Anyone Raised by a strict Fundamentalist family?

[JohnM81]

Actually, she's wrong. As you can see from here and here, Christians make up about 82% of the US prison population, but only 76.5% of the total US population. So Christians are actually more likely than the average person to commit crimes. Note that my source is the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Incidentally, the non-religious, while making up approximately 14% of the US population, only make up 0.2% of the prison population, so it would seem that people who have independently decided that (for example) it is morally wrong to have children eaten by bears just because they called you "Baldy" are of higher moral calibre than those who would worship someone who does just such a thing as a prophet. Who would have thunk it?

Interesting statistics matched by some impressive spin on your part. Prison is place where there is a massive outpouring of evangelism. So no doubt many convert in prison. You offer no data as to how many were Christians before prisons and how many converted due to this evangelism. Without that data your point is unsubstantiated.

[Darth Wong]

WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF RACE, ASSHOLE?

There is a dictionary definition of "race", and you either don't know what it is or you don't care. This makes you either an idiot or a lying sack of shit, and I'm betting it's the latter.

[JohnM81]

(to the mods: sorry about the double post, also, could a mod please fix my url tag)

And incidentally, John, a recent study by the Bana Research Group showed that the divorce rate in America is higher amongst Christians than it is amongst other religious groups, and much higher than that of atheists. The highest divorce rate, in fact, was amongst fundamentalist Christians.

Combine this information with the data I gave in my last post about prison statistics, and tell me what sensible conclusion can be reached regardings atheist ethics vs Christian ethics.

Barna's study is flawed. If you take a listing of people who have been divorced once or more you get the 25% general population divorce rate. When you do that a person who has been divorced 3 times only counts as one divorce. If you count each divorce then the rate goes up to 50%. So this approach masks which group actually has more divorces by ignoring repeated divorces. It's like the difference between a linear mean and a weighted average.

With that said, Im not saying Barna is wrong. But his data is inconclusive without verifying studies that don't count multiple divorces as one divorce.

[Buddha]

Barna's study is flawed. If you take a listing of people who have been divorced once or more you get the 25% general population divorce rate. When you do that a person who has been divorced 3 times only counts as one divorce. If you count each divorce then the rate goes up to 50%. So this approach masks which group actually has more divorces by ignoring repeated divorces. It's like the difference between a linear mean and a weighted average.

With that said, Im not saying Barna is wrong. But his data is inconclusive without verifying studies that don't count multiple divorces as one divorce.

Even with what you put to the contrary there is no way that it disproves the fact that the particular group has a higher divorce rate. I am not interested in that, however. I am interested in knowing what you are trying to say with this. Do you think that you are the only one (and your group as a whole) who has the purest morals in the world? Can you prove that your morals are better than a HIndu or someone else's religious standards? I also want to know what your idea of a "division" means. You say that they are no longer applicable and have put forth a very dodgy definition of race. The typical labels like black, white, asian, and hispanic do not take in the many factors of nationality and individual affiliations. Do you think that the original intent of Paul was to tell people that it was okay to marry other races? Does this make sense with the times in which he lived and what he may have felt personally?

[Darth Wong]

(to the mods: sorry about the double post, also, could a mod please fix my url tag)

And incidentally, John, a recent study by the Bana Research Group showed that the divorce rate in America is higher amongst Christians than it is amongst other religious groups, and much higher than that of atheists. The highest divorce rate, in fact, was amongst fundamentalist Christians.

Combine this information with the data I gave in my last post about prison statistics, and tell me what sensible conclusion can be reached regardings atheist ethics vs Christian ethics.

Barna's study is flawed. If you take a listing of people who have been divorced once or more you get the 25% general population divorce rate. When you do that a person who has been divorced 3 times only counts as one divorce. If you count each divorce then the rate goes up to 50%. So this approach masks which group actually has more divorces by ignoring repeated divorces. It's like the difference between a linear mean and a weighted average.

With that said, Im not saying Barna is wrong. But his data is inconclusive without verifying studies that don't count multiple divorces as one divorce.

Red-herring, liar. The study proves that Christian fundamentalists have the lowest proportion of people who did not divorce. The number of times the divorcees actually divorced does not have any bearing on this fact. Moreover, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that the rate of multiple divorces will diverge dramatically from the rate of single divorces. Do you seriously think that the group with the lowest number of divorced people will shoot forward to the head of the pack because its smaller number of divorcees did it so many times that they bumped up the average?

As I said, you're doing exactly what I expected: you're hiding in shadows and uncertainties and clinging to false hopes, because you refuse to accept the logical conclusion staring you in the face.

[SirNitram]

Except, of course, Barna did say this:

Link

Multiple divorces are also unexpectedly common among born again Christians. Barna’s figures show that nearly one-quarter of the married born agains (23%) get divorced two or more times.

