Increase of Atheists around the world, increase of crime any coincidence?

[Frankie65]

I don’t know. I’ve forgotten what the thread was about

 

[Spaten]

Not really interested in this whole discussion, but abortion or same sex marriage are NOT crimes, unless they are declared to be crimes (Like in Russia and some Islamic countries). And in the US they are both legal, therefore NOT a crime. Redefining actions you don’t agree with to become a “crime” is not a good foundation for conducting a conversation.

It is obvious that atheism will not follow religious principles. Same sex marriage, sex outside marriage are both accepted practices under secular principles.

Murders, genocides are NOT accepted. This whole attempt to declare atheism as “immoral” is just an attack to declare Christianity as superior. So boring!

 

[Frankie65]

Ok. The point is, these were strongly Catholic countries…Poland still is. Politicians were strongly Catholic and fought against abortion etc.

I know over the last 50 years things have changed.

The ethos of a strongly Catholic country is against abortion because God is against abortion.

So abortion in that country will be prohibited.

Individuals will sin as they always have irrespective of pro life laws.

Pro life laws which are now nearly non existent except in a few countries where the faithful defiantly resist Satan

 

[ATraveller]

I find it fascinating that in most of these posts, they do not question the assertion that world wide crime rates have been going up. A few posters pointed out that crime rates have varied up and down, but the long term trend is down.

There different ways of measuring crime but that varies from country to country. It’s hard to know the global total. Some drugs are illegal. Some countries don’t enforce certain laws that are still on the books. And I could go on.
However, the OP mentioned the UK a bit later on. In the UK, particularly England and Wales, the police services have had their funding cut since 2010(?) and fewer officers on the streets. That’s why violent crimes have been going up the last few years.
I believe there’s little difference between atheists and practising Christians on this matter but atheism or individualised/cafeteria spirituality don’t have the tools to restrain a vulnerable subset of the population.

 

[Frankie65]

Not really interested in this whole discussion, but abortion or same sex marriage are NOT crimes,

See my point above exactly. If you have no belief in God you will not believe that abortion is a crime.
God is creator of all things

All sins are crimes against him and will be judged at each individual’s particular judgement

 

[Frankie65]

You do realise that you have defined yourself into a win-win situation. If someone doesn’t have an abortion then they are almost certainly Christian. If someone does, then they are most certainly not.

Ok so you know I didn’t make this up? Jesus really said it?

‘Jesus Christ said, "lots of people on the last day will say , “Lord, Lord " but I will say to them, away with you, I know you not.”’

 

[Spaten]

See my point above exactly. If you have no belief in God you will not believe that abortion is a crime.
God is creator of all things

All sins are crimes against him and will be judged at each individual’s particular judgement

It is a bad idea to confuse “sins” with “crimes”. A crime is an action which is forbidden by some law, and is punished if caught. At least we should attempt to use clear categories, so we would not talk past each other.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

You do realise that you have defined yourself into a win-win situation. If someone doesn’t have an abortion then they are almost certainly Christian. If someone does, then they are most certainly not.

Ok so you know I didn’t make this up? Jesus really said it?

‘Jesus Christ said, "lots of people on the last day will say , “Lord, Lord " but I will say to them, away with you, I know you not.”’

Then could you please list all the sins that a Christian can commit that denies him or her the right to be called a Christian?

 

[ATraveller]

I mean, I can cherry pick data too. Greenland has an atheism rate of less than 3%, but has the highest abortion rate in the world. Show me the dataset for abortion rate vs atheism rate for all the countries.

You confuse nominalism and self-identification with practising.
There’s a radical difference in behaviour between self-identifying Christians and practising ones. It’s a very consistent trend.
And merely plotting macro level data points against another macro level set fails to control for important and relevant variables.
Plus, you might be surprised many bishops in the Church of Denmark are very lose with their teachings and doctrines like many of the Nordic state churches.

 

[Frankie65]

Ok Freddy how about this.

I’m a bus driver but I don’t drive buses.

I retain the right to call myself a bus driver. I’ll challenge any one of you who disputes I might be a bus driver.

 

[Freddy]

Ok Freddy how about this.

I’m a bus driver but I don’t drive buses.

I retain the right to call myself a bus driver. I’ll challenge any one of you who disputes I might be a bus driver.

Bus drivers? What?

C’mon, this isn’t a difficult question. You have already stated that a woman who has an abortion isn’t a Christian however she may describe herself. So we take a large chunk of Catholics out of the ranks as far as you are concerned. No problem.

Now what if a Catholic has sex outside marriage. If that person still a Catholic or do we remove them from the ranks as well? And what about those who use contraception? Are they in or out? And supporters of ssm. Still Catholic as far as you are concerned or not?

