Answered Prayers as Proof of God

[Captain Scarlet]

where are you getting your atheism questionnaire for crime exit polling? Atheist are an extremely small demographic and the basis of the question had to do with if there was no god, therefore everyone by default would be an atheist. If I understand what you are stating, you think that I am applying this philsophy to our current status in the world and if you are, I understand what you are saying. My scenario again has to do with a sudden knowledge right now that all the world accepts that there is no afterlife. I am only guessing anyways, I can only assume that as I said, there were 2 deterents before (one of human punishment and one of god afterlife punishment) Take away the god deterent, there has to be more "crime" Since I am only guessing, I could be wrong, but there is no way to prove it.

I do disagree with your view on afterlife people having a lower regard for themselves. I would have exchanged your last sentence with people whohave no belief in afterlife have a lower regard...........

People who believe in an afterlife are more afraid of how they act in this life. Its all about judgment in today's religon. If you anger the god(s) by being immoral, you will rot in the fiery pit of hell forever. The fear of this wrath is what keeps people following the rules. If you don't believe in the afterlife, it would make sense that you would care less how you acted here because there is no consequence after death like the religious believe. Unless I misunderstood religion and breaking all of god's commandments mean a life of eternal joy anyways when you die. I went to church growing up and it was 3 hour never ending sermons. I am pretty sure they taught that living an unholy life leads to hell. I sure cared about how I acted for fear of going to hell. I still had faith until college answered how everything worked. I am done with this topic; I am willing to admit I could be wrong, but I need someone to explain how removing the fear of god as a deterent would make our society safer and better.

The arguments you present here are simplistic. There is plenty of evidence of reasoned thinking on this subject which flatly counters your assertions. Sophisticted theologians have a different view of hell primarily becuase of the philosophical issues with a perfect creator and justifying etrenal torture. Anyway I suggest you read through available material, personally I did't take any crime exit polls but there is research out there and I suggest you avail yourself of it:

Published works: Gregory Paul study link to the published paper http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html, or the Global Peace Index. There are others.

For a view of the secular development of morality and why humans rely on other humans, you may want to look at Contractarianism, under the philosphy of ethics.

Taken together all the evidence and thinking on this suggests that in the absence of other factors like totalitrianism and relgion, that humans work together for the common good, becuase it is also to their advantage to do so. Whereas totalitrianism and religion provides the excuse for violence, repression, wars, murders, theft, becuase people beleive they are acting for a non-existent higher moral purpose. Societies like Sweden are good examples of a dominantly atheistic society with very high societal wellbeing.