or indicted for crimes against humanity. He supposedly inflicted plagues on innocent people for what their Pharaoh did. He ordered the killing of Jewish men/women/children/babies for erecting a golden calf (changing religion.) My intuitive morality tells me that those things were wrong.

All of those things were implicitly moral in the Old Testament but not in the New Testament. Now only the most dodgy or extreme Fundamentalist would insist that it is still alright to kill the babies of infidels.

Thus Judeo-Christian morality is very relative. It is not moral or immoral on any objective basis but purely the whim of God who can change his mind. This denies Intuitive brain based morality or suppresses it. This contributes to the high Christian crime rate, and murder rates compared to Atheists/Agnostics. Keep in mind that Christians are not a homogeneous group. Fundamentalists and Catholics differ greatly from mainstream Protestants, moderate and liberal Christians as prison statistics indicate.

The association of crime and religiosity is due to a failure to see such things as robbery, lying, or murder as wrong. Or it could be the belief that one is not personally responsible for his/her behaviour. Some religious people fail to comprehend the intuitive evil of an action. When they avoid crime it is not because of the harm done to fellow humans. It is only wrong by God’s current but changeable mood. Commandments are ineffective if there are no penalties.

By saying a few magic words certain Christians can erase any responsibility for evil acts. One is saved as long as one believes and is born again. One’s sins are trivialised and do not count (in Fundamentalism) or forgivable by confession (in Catholicism.) My hypothesis is that for some, Christian Morality is relative. It is what might be called "situational ethics."

US prison statistics strongly confirm this and show that Fundamentalists and Catholics are disproportionately represented in all US prisons compared to Mainstream, Moderate, and Liberal Christians. Members of Eastern religions, and unbelievers are barely represented at all in prisons. Atheists and Agnostics are 10% of Americans but 0.2% of prison inmates.

The latter groups (Mainstream/Liberal Christians, Eastern believers, Jews, Atheists, and Agnostics) feel that they must bear responsibility for their "sins." And thus they are all underrepresented in prisons. While religious ideologies that make morality relative, trivialise immoral actions, and remove personal responsibility inevitably promote bad behaviour.

Disclaimers:

1. I am not condemning or slandering Christians in general. I think that Fundamentalism and Catholicism have inherent moral flaws.

2. I admit that I did not factor in low education, poverty, racial discrimination, broken families, and genetic predisposition which all tend to cluster in a vast underclass that commits most of the crime. Most of these people are Baptists, Catholics, and various variants of those. This could contribute to the extraordinary prevalence of those religious groups in the criminal population.

3. No members of this forum should feel that I consider them in the categories described.

Amergin

 

[Amergin]

In the Archives of Neurology, June 2002, Vol. 59, No. 6. Pages 916-919, there is the following article, "The Neurology of Reasoning". This is a very prestigious neurology journal affiliated with the American Medical Association. The following is my review of the studies, their applications, and implications. I have summarised it here.

They did some interesting studies using PET scanning to highlight areas of focal brain activity. They gave patients and volunteers a series of tests in deductive and inductive reasoning, executive problems to solve. They even electrocortically stimulated right and left frontal gyral areas separately.

The results are fascinating. It shows the pathways and cortical areas that perform thought and reason (logical function). They identified areas of prefrontal cortex laterally, medially, and orbitofrontally. Left hemisphere areas mediated the major rational functions while right hemisphere area had more of an affective or emotional role, relating the data to past emotion laden experiences.

One group of people were schizophrenic or bipolar. They initially had difficulties with left frontal mediated problem solving and premise-conclusion accuracy. This was before electrical stimulation of their brains.

They electrically stimulated these patient's left frontal area, the patients when presented conclusions with false premises, they immediately rejected them and were emotional in this rejection. When the same patients were stimulated on the right hemisphere, they "responded calmly and appeared unaffected by the absurdity of the premises."

The Left hemisphere applies rules of formal logic to the content of the presented data. The Right Hemisphere checks the data to assure that it corresponds to memory experiences and “gut feeling” (indoctrination for example.)

