In this issue 017:
"Of Babies and Bath Water"
Why are atheists grossly under represented in the American
prison system? Why are the majority religious systems which
claim to hold the higher ethic and morality failing to live
up to their claims?
Green Pastures takes a look at the prison system, several
"prison outreach ministries" which are created by a wide
spectrum of religions, and explores the responses given in
explanation for the current state of affairs.
In the next issue 018:
"History revisionism Christian style: Denying Adolf Hitler."
What are the words of Adolf Hitler in regards his religious
beliefs? What are the explanations of fellow religionists in
response to Hitler's religion?
Green Pastures takes a look at the phenomena of the history
revisionism which deny Adolf Hitler's religion and explores
the explanations offered by fellow religionists for his agenda
of genocide. Commentary solicited from a broad spectrum of
religionists include the denial that Christian hate groups
across the world are in any way Christian organizations.
In a future issue 019:
"What do Christians think of Wicca and Pagani?"
What are some of the claims made against Wicca and Pagani? How
does the actual ideological attributes of Wicca and Pagani stack-up
against these allegations? Who benefits from the perpetuation
of these myths about Wicca and Pagani? What's the history of
Wicca and Pagani?
Green Pastures takes a look at the ignorance surrounding Wicca
and Pagani and explores the need for the "monotheistic" religions
to demonize life-affirming religions.
Of Babies and Bath Water
What motivates your polite behavior?
One of the reasons often given for teaching one's children
religious values is to impart upon them a sense of quality
ethics and morality in the hopes of creating useful,
non-destructive, polite members of society. The belief is that
people require deity constructs to live ethically otherwise one
is predisposed towards rape, thievery, and generally anti-social
behavior. The argument usually goes something like the
following:
Christian: Having no one to answer to grants you atheists
no moral reasons to keep from doing as you wish, raping
and killing as you see fit. My god will punish me, however,
if I behave like that so I won't.
Atheist: That's nonsense. Historically the reverse has
been true. In the past people like me who didn't hold
deity construct beliefs were raped, tortured, and murdered
by you Christians -- all under the guise of being justified
as the wishes of your gods. And while you might find the
idea of rape and murder a fun time, I most certainly don't.
Christian: But those weren't TRUE Christians! And even if
they were you can't hold me responsible for their actions
so long ago. If they rape and murder they can't be TRUE
Christians!
Atheist: The only way to tell if someone is a "true
Christian" is to ask them and to look at the historic record.
All of history shows us that the only "true Christian" is
the Christian asserting the claim at the time. As for holding
you responsible, your own religion demands that all of
humanity be held responsible for the actions of only two
individuals. Additionally you know the bloody history of
Christianity and yet you joined it any way; thus you must
be in agreement with it.
Christian: But that's different! In the first place my
god is holding us all responsible for the sin of Adam and
Eve whereas you -- a mere mortal -- is holding all of us
Christians responsible for the actions of non-Christians.
My god isn't the moral equal to you mere humans -- most
especially to you atheists.
Atheist: It is in no way different since it was men which
created your deity constructs and concocted the elaborate
mythologies which you believe in. Your religion holds
billions of innocent people guilty for a pretend crime which
never took place and yet me -- a "mere atheist" -- can simply
point at history and prove that the religion you claim you
willingly joined has been guilty of extreme amounts of
tyranny, genocide, and injustice.
Christian: You're going to have to prove that men created my
god and then you're going to have to prove that sin doesn't
really exist. Then you're going to have to prove that all
those people who raped, tortured, and murdered through the
centuries were really Christians.
Atheist: It would take a number of years for me to cover the
archeological and anthropological evidence which shows the
origins of the Christian religion and, even while doing so,
you wouldn't accept the scientific evidence any way. I can
also show you the quotes from Christians down through the
centuries and also show you the body counts they're responsible
for -- all upon the orders of your gods, I might add.
Christian: That's nonsense! The fact that they raped,
tortured, and murdered _shows_ that they weren't TRUE
Christians! No TRUE Christian would do any of that! We
have to answer to our god and that alone keeps all of us
TRUE Christians from committing crimes. Anything you show
me is evidence that atheists or non-Christians committed
those atrocities and tyrannies you're speaking about!
And stop saying that I have "gods." There is only one god
and that's my god!
Atheist: Thus we find the true reason why Christianity has
the bloody history that it does. Few Christians ever
take responsibility for the actions of their fellow club
members.
