Where are the Morals?

[Esquilax]

Frankly speaking figures 1% or 0.7% or 0.2% of atheist prison population kept me in surprise until I have not read the real facts.

I tried to find some government link for the verification on these figures but failed. However, I found an interesting article on one sceptic blog, which criticizes such statistics as misrepresentation.

Funny that you'll fact check the claims that don't line up with what you already believe, but when you make the insane claim that fifty percent of atheists are in jail you do no fact checking at all.

As to the actual article, did you read it, or just scan for the word "misrepresentation"? Because, you know, if you read even the excerpts you posted...

But these numbers cannot mean anything without comparing them to the general population. According to Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, atheists make up 1.6% of the population, and according to the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, 0.7% of the population described themselves as atheists. Regardless of the small number, based on one or the other religious identification survey, atheists aren’t proportionally represented in prison, as a matter of fact they are by far misrepresented, with a very small number of inmates per overall atheist population. By using these reports in comparison with each other, we have to be careful not to confuse the inmates who did not declare a religious affiliation, by saying no preference (17%), other (3%), or unknown (3.4), with the group identified by sociologists as “nones” (comprised of self-declared non-theists, and non-religious) who made up 15% of the population in the 2008 survey.

Oh my god. I just went back and read the article again: you really didn't read it beyond skimming for words that confirmed your pre-existing disagreement with the data I posted, didn't you? hock:

Because, see, not once does that blog call the data a "misrepresentation" like you said it does. In fact, it only uses the word "misrepresented" ONE TIME in the entire post, and that is in reference to, as I bolded above, atheists being misrepresented within prison populations, which is a confirmation of the data, not a disagreement! In your rush to disagree without thinking first, you decided that this source was saying the exact opposite of what it's actually saying. You lied, Harris. You lied again.

Just in case you're inclined to disagree again, and given the current facts it seems likely that you'll disagree regardless of the content of my post, here's a line from the conclusion of the article that, I have to stress, you selected and posted: "Though the figures can never be perfectly accurate and can be ambiguous, they do provide a strong indication that there is no correlation between atheism and criminal behavior"

Think, next time.

Until the end of nineteenth century, religion was controlling all major cultures in the world. Even today, religion has most potent role and different cultures. You cannot abandon this fact.

Yes, and look at how much better things have gotten since religious influences began to falter.

USA has the best secular laws in the world. Statistics of crime in USA shows that law is not helping people to become virtuous and wise. Crime rate is rising not declining.

Speaking as an Australian, I would disagree with your bald assertion that America has the best secular laws, partially because we too are a largely secular nation that has better laws, and partly because American culture is steeped in christianity, among which the more fundamentalist sects continue to try and infiltrate the government on behalf of their religion. The picture is not as clear cut as you are, rather simplistically, presenting it to be.

Atheist love evidence but when evidence is presented to him, he simply ignore that. To every compelling fact, you say “assertion.” Here is the evidence.

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2013/sep...s-released

Given the utter ineptitude with which you handled your sources last time, I wasn't about to allow you to get away with it again, and lo and behold, when I look at your source here, what do I see? You've only provided data on one single year!

If we look at the data over a longer period of time, say twenty years or so, the picture is very different. If we look at figure one in this US government report- which is a graph depicting the percentages of violent crime since 1993- what we see is a constant, definite and pronounced slope downward, and not the rising crime rate that Harris claims exists, based on a single year's data.

Wrong again.

Hammurabi existed only yesterday! They are categorised as modern humans compare to your real evolutionary ancestors. Question remain unanswered, what were the morals in the culture of your real ancestors billions of years ago.

Not the same, but developing along the same path. After all, cooperation has always been our survival niche, not that you actually understand anything about that.

Religious scriptures are leading different cultures since the time of Prophet David, more than 3,000 years. Do not try to undermine this fact by declaring these scripture as fairy tales.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David

Shocker, another source which doesn't provide any real evidence that the person in it even existed. You're terrible at this, Harris.