The authors, Dr. Shuren, MD and Dr. Grafman Ph.D., do not address religious belief. But philosophically, it is stimulating to be finally analysing thought, reasoning, logic, and executive mental functions to know how we all work. It fits well with my earlier hypotheses about the possible differences between sceptical/unbeliever and more gullible/believer types of brains. I suspect that Atheists, Agnostics, Freethinkers have brains in which the left hemisphere centres and pathways are more efficient. Why they are more efficient could be due to synaptic density, receptor regulation, and possibly the concentration of cortical neurons in those areas.

By contrast, religious believers as well as those who believe in UFO's, Bigfoot, and Nessie have less efficient, less stimulated, or less developed logic circuitry in their left frontal lobes and/or more excitable right frontal circuits.

There has been no formal study of this because it is politically incorrect if we admit our hypothesis. There is only the secondary study of epilepsy patients (including patients with frontal foci, temporal foci, insular foci, and some with non-seizure events.) Our law does not forbid us from requesting personal background info including the patient rating religious belief on a scale of 0 to 5, 5 being strongly religious, 0 being non-theists. So we did. It was funded by another study. Since the images were acquired, it did not cost us another penny to look at the images and correlate them to the religion questionnaire. Then we had English Neuroscientists down in England review the films without the histories. They coincided with our impressions 90% of the time, if the patients were 0 or 5 on the religion scale, but it broke down with the 2’s and 3’s.

Evidence is piling up that the brains of determined atheists are quite different from determined religionists. Naturally there is a spectrum in which intermediate types prevail and in them you have people who are weakly religious or weakly sceptical. Those are the ones who may convert one way or the other depending on life experiences, or education.

So, religionists don't feel like I am slagging you, I am not claiming superiority of one versus the other, just difference.

It also reinforces my position that many people don't choose to believe or not believe. Our conscious, or seemingly conscious brain does not decide. Our more complex circuitry analyses the data of God belief and bible ideas. Those of us with more hard wired Left Pre-frontal centres, circuits, synaptic regulation, receptors, and neuronal population density, have no real choice. Our brains cannot accept the concepts anymore than we can accept cubical spheres.

Others, no slag intended, readily accept premises that we cannot, and conclusions that our brains reject. Their brains downloaded with religious memes accept logically flawed data and for them it makes sense, in view of the strong emotional input and learned experiences.

My hypothesis is that in an impossibly ideal lab. A brain is presented with a complex issue requiring a number of possible choices or decisions. That brain makes a conclusion based on its hardware and the software programme of experience/memory. That hypothetical brain concludes answer “C”. If you repeat the question immediately after, you might get a different answer “D”. But the brain was altered by the question when first presented. One would need to erase all memory of the first presentation and re-question the subject. I think that if conditions were IDENTICAL to the smallest detail, the answer would always come out “C”. Each repetition of the same question unfortunately changes the brain.
Your Google doesn’t normally change with a repetition. It will give you the same websites if you repeat the search before new sites are added.

The trends in science are rapidly making more and more advances in the field of Neurocognition. None of this disproves god(s); it only shows the mechanism of the brain at work in processing the data. Progress in artificial intelligence may shed light on this issue.

Too much false knowledge in those undereducated in science but over educated in religious meme repetion of irrational concepts. This if it continues intensely until young adulthood and the multiple faulty circuits may then be beyond repair. That is reflected in their behaviour.

Amergin

 

[c0de]

.

So why are Atheists so UNDERREPRESENTED in prison?

because... >>------------> they're NOT

Atheists are actually over-represented in the US and the UK prisons (which has more accurate and official records than the US). I found this tidbit on an Atheist blog no less, which cautions atheists from using this faulty argument in debates:

"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”... we can estimate that the number of atheists in the UK at the time was between 15.5% and 22.8% of the population.

The Atheist Blogger Atheists in Prison, What Are the Facts?

Also, the blog links to Christian response websites, which have shown that more accurate calculations for "non religious" inmates comes to 20% in Texas. Plus, the people who put down a religious preference in prison were not shown to be actually practicing religion prior to incarceration:

"they exhibited none of the standard sociological measures of religiosity, such as regular prayer, scripture study, and attendance at worship services... American sociologists are well aware that nearly all Americans profess a religious preference. But there is a major difference between those who are actually religious affiliated, that is, members of a congregation (approx. 45 to 65% of the population, varying by region), and those who merely profess a preference, "

Source provided by the site: The Churching of America, 1776-1990, by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark; New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992.