When it is shown that the actions of fellow members are
no longer politically acceptable, said Christians suddenly
become atheists in your eyes, allowing the tyrannies to
perpetuate themselves generation after generation. You
ignore your responsibility to police your own and then
leave it up to your deity constructs to punish your fellow
Christians "after they're dead," allowing the ideologies
which drove them and drives Christianity today to remain
unchanged, generation after generation.
And I suggest you look up the meaning of the word "Elohim."
It has been my experience that the Christian will fall silent at
this point else start quoting Christian mythology -- an attempt to
make the voices go away, perhaps; that still, small voice that's
telling them everything the atheist has said is undeniably true.
What's disturbing is the implied statement that if the Christians
who believe atheism leads toward criminal behavior ever stop
believing in their deity constructs, they will, as newly-discovered
atheists, start engaging in criminal behavior. I would not want
Christians to be living next door to me if this were at all true!
It's a good thing for society that such a belief is an obviously
evidenced lie.
"So, what other systems have been proposed by atheists
to keep people from committing crimes against other people
any time that they thought they could get away with it?"
Eric Roode (sdn@mv.mv.com) responded:
"Pick any legal system that has ever existed that has not
been based explicitly upon the threat of eternal damnation
by God. Say, to pick two quick examples, the legal systems
of the United States and the former Soviet Union.
Certainly there was enough threat of punishment to keep
most of the people in line."
In fact the threat of punishment by secular sources isn't what
keeps most of humanity from committing crimes -- it is the fact
that humans are social animals who find the commission of most
crimes emotionally repugnant. No deity constructs or secular
punishments are required.
"Days of past and future blend into where we are today" - The Ship:
While it's undeniably true that the Christianity of the past has
been the ideological basis of extreme evil and motivation for
inhuman tyranny and atrocities, what about the Christianity of
today? Does contemporary religion in general imbue humanity with
enviable virtues that are lacking in the atheist community?
The next issue of Green Pastures will cover the many Christian
hate groups in the United States and around the rest of the
world yet today we'll focus on the criminal population residing
within the United States prison system.
First, we need some raw numbers. The reasons I have offered
these values will become clear later on. We're mostly interested
in the religious beliefs -- of their lack -- in the prison
populace.
95% of inmates in state prisons were men. Of those
men 47% were in prison for violent crimes, 25% for
property crimes, 21% for drug crimes and 7% for public
order crimes.
5% of inmates in state prisons were women. Of those
women 32% were in prison for violent crimes, 29% for
property crimes, 33% for drug crimes and 6% for public
order crimes.
Males comprised 93.0% of the Federal population, Females 7.0%.
The average Federal prison inmate age was 37 years old.
Race Percentage
White 58.0
Black 39.1
Asian 1.5
Native American 1.4
Hispanics 26.3
Citizenship Percentage
United States 75.2
Mexico 7.6
Columbia 4.7
Cuba 3.0
Other 0.5
Sentence Percentage
Less than 1 year 2.1
1-3 years 13.1
3-5 years 13.7
5-10 years 25.4
15-20 years 21.7
More than 20 years 11.4
Life 2.7
Offense Percentage
Drugs 60.5
Robbery 9.9
Firearms, Explosives, Arson 9.5
Extortion, Fraud, Bribery 6.1
Property Offenses 5.3
Immigration 2.1
Continuing Criminal Enterprise 0.8
White Collar 0.8
Courts of Corrections 0.8
National Security 0.1
Miscellaneous 1.5
What about the religions of these people?
These are the statistics that the prison system provided as a
matter of course. The Department of Justice Statistics
Clearinghouse, [1] however, will perform statistical look-ups
from their data base on all other statistics that the general
populace requests for a fee which is determined by the number
of references which are returned by a keyword search.
I found that many prison officials will provide information
freely upon request if you telephone them, and I have offered
all of their addresses and telephone numbers (where provided)
below.
None of the prison authorities I contacted publish statistical
information on the religious affiliation of record that is part
of many prison system's registration. None of them published
the number of births of deaths which take place in the prison
system (though Amnesty International does provide statistical
information on the causes of deaths within prison systems.)
All of the individuals I contacted either by telephone or by
email who responded to my request agreed that the percentages
of religions (as well as lack of theist beliefs) held by the
prison populace was -- surprise of all surprises! -- closely
equal to the religious beliefs of the populace that prison
serves. Thus nation-wide, in a country with the horrid statistic
of finding itself with roughly 85% of the populace professing
Christianity, 85% of the prison populace is Christian.