I don't like Barna. His math is good but he brings enough rhetorical and idealogical baggage to require a C-130. He openly states he thinks Atheists and Agnostics should have the highest rate, and is left grasping for straws as to why.

[Lusankya]

Actually, she's wrong. As you can see from here and here, Christians make up about 82% of the US prison population, but only 76.5% of the total US population. So Christians are actually more likely than the average person to commit crimes. Note that my source is the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Incidentally, the non-religious, while making up approximately 14% of the US population, only make up 0.2% of the prison population, so it would seem that people who have independently decided that (for example) it is morally wrong to have children eaten by bears just because they called you "Baldy" are of higher moral calibre than those who would worship someone who does just such a thing as a prophet. Who would have thunk it?

Interesting statistics matched by some impressive spin on your part. Prison is place where there is a massive outpouring of evangelism. So no doubt many convert in prison. You offer no data as to how many were Christians before prisons and how many converted due to this evangelism. Without that data your point is unsubstantiated.

Oh, how cute. The little boy thinks that prison evangelism is so effective that 99.6% of all atheists who are exposed to it convert.

[Tiriol]

My only actual encounter with fundamentalists was with two Mormon missionaries (they were jolly surprised when I actually talked to them, knew about their church and its history and were even more surprised when I knew about the historical church and Christian dogmas). They were passable enough, although I only talked to them once or twice; there was still something that made me a little bit suspicious around them, I just don't know what.

In more humorous note, my mother's cousin has a strict fundamentalist mother. When my time in high school (Kallion lukio) was done and I graduated from there, she (I don't think I've ever met her) sent a post card to congratulate me. She quoted a Biblical passage which I think is attributed to Moses; however, she added my name there. It was a sweet gesture, really (the quote was about wisdom that comes from God or some such, I've misplaced the card so I can't look it up), but I had a small chuckle with my friend when I pointed out that she added my name to a Biblical passage and then right under it named that passage (a very bad case of dry humor: this would mean that my name appears in the Old Testament). However, my late grandfather had a particularly poor opinion of her and they often clashed over opinions (my grandfather was an atheist). He thought of her as a deluted, sad case and even a little bit scary - apparently she liked to read a random Biblical passage every day based on a form of lottery and her zealous submittance to a single book made grandfather nervous.

[wautd]

Actually, she's wrong. As you can see from here and here, Christians make up about 82% of the US prison population, but only 76.5% of the total US population. So Christians are actually more likely than the average person to commit crimes. Note that my source is the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Incidentally, the non-religious, while making up approximately 14% of the US population, only make up 0.2% of the prison population, so it would seem that people who have independently decided that (for example) it is morally wrong to have children eaten by bears just because they called you "Baldy" are of higher moral calibre than those who would worship someone who does just such a thing as a prophet. Who would have thunk it?

Interesting statistics matched by some impressive spin on your part. Prison is place where there is a massive outpouring of evangelism. So no doubt many convert in prison. You offer no data as to how many were Christians before prisons and how many converted due to this evangelism. Without that data your point is unsubstantiated.

Evangelism, the religion for scum, by scum

[Broomstick]

Ah, evangelicals...

I once worked at a clinic where we had a significant number of such, so much I used to call the place "Fundy Central". (A lot of it had to do with the limited pool of people willing to watch other people piss into bottles for minimum wage). Anyhow, at one point they kept telling me that Jesus would save me no matter WHAT terrible things I had done in life. After which, I swear, it became a pissing contest as to who had been the biggest sinner, or knew the biggest sinner who had come to God. I'm telling you, one-up-manship on evil deeds.

After one such session I looked them all and said "You know, I haven't done anything nearly as bad as any of that. Really, I just haven't sinned in that manner. Are you saying I have to go out and do something really evil or I don't qualify?"

See, that's what they don't get - they are OBLIVIOUS to how they look to the outside world. They come across as if you have to sin big before you can be saved, they are obsessed with death, and that whole cannibalistic ritural worship thing is just icky.

[Imperial Overlord]

I've heard of that behavior before, Broomstick. From what I understand (which is limited) the eviler they were (and they do tend to exaggerate their "sins") the more divine grace they received in being "saved". So yeah, it really is a one-up-manship contest with the same kind of lying and exaggerating. They're waving their "Jesus expended this much effort to save me" dicks in each other's faces.

[Darth Wong]

Ah, evangelicals...

I once worked at a clinic where we had a significant number of such, so much I used to call the place "Fundy Central". (A lot of it had to do with the limited pool of people willing to watch other people piss into bottles for minimum wage). Anyhow, at one point they kept telling me that Jesus would save me no matter WHAT terrible things I had done in life. After which, I swear, it became a pissing contest as to who had been the biggest sinner, or knew the biggest sinner who had come to God. I'm telling you, one-up-manship on evil deeds.