Why does hyperreligious America have a homicide rate of 10/100,000 but Netherlands, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Scotland, England, and Iceland (with 40-60% unbelievers) have homicide rates from 0.9 to 2.3/100,000?

Do you have any evidence to suggest that the homicide rate is causally connected to "hyperreligiousness" ?

Because, I could just as haphazardly claim that the unreligiousness of the countries you mentioned is responsible for their collective demographic suicide, which is due to make Europe a giant retirement home in 40 years, with a collapsed economy and broken welfare institutions.

I think the connection is also based in the Pre-Frontal Cortex of the Brain.

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex has been linked to moral judgments, but you have not provided any studies to show that it is less active/impaired in religious people. In fact, as I have already told you before, religion is considered a higher cognitive function of the brain.

Your actual argument is not based in neuroimaging studies but convoluted and faulty statistics, as shown above. Therefore, you yourself are an example against your own hypothesis, that atheists are more rational than religious people. Which is why I believe that both groups are just as blind.

 

[c0de]

.

p.s.


Clarification:

.
Which is why I believe that both groups are just as blind.

^^ philosophically speaking, of course.

But from the POV of my faith, I believe: atheists are blind...
Just as an atheist, due to his faith, believes: I am blind...

Rationally, neither has any grounding in objectivity.

The only difference seems to be: I know this, while you Amergin, do not.
Therefore, this makes you philosophically ignorant, as well as blind.

But before you feel too offended, here's some of your own medicine:

Disclaimers:
1. I am not condemning or slandering Christians in general. I think that Fundamentalism and Catholicism have inherent moral flaws.

Well, here's my "Disclaimer" to you:

I'm not "slandering" you specifically, I just think YOU have "inherent" and fundamental "flaws"

; )

 

[iBrian]

Why does hyperreligious America have a homicide rate of 10/100,000 but Netherlands, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Scotland, England, and Iceland (with 40-60% unbelievers) have homicide rates from 0.9 to 2.3/100,000?

Going on a long shot here - guns. We don't tend to have them in Europe. Nothing to do with religious outlook.

 

[Amergin]

There are a number of comprehensive studies on the American prison system. One, actually polls prisons all over the US.

In "The New Criminology," Max D. Schlapp and Edward E. Smith say that two generations of statisticians found that the ratio of convicts without religious training is about one-tenth of one percent. W.T. Root, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, examined 1,916 prisoners and said, "Indifference to religion, due to thought, strengthens character," adding that Unitarians, Agnostics, Atheists and Free-Thinkers were absent from penitentiaries, or nearly so.

During 10 years in Sing-Sing, of those executed for murder 65 percent were Catholics, 26 percent Protestants, six percent Hebrew, two percent Pagan, and less than one-third of one percent non-religious.

Steiner and Swancara surveyed Canadian prisons and found 1,294 Catholics, 435 Anglicans, 241 Methodists, 135 Baptists, and one Unitarian.

Dr. Christian, Superintendent of the N.Y. State Reformatories, checked records of 22,000 prison inmates and found only four college graduates. In "Who's Who," 91 percent were college graduates;

Christian commented that "intelligence and knowledge produce right living," and, "crime is the offspring of superstition and ignorance."

A survey of Massachusetts reformatories found every inmate to be religious.

In Joliet Prison, there were 2,888 Catholics, 1,020 Baptists, 617 Methodists and no prisoners identified as non-religious.

Michigan had 82,000 Baptists and 83,000 Jews in the state population; but in the prisons, there were 22 times as many Baptists as Jews, and 18 times as many Methodists as Jews. In Sing-Sing, there were 1,553 inmates, 855 of them (over half) Catholics, 518 Protestants, 117 Jews, and 8 non-religious.

Steiner first surveyed 27 states and found 19,400 Christians, 5,000 with no preference and only 3 Agnostics (one each in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Illinois). A later, more exhaustive survey found 60,605 Christians, 5,000 Jews, 131 Pagans, 4,000 "no preference," and only 3 Agnostics.

In one 19-state survey, Steiner found 15 non-believers, Spiritualists, Theosophists, Deists, Pantheists and one Agnostic among nearly 83,000 inmates. He labeled all 15 as "anti-Christians."

