BUT…

If you do think about it, and become an atheist it doesn’t mean you are any less likely to commit crimes, simply that you are too smart to get caught!

The UK is a highly secular country (despite our official religion) and the vast majority of those “no religions” will be people raised without a religion who have never given religion or god any thought at all. Unfortunately this makes them easy to convert while in a prison situation as they have no critical thinking defenses.

Religious radicalisation in prisons, amongst muslim predominantly, is quite a problem at them moment, and i’d imagine that even very mild muslims self identify as such while in prison as it provides a ready made support network with other muslim prisoners and chaplains.

I think that the figures indicate that those not raised within a religion (cultural atheists) are almost as likely to commit crimes as those raised within a faith. The proportions are nearly the same as the general population after all. However among self identifying atheists, who have actively decided against religion as a viable option, there is much less chance of criminal behaviour.

No, it really isn’t. Again, ignoring the fact that Protestants don’t seem to be on this at all, nor is there a N/A, they could have chosen no religion. Additionally, even if they didn’t choose no religion, no religion is the only category significantly under-represented (according to 2006 data). Other than Jews and Hindis, the other religions are significantly over-represented in the prisons.

To be fair, if you use 2001/2005 data for no religion, then it seems to be equal across the board (31-44% of the population).

I think that the figures indicate that those not raised within a religion (cultural atheists) are almost as likely to commit crimes as those raised within a faith. The proportions are nearly the same as the general population after all. However among self identifying atheists, who have actively decided against religion as a viable option, there is much less chance of criminal behaviour.

I’d be interested in seeing whether or not the parallel ran true for those who actively chose a faith. Perhaps it is the thoughtful approach to decisions rather than religion that reduces criminality.

The possibility of 60 million US atheists isn’t absurd, but it is reaching from the current numbers. Furthermore, when we have these UK numbers and we now make the distinction that ‘non-religious’ =\ ‘atheist’, we are remiss if we don’t point out that this error is often made by atheists as well.

I had to laugh at this one. Many organized atheist groups will cite absurd stats like 30 million or 60 million atheists in the US by intentionally conflating people who choose “No religion” with atheists and agnostics when it suits their agenda, but when it comes back to bite them in the ass, they back away from it quicker than flies come to shit.

I don’t think 30 million in the US is absurd at all. If over half the “non-religious” in the US are atheists then that’s about right isn’t it? I’m listening to Tom Flynn on Point of Inquiry right now telling me Pew thinks it’s more like 66.6% of the “non-religious” that are atheist. I’m going to have to look into it more until I’m really convinced but I don’t understand why it would be absurd to think that atheists are 5-10% of the US population.

So it said atheists thought more about ethical matters than the religious, but I didn’t think about how “non-religious” would be. One would think that the “non-religious” would think about that stuff even less. That is…IF they declared themselves non-religious for lack of thought about religion, as opposed to thinking a lot about it and deciding against -organized- religion.

What would be best is a survey grouping these results with the results of how they would answer the question:

“Prior to incarceration, how much thought did you give to questions of morality or ethics or religion? Rate yourself on a scale of 1-10.”

I had to laugh at this one. Many organized atheist groups will cite absurd stats like 30 million or 60 million atheists in the US by intentionally conflating people who choose “No religion” with atheists and agnostics when it suits their agenda, but when it comes back to bite them in the ass, they back away from it quicker than flies come to shit.

Better to stick to the truth in the first place. Otherwise some atheist group will end up claiming a billion atheists in the US. (I’ll let ya’all figure out the problem with that statistic!)