That's because most evangelicals are bad people. They were raised in a stifling atmosphere of religious conformism where they were taught what rules to follow but not why, other than "God says so". As a result, they literally don't have any ethics of their own. Naturally, when they rebelled as teenagers, they did all the things they were told not to do, and then when they inevitably did harm to themselves, they came running back to the faith. Every one of them tells the same sad-sack story of "I sinned, but one day I woke up and I realized that this wasn't the way to live my life, and I put myself in the hands of the Lord, yadda yadda yadda".

It's a simple-minded morality tale which they tell, in order to teach people that when you stray from God, you do terrible things, and when you come back to God, those terrible things stop. Obviously, the story doesn't work unless you truly did terrible things when you strayed from God. And the more terrible those things are, the more powerful the message is.

This is why people like me just confound them. Happily married, two kids, never committed adultery, don't smoke or do drugs or drink or break the law, and don't believe in God. They literally can't compute that such a person can exist. One guy once responded to my argument on those grounds by looking at me and saying "You may not know it, but Christ has obviously been working in your life". This is the kind of idiot raving that passes for intelligent discussion in fundieland.

After one such session I looked them all and said "You know, I haven't done anything nearly as bad as any of that. Really, I just haven't sinned in that manner. Are you saying I have to go out and do something really evil or I don't qualify?"

See, that's what they don't get - they are OBLIVIOUS to how they look to the outside world. They come across as if you have to sin big before you can be saved, they are obsessed with death, and that whole cannibalistic ritural worship thing is just icky.

Of course they're oblivious to how they look to the outside world. They consciously do everything in their power to ignore the outside world.

[Lusankya]

Hey, don't diss the evangelicals too much. Clearly they (especially the ones who target prisons) must have such a powerful conversion tecnhique that well over 95% of all atheists who are exposed to it convert. In fact, I believe that JohnM81 will either provide evidence of this in his next post or concede the argument. How's that for conviction?

[Themightytom]

My only actual encounter with fundamentalists was with two Mormon missionaries

Some mormons came to my kun fu school and the head isntructor intercepted them. It was like the unmovable objects meets unstoppable force. I think the isntructor ended up attending a service and we ahve two mormon students now.

Throw an amway salesman in there and you'd have the trifecta

[Lagmonster]

This is why people like me just confound them. Happily married, two kids, never committed adultery, don't smoke or do drugs or drink or break the law, and don't believe in God. They literally can't compute that such a person can exist. One guy once responded to my argument on those grounds by looking at me and saying "You may not know it, but Christ has obviously been working in your life". This is the kind of idiot raving that passes for intelligent discussion in fundieland.

That's not intelligent discussion. That's the equivalent of shoving a finger in your chest and saying, "I'm right, you're just too damn stupid to realize it". I've noticed that an awful lot of fundie 'debate closing statements' amount to statements where they reasssure themselves of how right they were. It's like watching them press a giant reset button on their foreheads to purge themselves of everything you said and re-assert their confidence in their original position. You can come back to them 24 hours later and have precisely the same argument over again, at the end of which: 'BLIP', reset button.

[Darth Wong]

This is why people like me just confound them. Happily married, two kids, never committed adultery, don't smoke or do drugs or drink or break the law, and don't believe in God. They literally can't compute that such a person can exist. One guy once responded to my argument on those grounds by looking at me and saying "You may not know it, but Christ has obviously been working in your life". This is the kind of idiot raving that passes for intelligent discussion in fundieland.

That's not intelligent discussion. That's the equivalent of shoving a finger in your chest and saying, "I'm right, you're just too damn stupid to realize it". I've noticed that an awful lot of fundie 'debate closing statements' amount to statements where they reasssure themselves of how right they were. It's like watching them press a giant reset button on their foreheads to purge themselves of everything you said and re-assert their confidence in their original position. You can come back to them 24 hours later and have precisely the same argument over again, at the end of which: 'BLIP', reset button.

Agreed. Some of them have such a powerful reset button that they actually forget you're an atheist the next time you meet. I had a coworker like that. I literally had to tell him I was an atheist dozens of times, because each time the subject came up, he obviously closed his mind so completely to what was being said that he couldn't remember any of it.

It was actually quite amazing to behold. I knew the guy for years, saw him typically at least once a day at the office, and had more conversations with him about religion and spirituality than I could count, and yet, after all of that time, he would still say things like "So wait, do you mean that you don't believe in any kind of God at all?"

[Themightytom]

wait Mike's an Atheist??

[Broomstick]

That's because they just don't believe in atheists. You must be kidding, right? Right?

[wautd]

That's because they just don't believe in atheists. You must be kidding, right? Right?

Atheists are just people angry at God