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

[Freddy]

Freddy:

So you don’t think that someone with no religious beliefs could state that genocide is morally wrong?

Anyone can make a statement. Your challenge is to provide a sound moral argument for morality with purely atheistic assumptions. You haven’t done that yet.

It wasn’t a statement. It was a question. Do you honestly think that there are no secular arguments against genocide? If the answer is in the negative then that would answer the second question as well. That you wouldn’t be able to mount one yourself.

I gave the following scenario many moons ago in a similar discussion. Someone is holding a gun to the head of a child. He wants to exact revenge on someone by killing the kid. He is angry beyond words with the actions of a religious figure. It’s your job to talk him out of it. Mention anything whatsoever to do with God or divine retribution or religion in any shape or form and he’s going to go over the edge and pull the trigger.

Is it possible for you to offer a secular argument that will persuade him not to kill the kid?

 

[Freddy]

But difference is Christianity faith requires all Christians follow rules or face consequences, whereas Atheism does not require same of all Atheists

I don’t drink and drive because it’s an idiotic thing to do. If there were no rules against it I still wouldn’t do it. But you’d say that you don’t drink and drive because you’d have to face the consequences as well.

Isn’t that really beside the point?

 

[ATraveller]

Sociologist Bradley Wright’s 2011 book Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites…And Other Lies You’ve Been Told had a section on crime.

How many in each group (self-identification) had been arrested:
Protestants: 9%
Catholics: 11%
Other Religious: 13%
Religiously unaffiliated: 15%
So here, you see the difference is quite small.

But differences grow when looking at levels of religious attendance. What he found was young adults who attended religious services weekly were a lot less likely to physically harm another person, steal or damage property versus those who attend monthly or less.

 

[Freddy]

Sociologist Bradley Wright’s 2011 book Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites…And Other Lies You’ve Been Told had a section on crime.

How many in each group (self-identification) had been arrested:
Protestants: 9%
Catholics: 11%
Other Religious: 13%
Religiously unaffiliated: 15%

When looking at levels of religious attendance, he found young adults who attended religious services weekly were a lot less likely to physically harm another person, steal or damage property versus those who attend monthly or less.

That looks pretty scientific. If they find the guy who broke into my house earlier this week then I’ll ask him if he goes to church. That should be the clincher.

 

[ATraveller]

That looks pretty scientific. If they find the guy who broke into my house earlier this week then I’ll ask him if he goes to church. That should be the clincher.

More scientific than anything you wrote. Are you a sociologist?

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

That looks pretty scientific. If they find the guy who broke into my house earlier this week then I’ll ask him if he goes to church. That should be the clincher.

More scientific than anything you wrote. Are you a sociologist?

No. But I met one in a bar once in Toledo.

 

[ATraveller]

No. But I met one in a bar once in Toledo.

Wow! And like magic, you become a sociologist with a PhD in the field in the span of a few hours. Good for you.

 

[Aquinas11]

I don’t drink and drive because it’s an idiotic thing to do

Some people drink and drive because they find it exhilarating, others because they don’t want to wait or pay for a cab. Point is nothing in Atheism can objectively say they’re wrong

 

[upant]

If you find some atheists that say that there is no good or evil in this life (and we are not talking about an ultimate universal morality in the sense that the universe could care less what is right or wrong) then tell them that Freddy says they’re idiots

how do you prove they are wrong. you have no ground to stand on. your opinion means no more than theirs. they may say there are people who are anti-social but they are not evil. you have no high authority to fall back on. it is your opinion against theirs. good(?) people today claim abortion is moral… Catholics still claim abortion is immoral. you say sex outside marriage is okay, I can fall back on God’s word where it says it is adultery and immoral. you only have feeling.

Combine those and you have a solid base for a moral code. If you don’t follow the moral code, and it’s one that allows us to live in relative harmony, then you suffer the consequences. Not always. But often enough.

they have a base for an individual code to live by until something comes along that requires a change to it and then they will change it because there is no reason not to if it benefits the self.

 

[HarryStotle]

I have to do no such thing. Notwithstanding the impossibility of the request. I coukd equally ask you to prove he’d lost his belief. But whether he was or was not a believer was not the problem. It’s what he did was the problem. And, I keep repeating this, having a belief does not stop you doing wrong. Otherwise the jails would be all but empty.

Any belief that is completely contradicted by someone’s action is not a real belief it is a pretence, at best.

If you truly think that killing all religious believers and destroying all religious institutions is an indicator of a shared religious belief, there isn’t much of a point to discussing the matter with you.

It would be tantamount to someone eating a banana at the same instance as proclaiming, “Bananas are deadly poisonous to humans.”

 

[englands123]

So no drugs , no rise of crime ?

I find that difficult to imagine. Drugs is huge part of today but so was alcohol illegal years ago. Crime revolves so please open the old eyes.

 

[GiftofMercy]

So no drugs , no rise of crime ?

I find that difficult to imagine. Drugs is huge part of today but so was alcohol illegal years ago. Crime revolves so please open the old eyes.