The Elmira, N.Y. reformatory system overshadowed all others, with nearly 31,000 inmates, including 15,694 Catholics (half) and 10,968 Protestants, 4,000 Jews, 325 refusing to answer, and no unbelievers.

Copyright 2002 by American Atheists, Inc
American Atheists Magazine

Here is one counter-argument, the religiosity of the US and all justice systems there.

Since everyone knows that US Criminal Courts are Christian oriented in all but name. Witnesses swear on the Bible. One argument is that a hypothetical Atheist on trial before a Christian Judge with 12 Christians on the jury, would claim to be Christians to increase his odds of acquittal. Once in prison, inmates may learn that fellow prisoners are more likely to be granted parole if they claim "finding Jesus" and unlikely to get parole if identified as Atheists. In the USA, atheists are hated or viewed negatively by 75% of Americans.




The Atheist proportion of the UK prison population of is 1%. (Study: http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/ho… section 17.) Yet, 20% of the UK population believes in no spirit, god, or life force (Study: http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/ho… section 1.2, Q2). Most, if not all, other liberal democracies mirror these results-atheists are much more common in the general population than the prison population, with the overwhelming majority of the prison population being theistic. It is generally accepted that religion appeals more to the undereducated, the low IQ, and mentally disturbed people who are more likely to commit crimes of violence and thus be overrepresented in UK prisons.



"In 2008, intelligence researcher Helmuth Nyborg examined whether IQ relates to denomination and income, using representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, which includes intelligence tests on a representative selection of white American youth, where they have also replied to questions about religious belief. His results, published in the scientific journal Intelligence demonstrated that on average, Atheists scored 1.95 IQ points higher than Agnostics, 3.82 points higher than Liberal persuasions, and 5.89 IQ points higher than Dogmatic persuasions. [4] "I'm not saying that believing in God makes you dumber.


My hypothesis is that people with a low intelligence are more easily drawn toward religions, which give answers that are certain, while people with a high intelligence are more skeptical," says the professor."


Amergin



Religiosity and intelligence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[c0de]

The Atheist proportion of the UK prison population of is 1%. (Study: http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/ho… section 17.)

Your link doesn't work, and is therefore invalid.

However, the link I provided DOES work and contains official stats on UK prisons.

Also your response doesn't answer the rebuttal that those inmates who cite a preference for religion were NOT practicing religion, or part of any congregation before incarceration. A non-practicing religious person might as well be "non-religious", in fact many practicing religious people (such as myself) think of non-practicing people as basically non-religious. Religion isn't like "spirituality"... you actually have to do stuff to be "religious." Just because some person says they're an astronaut, doesn't mean anything.

My hypothesis is that people with a low intelligence are more easily drawn toward religions, which give answers that are certain, while people with a high intelligence are more skeptical," says the professor."

This argument has already been refuted:

...As long as smarter people are more likely to be skeptical of tradition, then full-blown rejection of tradition will almost inevitably be correlated with higher IQ, even if a majority of smart people still favor traditionalism. Consider the example of religious belief, which is a major component of the “syndrome.” Let’s say that the bottom half of the IQ distribution never questions the religion of their upbringing, while the top half is skeptical. Now, just among that skeptical top half, let’s say that 80 percent end up affirming their faith and remain religious, while the rest reject faith and become atheists.

Religion would seem to be the clear choice of smart people in this hypothetical example, but there would still be a positive correlation between IQ and atheism. The correlation exists not because smart people have necessarily rejected religion, but because religion is the “default” position for most of our society.

This same principle works in places where the default and iconoclastic beliefs are reversed. Japan, for example, has no tradition of monotheistic religion, but the few Japanese Christians tend to be much more educated than non-Christians in Japan. By the logic of someone who wants to read a lot into the Stankov study, Christianity must be the wave of the future, perhaps even the one true faith! But, of course, the vast majority of educated Japanese are not Christians. Just as with atheism in the West, the correctness of Christianity cannot be inferred from the traits of the minority who subscribe to it in Japan.

