I would not take any stock in this, they can say anything they want.
First, second or third degree?
Nope. Never done any of those sins.
Then you are in quite a small minority.
But to your point, yes, each and every time we sin we do indeed choose hell, which is, in essence, choosing atheism.
I can tell you the prison one is very true. 0.07% of the prison population are atheist.
Source?
Also, not to be difficult, but I’d like to use the standard that atheists use for evidence.
When someone is incarecerated, there are forms to be filled in. Next of kin, age, previous address etc. They are also asked the religion with which they self identify. You can obtain this information via the Freedon of Information Act. Which, to save you some time, someone already has done: fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-prisoners-less-likely-to-be-atheists/
Interesting.
As Mark Twain said: “There are lies, damned lies, and statistic.”
So, speaking from your experience, as American parole boards discriminate unjustly in favor of Christians, do Muslims and other faiths also feel a need to pretend to be Christian?
I think you are right. Correlation does not imply causation.If there is truth to the correlation, I suspect the meme misses the point. Such things would not be the result of being atheist, the person’s atheism would likely be “supported” by being better off in life. If you can be secure and successful and see it as entirely your own merits, what need have you of God? While certainly not applicable to each and every atheist out there, I’d suspect that would be a large, contributing reason for any statistical significance, should there be any correlation.
It’'s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle…
Plus, the insistence some groups have regarding literal historical interpretations that are at odds with what’s known in the sciences, and a failure to grasp what, while such interpretations have always existed, so have others. That holding that the Bible does not speak on the sciences is not just some new 20th century thing. It would therefore seem to them that their education in some fields are at odds with religion.
But this is all speculative on my part.
Does this mean that Aristotle, Plato, Aquinas, Newton and Einstein had lesser I.Q. than Dawkins?
I must ask what the religious background of the people conducting the polls is, because there is this fun thing called confirmation bias. I have Aspergers Syndrome, and have a high average IQ. What does that prove? It proves I’ve had an IQ test that’s it. I’m also wondering if they ask people what their religious beliefs were when they took the IQ tests because mine were never asked on any of the three IQ tests I’ve taken because they don’t seem to ask questions like that. My guess is that when they do a correlation between religious views and IQ they’re basing it on what they say their IQ is and not what it actually is. My IQ tests were done with actual people in an actual building and not on the internet. For the record, my mother has a genius-level IQ (146) and my father did too, neither of them atheist well my father’s dead and he was Lutheran anyway (IQ 140). I am no genius, but I am not stupid and I wasn’t raised by people who are stupid. I know you’re not going to like this but you are not smarter than Augustine of Hippo or Thomas Aquinas. I am not either. I find a serious lack of humility in your post.
It might help if yocu read the paper.
