I think that all this demographic and sociological data indicating how self-described Christians or atheists behave must be put aside in order to examine the core of the issue. I’m sure the point I am to make has been brought up on this thread before, but I don’t have the patience to read all twenty pages.
Essentially, this debate is composed of people on opposite sides claiming moral superiority over the other side. I was taught in a high school theology class that every argument begins with an agreement on some sort of premise, and it made enough sense for me to believe it. Now, the Christian here are arguing that, having assumed that there is an absolute standard of morality, and action that does not meet this standard is inherently worse than one that does meet it (obviously a very simple, abbreviated summation of the Christian concept of morality). Most Christians here, and anywhere, have argued or would argue that Christians generally act in accordance with this absolute standard of morality more than atheists (and agnostics, secularists, and whatever). Fair enough.
However, one must realize that this debate then is nothing more than a sociological study for a Christian. This is reinforced by the fact that the overwhelming majority of arguments brought up by those of secular positions have been intended to show that Christians have in fact behaved less in accordance with this absolute standard of morality. So let us suppose that these atheists and agnostics are right. What then? If the godless of the world were more in line with the ideal Christian ethic, would it at all detract from the validity of that ethic? I don’t see how it would. Obviously, it has no theological implications, as even the most horrible human beings are capable of being right in matters not related to morality. They can even be very morally enlightened even if they behave in a way contradictory to such moral enlightenment (we call these ones hypocrites). The converse is also true: a person, or group of people, can be so horrible wrong and misguided in science and philosophy (or theology) and be the nicest person or group of people on earth.
So, ultimately, if Christians admit that Christians should be moral, at least ideally, and I’m sure even the atheists and agnostics will concede that Christians do claim this to be so, otherwise they wouldn’t be arguing there case on this forum, then what we get from hypothesizing that atheists are more moral than Christians is nothing more than irony: that Christians should look to secularists to learn to be more Christian. Or if being a Christian (I mean belonging to the demographic group consisting of people who describe themselves as Christian) is conducive to immorality, then what we have is a paradox:
Christians should then stop being Christian (that is, leave the aforementioned demographic group) in order to better live in accord with the Christian standard of morality.
The atheists are essentially arguing that Christians should cease to be Christians in order to be better Christians.
For the Christian, the debate carries no weight on his beliefs either way, it simply leads to observations about the behavior of his demographic group and leads to one of two conclusions: that Christians in general are generally good Christians, or in other words, good people, better people than most, or it indicates that most Christians aren’t really Christians, as they are immoral people (or more so than people in general). Neither conclusion pokes any holes in the religion or concept of Christianity, only in the demographic group.
Even the second conclusion, to which most secularists argue, is meaningless by itself. The only way to draw any conclusion relevant to the demographic issue (once again, it has no ontological bearing on theology or religion either way) one must be able to compare the behavior of Christians to the behavior of secularists with everything else being equal; there can be no other variables, and this scenario would be almost impossible to create, as we are observing societies, not conducting a controlled experiment. There are many irrelevant factors that leas people to either religious or nonreligious, or moral or immoral. If one finds a positive correlation between poverty and immorality and crime, then finds one between poverty and religious activity, then it would appear, if one ignores the poverty factor, that religious people are generally less moral than others. It is also likely that political liberalism or conservatism may actually influence religiosity (I believe that in this age this is more the case than vice versa), which in turn drastically influence a person’s behavior. One interesting bit of data I once saw, though I don’t have on hand, indicated that political conservative donated more money per capita to charities than liberals. I’d say this is an anomaly, as conservative ideology itself does not advocate equal distribution of wealth or aid for the poor very much. The reason for this salient bit of evidence: conservatives more often religious than liberals. The point is, an irrelevant factor (such as politics) can influence a group of people that may be prone to immoral behavior (not necessarily the case here, but if you’re a liberal, you would probably say so) to behave in a way contradictory to their general nature, like making conservative more generous to the poor or making (assuming that the above mentioned hypothetical conclusion is true) religious people, perhaps generally immoral for other reason, behave more morally.