Fredric: I don't believe there really is much information on this
currently. Some institutions don't even ask for this type of data.
However, I would say that most inmate populations pretty closely
mirror the general area from which they emanate. For example, our
educational level for the inmate population is only slightly lower
than the general population in Erie County.
Those who found that the percentage of atheists in the prison
system were under represented didn't have any clinical or causal
explanation. The one suggestion which made the most sense was
from Charles Fiterman:
If you notice the statistics published by the prison system,
it tends to support Mr. Fiterman's summation of the state of
affairs. There is no indication that holding a religion either
causes someone to engage in criminal activity or to refrain
from engaging in criminal activity; those with the predisposition
towards criminal behavior (either through general lawlessness
or due to desperate circumstance) will engage in criminal
activity regardless of whether they hold a religious belief or
not.
That's important to read again: Holding a religion does nothing
to preclude acting criminally, nor does it in itself make someone
more predisposed toward criminal behavior. Christianity and Islam,
of course, grants the criminal justification for their actions
-- a cop-out of sluffing-off ones responsibility onto the
shoulders of their gods. A good example is pedophiles finding
sanctuary within the Christian church , resting easy in the
knowledge that if they're found out the church will seek to
protect them. (More on this a bit later.) But what prison
officials find is that religion just doesn't impact criminal
behavior one way or another.
The reason why that fact is important is because theists will
tell us that their system or morality and ethics is superior to
atheism. According to that theory the prison system should be
over represented with atheists. It isn't ergo the theory is
false. What we do find is that the Christian church itself is
filled with criminals at its highest levels. The story of the
sodomizing child-raping priest has become cliché in America --
and something of a stereotype which can be misleading. What's
undeniably true is that Christian clergy child sexual abuse is
epidemic in America and pandemic to all brand names of
Christianity.
Austin Miles was a widely-known Christian preacher who traveled
the world and spent all of his waking hours in the service of
his gods. When he started to see what the Christian religion
was actually like as opposed to what he believed it to have been
all his life, he surfaced from the cult long enough to write two
books, "Don't Call me Brother" and "Setting the Captives
Free."
Don't Call me Brother is an excellent and direct look at the
Christian religion from the eyes of one of its best. The
"captive" was Austin Miles and fellow Christians like him who
were duped into their beliefs. Sadly Austin has backslid into
fundamentalism but his brief journey into the light of the real
world left its mark. Most of note for this article was his
eye-witness of how pedophiles are handled by the Christian
religion.
"What did you do with him?" I asked.
"Transfered him out of the district," Schultz replied.
Later, I learned that the offending pastor had been transferred to
Florida from yet another district, where he had been involved in
a similar incident. And Eugene Profeta was kicked out altogether
for tipping his hairdresser twenty dollars!
Incidents of Assemblies ministers found patronizing prostitutes
were on the rise. But that kind of sordid behavior tended to
remain hidden, unless rivalries among preachers provided someone
an incentive to expose the offending minister.
Even though I had become aware of the sexual perversion rampant
among the ministers, I was so wrapped up in the church that I
rationalized it all away. Perhaps god let me see all this to
impress upon me that he needed true ministers through whom he
could work miracles and bring about a revival. And did not
Satan come as a wolf in sheep's clothing, or disguised as an
angel of light? Looking back, I can see I clearly had lost
perspective. Before I was "Saved," I would _never_ have
even considered associating with such people!
Thus what we see in the news almost on a daily basis is an epidemic
of child sexual molestation's by Christian priests. The policy of
shipping these criminals from one church to the next becomes, in
effect (though not, I will be kind, with intention) the creation
of a "dating service" for pedophiles.
No atheist organization has this problem. Why? Because atheists
are on the whole far more ethical and moral than their theist
brothers and sisters. Because atheists don't have huge and
financially well-off organizations protecting them. Because
atheist organizations don't have a priesthood which actively
condones child rape and protects the rapist!
Some numbers from the 1992 World Almanac on world population
demographics. Note: Since 1992 the number of Christians in the
United States had continued the previous three decades of slow
decline and the statistics offered by the World Almanac didn't
appear to offer a break-down of the percentages according to
nation. Actual atheist percentage in the United States for the
year 1996 are around 22%. (George Gallup Jr., in fact, got
caught fiddling the numbers to try to make the decline appear to
have stopped. CODESH and various other secular publications
covered the Gallup attempt to deceive the people.)
