You can claim people are not religious if you like, but we in the end can only take peoples word for it. In other words if some says to me they believe in god, whether of not they go to church is irrelevant.
Lets forget jails. Lets look at overall societies "Next in line are the Norwegians, British, Germans and Dutch. At least sixty percent accept evolution as a fact and fewer than one in three are convinced that there is a deity. There is little teenage pregnancy , although the Brits, with over 40 pregnancies per 1,000 girls a year, do twice as badly as the others. Homicide rates are also low – around 1-2 victims per 100,000 people a year.
At the other end of the scale comes America. Over 50 percent of Americans believe in God, and only 40 percent accept some form of evolution (many believe it had a helping hand from the Deity). The U.S. has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy and homicide rates are at least five times greater than in Europe and ten times higher than in Japan."
americanhumanist.org/hnn/archives/index.php?id=219&article=7
There is no doubt that atheist societies are more moral than religous ones, every stat supports this conclusion.
Common sense and hands-on evidence don.t. That conclusion is bogus to its very core. It simply can’t happen that way. You discredit yourself when you make such statements. Regarding your statistics, it used to be said about them, that “liars figure and figures lie.” There are organizations, out there, that deal (and have dealt in the past) directly with the general public in very large numbers. The people they deal with have come to these organizations for the sole purpose of obtaining help with primarily “ethics” problems. One such organization is the Church of Scientology - despite what you may think of them from television indoctrination.
As you no doubt know, the CoS has had a less than remedial relationship with God, in its past, however, now, that relationship seems to be getting decidedly better (I think). In its early years, the CoS consisted primarily of young people who had run away from their homes and, thus, any little bit of church they might have had. When these kids came to the CoS, all of them, to the one, indicated that they were “born into such and such religion but didn’t practice it.” They knew little about Christianity and even less about what their religion held that the others didn’t.
But, the common thread among them, was the drug-use, lack of sexual self-control and other “criminal” or, near-criminal, activities that led them to the need for a change in their lives. Today, the CoS has several side-endeavors, the purpose of each is to help the incarcerated, the wayward and the alcoholic, for example.
The truly religious cannot be enticed, as a general rule, to breaking moral rules. Some, on occasion do, but, in general they do not. For those few who do break the rules it can normally be attributed to their failure to think the ethics through. This is especially true of the young. The younger the person, the less solidly he or she is swayed by morality and ethics.
A few years ago, I worked with an agency that distributed psychological tests for honesty, ethical and religious underpinning, regard for employers in general, regard for other members of society, drug use tolerance, and work-ethics. These psychological evaluations were created by Ph D’s who studied in the field and were used by private and public companies largely because pre-employment lie-detection testing was outlawed in the US. These types of tests are still in general use in the States.
Invariably, those without any moral upbringing did the worst by a wide margin, and their legacies usually followed closely behind them. If an employer called these peoples’ previous employers and was able to get the previous employer to tell them anything (as the use of such information by a current potential employer could result in a lawsuit against the previous employer.) about the ex-employees, they normally heard real horror stories of disdain of supervisors, disdain of the “company” generally, theft, on-the-job drug use, and severe lack of work-ethic.
Those people that were brought up in a home environment that was religious, inculcated with morality, was churched, that continuously taught them right from wrong, they were the pillars of the workplace - even as youngsters. They were not job-hoppers. They did not lack a work ethic. They did not break rules. They did not steal from employers, co-workers, or their public. They did not lie to cover their butts. They did not lie to the public.
There’s so much more that could be told. There’s so much more documented - by all of these providers of such testing as well as the companies that use them. Clearly, and without any doubt whatsoever, any so-called statistics that attempt to show that the unchurched/atheists are as moral, or more moral, than the churched/theists, are dead-wrong bogus. If you even attempt to debunk this, you will have done your fellow atheists a severe disservice.
As a one-time practicing Atheist, I have been on both sides. I have known dozens - perhaps hundreds - of churched and unchurched people. I have seen with my own eyes. I have witnessed through the lenses of the psych-testing company, and history shows that the worst offenders at exhibiting disdain for life, liberty and happiness - especially of others - rests almost completely in the private sanctuaries of the godless.
jd
