(November 17, 2010 at 8:05 pm)Tiberius Wrote: Ahh, misuse of statistics.
I'd bet heavily that a large percentage of the "no preference" group are non-believers (inc atheists, agnostics, etc), and "unknown" or "other" probably contain a few. These statistics rely on people being honest about their beliefs, and in a hostile environment like prison, I doubt that many people would openly admit to being non-believers.
Don't worry though, even in the worst case scenario, that creates about 16% of prisoners who are non-believers, which correlates with the amount of atheists in America (last I heard, it was around 16%...not the 1.6% you quoted).
Regardless, you've provided no evidence to back up your claim. The PDF appears to be homemade, and nothing official. The "press release" is not from an official website, and appears to be something that someone typed up in about 5 minutes.
*yawn*
I'll stop being skeptical when someone actually shows me the original documents...that's all I ask.
Non-preference might also be those that probably would not be well seen in the eyes of the general populace and decide to lie, like Islam and Scientology