Atheists 240,310,000 4.39% 20.37%
Buddhists 314,939,000 5.75% 26.12%
Jains 3,794,000 0.07% 26.19%
Christians 1,833,022,000 33.45%
Moslems 971,328,700 17.72%
Hindus 732,812,000 13.37%
Chinese folk religionists 187,107,000 3.41%
New-Religionists 143,415,000 2.62%
Tribal religionists 96,581,000 1.76%
Sikhs 18,800,500 0.34%
Jews 17,822,000 0.33%
Shamanists 10,493,000 0.19%
Confucians 6,028,000 0.11%
Baha'is 5,517,000 0.10%
Shintoists 3,222,800 0.06%
Other religionists 18,586,000 0.34%
5,480,010,000 100.00%
Christianity is still a minority among the world's religions
(thank the non-existent gods.) And yet religious wars inflicted
upon the world due to Christian, Muslim, and Jewish ideologies
accounts for most of the worlds' woes. Over population around
the world accounts for the cause of such holy wars and yet it is
the Christian religion which is the most vocal about advocating an
end of birth control. Could it be that the reason people join
the Christian religion in the first place is because they're
miserable? Could it be that misery is a prime revenue maker for
the Christian priesthood? Could it be that working to keep the
world miserable, fighting against social progress, and actively
making the world a living Hell is done out of greed?
Probably not. I'll be fair and suggest it's all secondary to
the primary motivational factor: Ignorance and superstition.
Who's in prison, then?
According to all the available information, the average prison
inmate is a white American age 37 serving a 5 to 10 year term
in minimum security for a drug-related crime. And, most
importantly, they are Christian. Accordingly there are a great
many "Prison Outreach Ministries" catering to the Christian
populace within the prison system. I also found several Jewish
ministries and Buddhist support organizations to serve the prison
system yet, as expected, they are few in number.
Though I received a great many responses from Christian "prison
outreach" ministries, the best letter that I received is reproduced
below. Keep in mind that this response is the best that I received.
Since most Green Pastures readers are well aware of the more
typical response expected, I'll not bother to include any of those
that I received. Mr. Kaestner was without a doubt the most honest
and "responsible" answer I received -- yet it's still a far cry
from totally honest.
Note several things about this ministers response:
Dear Mr. Rice:
We have received your E-Mail dated October 9, 1996 in regard to
your question about why are there so many Christians in prison
and not as many Atheists.
When we last contacted you in response to your original
question, we were not aware of the fact that you were an
Atheist and your website is so offensive to the Christian
principles we believe, as well as to our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ. We had thought that you were a Christian minister of
the Gospel who simply needed an answer in response to a question
from a member of his flock. We have since discovered that that
is not the case.
Nevertheless, we will attempt to answer your question and hope
that it will be a help to you, however, this will be our last
correspondence to you and we have no desire to have a continued
dialogue on this issue or any other.
Here is the answer to your question. Jesus said, "Not everyone
who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of Heaven,
but only he who does the will of My Father who is in Heaven.
Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not
prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and
perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never
knew you. Away from Me, you evildoers!'" (Matthew 7:21-23 NIV).
The question that you asked presupposes an incorrect conclusion.
There are many people in this world who call themselves
Christians, but that doesn't mean that they love and serve God,
or live according to the doctrines of the Bible or the Christian
faith. Moreover, there are many people in prison today who call
themselves Christians, and there are two primary reasons for
this. Reason number one, the Bible tells us that, "For such men
are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles
of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an
angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants
masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what
their actions deserve" (2 Cor. 11:13-15 NIV).
We will ask you a question in return, however, I do not wish a
response. If the devil can have so many of his children doing
the will of their father, Satan, and calling themselves
Christians, why would he need an Atheist?
In the days of Christ, the Pharisees and Sadducees believed that
they were doing the will of God because they kept the Ten
Commandments in their own eyes and were meticulous about the
ceremonial aspects of Judaism. However, they did not know the
Son of God or recognize Him when He stood before them in the
flesh. And Jesus recognized them for who they were. He said to
them, "You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to
carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the
beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in
him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a
liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you
do not believe Me!" (John 8:44-45 NIV). The devil is, above all
things, deceitful and it serves his motive better if Christ and
true Christians receive the blame for the evil that Satan and
his servants commit.
Down through history there has been more bloodshed, more wars,
more torture, more violence, more acts of wickedness and evil
conducted as a result of religion than can be imagined. Much of
that occurred at the hand of people who claimed to be Christians.
