everyone (else) seems to be hating on atheists

[Aiza]

Sorry I am a bit delayed, I went on the most amazing discernment retreat of my entire life.

So any study that attempts to compare two different locations, for instance, to say which has the denser population or highest standard of living is meaningless? A correlation is not a smoking gun but it's far from meaningless.

Comparing two locations is fine. When you get into territory such as: "Southern states are more religious and also have more teen pregnancy, ergo religion is correlated with pregnancy" that it starts to get sketchy, especially when on that individual level you note that more religious teenagers are less likely to get pregnant than their irreligious peers--Southern states are just poorer in general.

You sure can switch off your critical thinking about studies when it suits you. The people in these studies weren't identified as atheists. Just not very religious. This has been pointed out to you before. Don't you think you should answer this point before the next time you link these studies? They don't say what you claim they do.

It is a fair point, and yes, there are atheists who are religious--some 1-2% of American Christians (iirc) are atheist, and there are atheist Unitarian Univeralists, etc. Any religion has its share of atheists within it. And of course there are theists who are totally irreligious. Sometimes that line between religious/irreligious and theism/atheism is conflated, probably because so many atheists are anti-religion, and often use the stats of people with "no religion" as the numbers of atheists (which you can actually see on that very freethoughtpedia link you gave me).

So yes, even trying to talk about "atheists on average" being more aggressive, impulsive etc. isn't necessarily true--its "non-religiouson average", but there are religious atheists and irreligious theists. So yes, I think you do have a point and I should be perhaps a bit more care in my wording.

You asked for executed atheists and I generously left off the obvious atheist prisoners of war and Jewish humanists, and that's still too much, you have to change the goalposts to 'atheists executed for atheism'. Whatevers.

Welll....yes. Yes very much so, because I thought that was the point. If you just wanted to say that atheists have died for reasons totally unrelated to atheism than yes, absolutely, I am sure, in every era atheists have died.

Sensationalistic news headlines based on studies. There's a difference between 'sensationalized' and 'not true'.

There is a difference, but those headlines are both sensationalized and also not true. Science reporting in the mainstream media is infamously terrible.

We only expressed concern at the news that we are the most distrusted minority in America. It's also what we experience in daily life. Why don't you go to a Catholic site and chide them for complaining about persecution when other Christians are dying in other countries. Why are you bothering us?

I am sorry for that one? For me those anti-atheist attitudes and state atheism and similar anti-religious forms of atheism are tied together--not rightfully so.

LOL, YOU bring up the crimes of communist regimes and say we're hypocritical to point out that people with whom you share MANY beliefs (as opposed with our one lack of belief) also committed their share of atrocities?

Oh please. Those "many beliefs" don't include the actual key one worth highlighting, right? The use of force and violence? You know? By all means, criticize me if you find fault in me, but don't criticize me because someone else who believed in the Eucharist thought it was okay to torture.

And yes, it is hypocritical if you do accuse all Christians or lump them under the Inquisition.

And back up to 25,000 open churches by 1959. The justification for the persecution was that the clergy was organizing resistance against the state. Remember, you are the one who keeps harping on WHY atheists were killed, otherwise I wouldn't dirty myself pointing out how a totalitarian regime rationalized its murders.

Resistance against the state---suppressing religion. The churches "went back up" after rules relaxed during WWII, but you cannot say they were left alone. The Church (or religion in general, if you'd prefer) will always "go back up" when it is allowed to. You can't destroy the human spirit I don't think. Even in the most hateful of times, there are those who keep it alive, and will die to do so throughout all ages.

http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Percent...statistics

.....

I prefer the criminological studies I previously linked (yes, through a freethought site, but it's easy to follow the sources). As far as I know, the Federal Bureau of Prisons does not distinguish between non-religious and atheist.

ANOTHER link to "Freethoughtpedia?" The very same "pedia" that tried to claim Pol Pot was a Buddhist? "Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people"? God help me. But you said you prefer the studies they used with respect to prison populations aaand... okay. Well, that cool, lets "follow the sources". I am nothing if not open to this.

First, they have a random string of info they admit was "floating around the internet", and they literally have no other info on where it came from. They actually are asking for any random reader to step forward and find a source for this info--post first and ask questions later I suppose.

They also cite "The New Criminology" from Schlapp and Smith (not to be confused with a newer book from Taylor et al)..... wow. Its written in 1928. Like....almost 90 years old. Apparently this book was written in order to prove that criminal behavior was caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, and not from a lack of moral training.

I don't really have anything to say to this. I get a few thousand results when I google for this book. Apparently it was an unpublished study, and was written in a very sensationalized format. Very obscure paper since we now know that criminology is quite a bit more complex. Atheists seem to like it though, because 4 out of the first 10 results I got were actually from atheists clinging to this particular study. And if you think that conflating "irreligious" with "atheist" is flawed (because some atheists are religious), this (or really, how some atheists have chosen to interpret this article) is to conflate "atheism" with "lack of any sort of religious training". Welp! You seem like a thoughtful person so I hope I don't need to say more about either of these.

Freethoughtpedia is like some bizarro atheist (or "free thinker") version of conservapedia isn't it?

Since the Scots did not bother to try to distinguish the atheists from the merely non-religous the statistic says nothing about atheists. That said, I believe the reason atheists are under-represented in US and Canadian prisons is that presently atheism is a position that most atheists think their way into, and thoughtfulness is not a typical criminal trait. If atheism becomes a norm, I would expect our prison representation to also become 'normalized'.

Really? I usually think of atheism as sort of a bit of a default (weak atheism anyway), and then both strong atheism and theism are that which you need to "think yourself into" a bit. But now that I have reflected on it some, I suppose maybe weak theism might be the default instead.

But you are right, if they were to study atheism in prisons, it would need to be straightforward "are you theist or atheist or unsure?" type of question. Or do the "Do you believe in God, a higher power, or neither?" question as seems popular in some studies, since actually quite a few (21%) of self-described "atheists" will also turn around and say they believe in God. I can get you the source for that as well. I fear the complexities of studying these sorts of correlations go quite deep.