The list could go on but you’ve enough there to give us an indication of your thought process in these matters.

 

[ewohdrol]

Your backtracking your statements. You can’t change the parameters like that if someone points out stats that are not true.

If I will accept your complete change of argument (so you now focus only on governments and legislators not the populus) it still doesn’t account for the very catholic governments of Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina etc. Their abotion rates are high.

 

[HarryStotle]

I find it fascinating that in most of these posts, they do not question the assertion that world wide crime rates have been going up.

It wasn’t merely an assertion. The data was provided with the US as an example.

Crime rates have been going up in the US from 2015 to 2019. Atheism rate going up starting in 2011. The question isn’t decided by long term trends, because the current short term rise in affiliation with atheism may be correlated to a short term rise in violent crime.

We can’t just punt to long term data trends here, because rates of atheism had been stable from 1944 to 2011 at between 1-3% and the crime rate dropped slowly during that period. Atheism has risen recently to 10-11% (2013-2016) or higher (12% in 2017) more recently.

That recent rise may correlate to the recent rise in crime, but it is too early to tell. Just saying it might be revealing. The data does show a recent and definitive rise in violent crime in all areas. See chart above.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

No problem. Throw that data into a spreadsheet and post the plot.

 

[Freddy]

That recent rise may correlate to the recent rise in crime, but it is too early to tell.

I read that coffee consumption has been on the increase over the last few years. I’m not saying it has anything to do with an increase in atheism, or the rise in global warming or even my hair loss. There may be a correlation but it’s just too early to tell.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

We can’t just punt to long term data trends here,

It’s not punting. It is recognizing a statistical truth. If there were a correlation between atheism and the crime rate we would expect to see it in both the long term trends and the short term trends. The fact that we see the exact opposite of that correlation in the long term trends destroys that theory.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

We can’t just punt to long term data trends here,

It’s not punting. It is recognizing a statistical truth. If there were a correlation between atheism and the crime rate we would expect to see it in both the long term trends and the short term trends. The fact that we see the exact opposite of that correlation in the long term trends destroys that theory.

The theory is not destroyed because rising atheism in the long term did not accompany long term lowering in violent crime rates. Atheism rates had been consistently low until recently, so long term downward trends in violent crime could not be attributed to atheism, per se.

Numerous factors are in play here.

If you have data to the contrary, please provide.

There may be other factors for why the crime rate was higher decades ago and trended lower until 2015, but that lower trend is definitely not correlated to rising rates of atheism. In other words it does not prove higher atheism = lower crime rates.

There might be a correlation between higher atheism + higher indoctrination into socialism = higher violent crime rates. I suppose time will tell.

It certainly had been true in Soviet Russia and Communist China among other experiments in socialism/communism, although authoritarian communist dictatorships have ways of hiding violent crime rates among citizens by making genocide legal and therefore not criminal.

I am just not convinced that our current social devolution into atheism/socialism will have a happy ending. That experiment has never yielded human happiness as the result, despite the propaganda.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

That recent rise may correlate to the recent rise in crime, but it is too early to tell.

I read that coffee consumption has been on the increase over the last few years. I’m not saying it has anything to do with an increase in atheism, or the rise in global warming or even my hair loss. There may be a correlation but it’s just too early to tell.

If you can show coffee consumption causes radical change in behaviour, you might be on to something.

The difference is that coffee consumption doesn’t – it might make you less drowsy but doesn’t make you violent.

Sincerely held beliefs, are a different story, however, because actions come from habits which come from sincerely held beliefs about the world.

Admittedly it is complicated, but it isn’t clear that adopting moral relativism as one’s de facto basis for behaviour in life is going to lead to better moral behaviour. Nor is it clear that having no moral principles or moral grounds to guide decisions will prevent people from becoming more violent in response to the actions of others.

A more permissive society with more lax laws might prove to be a social nightmare. It isn’t clear to me that eroding all traditional moral taboos and social controls on behaviour coupled with encouraging everyone to indulge themselves to their heart’s desire will necessarily and naturally lead to a blissful moral order.

We shall see.

 

[MiserereMeiDei]

It’s not as though atheists don’t have their sense of morality informed by their christian and post-christian surroundings. How their moral sensibilities will be altered as the number of christians declines and the number of people with no moral anchor ascends has yet to be seen. Lucky us, we’ll get to watch. I’m betting it’ll be quite horrible. It certainly hasn’t started out well.

 

[niceatheist]

I am just not convinced that our current social devolution into atheism/socialism will have a happy ending. That experiment has never yielded human happiness as the result, despite the propaganda.

During the horrors of the First World War, there were many who had crises of faith as it became apparent belief in God was no constraint on slaughter. Heck, the atheist Bolsheviks gained power in no small part by committing to extract Russia from the nightmarish conflict.