I did not say that,
I said here where I am crime is on an exponential increase due to drugs, specifically the addiction of ICE , coming mostly from the Mexican Cartels. The Cartels are said to be involved in the satanic, exorcists talk about it. Just the same as we bless our food and say grace, they do the opposite with each batch of their ICE.

If there were no drugs , satan would find another way to cause people to temptation to crime I am sure.

We are talking addictive drugs, those with addictions that do ridiculous things like rob banks in broad daylight, and then try and run off on foot because they are so desperate.
The rise in the theft of cars and the burning out of these cars after they have been used in crime.
Illegal alcohol did not cause this addiction that led to crime.

What do you mean crime revolves

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

No. But I met one in a bar once in Toledo.

Wow! And like magic, you become a sociologist with a PhD in the field in the span of a few hours. Good for you.

Don’t be silly. It took many weeks of hard work.

Freddy:

I have to do no such thing. Notwithstanding the impossibility of the request. I coukd equally ask you to prove he’d lost his belief. But whether he was or was not a believer was not the problem. It’s what he did was the problem. And, I keep repeating this, having a belief does not stop you doing wrong. Otherwise the jails would be all but empty.

Any belief that is completely contradicted by someone’s action is not a real belief it is a pretence, at best.

Couldn’t agree more. Which is a problem when you start doing a head count of the members of any given religion. If you discount all those who have not followed their beliefs at some point (and conclude that it wasn’t really a belief at all) then the numbers drop precipitously.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

I don’t drink and drive because it’s an idiotic thing to do

Some people drink and drive because they find it exhilarating, others because they don’t want to wait or pay for a cab. Point is nothing in Atheism can objectively say they’re wrong

You missed the point. We both agree it’s wrong so we don’t do it. Mostly everyone agrees it’s wrong so we make laws to compel those who don’t. That’s the way the world goes around.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

If you find some atheists that say that there is no good or evil in this life (and we are not talking about an ultimate universal morality in the sense that the universe could care less what is right or wrong) then tell them that Freddy says they’re idiots

how do you prove they are wrong.

I steal something from them and ask them if I was doing right or doing wrong. Guess what they’d say.

 

[HarryStotle]

Couldn’t agree more. Which is a problem when you start doing a head count of the members of any given religion. If you discount all those who have not followed their beliefs at some point (and conclude that it wasn’t really a belief at all) then the numbers drop precipitously.

Something we can agree upon. Merely because someone claims to be a believer of some religion does not mean s/he is a real follower of that religion. Which goes to show that surveys and such about religious beliefs and crime have a high degree of error built into them.

A better methodology would be to track religious practice with criminal behaviour. Things like attendance, sacrament use, fasting, almsgiving, reading Scripture, time volunteering, and so forth; correlated to criminal behaviour. I doubt there would be much correlation.

Now if we could identify specific behaviours that attend to atheism, perhaps we would have something to base conclusions on.

Oh wait…

… there are no consistent moral or immoral behaviours because pretty much any behaviours are consistent with atheism.

Perhaps that means atheism provides no grounds whatsoever for any systematic moral beliefs.

I suppose that kind of proves my point…

Materialism (atheism) claims the underlying substrate of existence is matter and nothing else. A material basis to existence – purposeless matter devoid of any moral aims cannot impart value since value isn’t a property of matter. We cannot get a moral order from a material causal one.

Ergo atheism that denies any intelligent moral purpose to the ground of existence cannot magically conjure up value from a material ground of existence.

 

[upant]

I steal something from them and ask them if I was doing right or doing wrong. Guess what they’d say.

it is against societal law. there is no right or wrong in atheism as much as you want it to be. just societal norm and that changes. cali just changed the rules on shoplifting, up to $950 it is only a fine. the cops don’t even bother to arrest people for it. yes, shoplifting is on the rise.

why do you need a right and wrong, good and evil? your world view doesn’t require it

 

[englands123]

Aww ok sorry I get your point.

Crime revolves because it will never stop. The majority of crimes without violence occur because of greed and power in my opinion.

As long as greed and power rule this world so will crime. The authorities can stop one bad seed but another will take it’s place and be wiser than than the last.

 

[Freddy]

Now if we could identify specific behaviours that attend to atheism, perhaps we would have something to base conclusions on.

Oh wait…

… there are no consistent moral or immoral behaviours because pretty much any behaviours are consistent with atheism.

Hey. Something else with which we can agree.

But you could, in general, asign certain moral attitudes to anyone who lives within society. Because to live within society you generally need to follow the moral rules of that society. So you could say with some degree of confidence that any given person would agree that murder was wrong. Or that stealing was wrong. And that person could have a religion or be an atheist.

But to be specific is more difficult. Just because a religion says that, for example, contraception is wrong, it doesn’t follow that a person claiming to be of that religion necessarily agrees with that moral position.

So there are no…how did you put it? There are no consistent moral behaviours. At least on a personal level. Even with an understanding of divine retribution, people generally decide themselves what is allowable or not. Just like them pesky atheists.

 

[GiftofMercy]

In my region, the violence of crime and its outlawishness has increased considerably. Even 5 years ago what is happening now , would not have been dared.

I blame the media and video games and role playing games etc.

The downward spiral of societal desensitisation continues.