To reiterate, people who subscribe to non-traditional ideas probably have above-average intellects, but that does not mean other smart people will like those ideas. This is a point often lost on liberals who work in universities or in the news media. They observe, usually correctly, that friends and acquaintances in their social circle are smarter than the average (and likely more conservative) people they encounter on the street. But too many elites see this correlation between smartness and liberalism as somehow a validation of their political views. They seem unaware that the wider world features plenty of intelligent people who are not professors or movie critics or government bureaucrats. Even among the nation’s smartest people, liberal elites could easily be in the minority politically, but different social circles keep them insulated from finding that out. The result is a convenient but damaging political meme that circulates among some people on the Left—the belief that their opponents simply can’t understand what makes for good policy.


The American, A Magazine of Ideas


Using statistics has been shown to be a very haphazard ordeal. People have been wrongfully convicted due to statistics. There was a lecture on TED about this.

 

[Amergin]

Anti-Atheism is the last great bigotry to be generally accepted by the public, especially in hyper-religious Americaa.

How Are Atheists Discriminated Against? Expressions of of Anti-Atheist Bigotry and Discrimination in America

I spent a year in the US taking an epilepsy fellowship at a major university medical school. What I discovered was that anti-Atheism is found in all levels of US society except Academia. At the Neuroscience department of the US medical school, 15 out of 15 neurologists and 4 neurosurgeons were Atheists or Non-theistic Agnostics. Some of them used "Non-Theistic Agnostic" although it means "Atheistic." But they found that the average American was not as angered by that term as "Atheist."

However, doctors in America, except for big cities with sophisticated educated populations, had to keep quiet about their lack of beliefs. This almost entirely affected primary care physicians (Family Practice) whose patients self-referred to them. They had good reason to realise that if they (the doctors) were identified as Atheists, there would be a marked reduction or boycott by Christians. I heard stories of many primary care doctors with successful practices (in the southern states) lose their patients and practice because their atheism was "outed." Some that I met in private dinners, admitted to me that they indeed pretended to be Christian, hung crucifixes on the office wall or exam rooms. One Atheistic Family Doctor placed a Bible in conspicuous sight on his desk when interviewing patients. Several attended local churches in small towns, keeping their non-belief a desperate secret.

A doctor being outed as an Atheist, is much more serious than one outed for being gay or being black. That made me question just how many US doctors were Atheists because they would unlikely risk their careers by admitting unbelief to a poll.

Was there any reverse in the case of University Neuroscience Departments? In other words, would Christian applicants to a University Neuroscience face discrimination by majority atheistic staffs? I can only say that the University that I attended was not allowed to even ask a candidate's belief system. In my experience, there are not many Christians who would be interested in the implications of Neuroscience, anymore than Evolutionary Biology, Biochemistry, Physics (esp. Quantum Mechanics), and Palaeontology.

In my Epilepsy Clinics, one for 10 years and the other 8 years, and now only part-time, I hired many assistants and never asked for religious affiliation. However, later most of them let it slip that they were Non-Theists, some fearing that if I were Christian, I might not like them.

It is a shame that we are all judged on our thoughts more than our accomplishments.

If I lived in the USA, my son and grandson, would have been denied entry to the Boy Scouts of America.

An Atheist would be a fool to run for national political office in America. A poll by Pew, I think, revealed that 71% in 1995 and 48% in 2008 would definitely vote for an Atheistic candidate. Both figures were higher than those who would not vote for a gay or an African-American.

The Pilgrims/Puritans who founded Plymouth and New England colonies in America, did not sail to America seeking religious freedom as legend claims. They left England and some left temporary refuge in Holland. They sailed to New England fleeing from religious freedom in England and Holland to set up a Fundamentalist Theocracy in which other religions or non-religion was illegal. Holland was at that time the only country with full freedom of religion.


Pilgrims were fleeing from religious freedom in Europe because they did not want children raised to be tolerant. Their version of freedom was obedience to Calvinistic elders. Personal freedom to think was a felony.

Amergin

 

[c0de]

It is a shame that we are all judged on our thoughts more than our accomplishments.

Do you think if the tables were turned and the Atheists were in charge, they would not discriminate against religious people? Before you answer, just remember that we don't have to hypothesize. The USSR is a perfect example of what happens when atheists are in charge.

p.s. All your arguments so far have been rebutted and/or refuted. Check the post above. You have a lot of catching up to do.

 

[Rob]

Going on a long shot here - guns. We don't tend to have them in Europe. Nothing to do with religious outlook.

I think there may be some merit in this one