During World War II, it was the Nazis who murdered
millions of Jews and yet, while they were doing it, they called
themselves Christians! Christ Himself was Jewish. He does not
hate Jewish people. And as a Gentile, my Savior, Jesus Christ,
came into the world as a Jew. The Bible was written, both Old
Testament and New, by Jews that loved and served God. True
believers in Christ, even if they are Gentiles, have much to be
grateful for to the Jewish people. It is the devil who hates
the Jews, not true Christians. The reason for this is because
our salvation, Jesus Christ, came into this world as a Jew and
Christianity has its roots in Judaism.
The second reason why there are lots of Christians in prison is
because, as a result of ministries like ours, and chaplains who
love and serve Christ, many prison inmates come to the Lord for
salvation after being imprisoned. However, not all of them
remain faithful to Him after they get out of prison.
What I would recommend to you is that you purchase a copy of
"Halley's Bible Handbook", it is published by Zondervan
Publishing House, and read something of church history. I think
it may be of help to you. Also, several books that would
explain the hypocrisy that has gone on in the church are, "The
Seduction of Christianity", by Dave Hunt, "Beyond Seduction", by
Dave Hunt, "Prophets of Psychoheracy", by Martin and Deidre
Bobgan, and "Psychoheracy" by the Bobgans.
I hope this has been helpful to you.
------------------------------------------------------------
Bible Believers Fellowship, Inc.
P.O. Box 0065
Baldwin, NY 11510-0065
Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature
Lastly I've managed to find a few studies which indicate that
holding a religious belief tends to make one a "slightly" more
moral individual than an individual who doesn't hold theistic
religious beliefs. I've offered it here -- even though I have
made no attempt to provide an unbiased, objective report -- there
is some merit in the possibility that, while most people in the
prison system are Christians, there remains the belief that
religion still has a baby in all that bath water:
When it comes to lying on job resumes, cheating on exams
or plagiarizing reports, folks who consider themselves
devout churchgoers often leave their ethics at the chapel
door when they return to their homes and jobs.
In fact, according to a soon-to-be-released report, the
ethical behavior of people who say religion is "essential"
to their lives is often not distinguishable from the
behavior of those who describe religion as "unimportant."
The findings "run counter-intuitive to what many people
expect," says Michael Josephson, founder of the Josephson
Institute of Ethics in Marina del Ray, which researched
and produced "Ethics, Values, Attitudes and Behavior in
America: the Impact of Religious Belief, Gender and Age."
"There's a general assumption that people make that
religious people are more honest than non-religious
people," says Josephson. "They are," he says, pausing for
emphasis. "Slightly."
Josephson based his opinion on the results of interviews
about ethical behavior with nearly 9,000 people, 60 percent
under age 25. More than 5,000 responded to questions about
the degree of their religiosity.
Among other things, the report says 13 percent of the
people who regard religion as "essential" have lied to
get jobs (as opposed to 5 percent of irreligious people);
that 36 percent of the same religious group cheated on
exams as high school seniors (compared with 39 percent
of irreligious people); that 30% percent of respondents
who regard religion as "essential" cheated in college (as
opposed to 29 percent for the irreligious); and that 20
percent of them admitted to submitting other people's
their own (as opposed to 21 percent of their irreligious
counterparts).
There were some brighter spots for the religious group:
Only 18 percent admitted to stealing merchandise from a
store in the past year (29 percent of the irreligious said
they had done so).
And those who say religion is "essential" were less
cynical: They tended to disagree that it is necessary to
lie or cheat to get ahead in society, and were less likely
to say they would be willing to do so. "The religious
people are much more optimistic about their own virtue,"
says Josephson.
What does this it all add up to?
"It sounds like original sin continues to flourish, and that
is not news," says the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, the social
commentator who edits "First things: A Monthly Journal of
Religion and Public Life."
...The institute set out to analyze the overall impact of
religious faith on behavior, without categorizing those who
responded according to their specific denominations or
faiths. Those who responded to questions about religiosity
fell into four groups: those who said religion was
"unimportant;" those who said it was "somewhat important";
those who said it was "very important"; and, finally, those
who said it was "essential" to their lives.
Only when considering the extremes -- the groups who
characterized religion as "unimportant" and "essential" -- were
there any discernible differences in ethical behavior.
Otherwise, the "unimportant" group's behavior was
indistinguishable from the others.'
There is a large body of research that indicates what religious
people think about proper ethical behavior, but a somewhat
smaller body that attempts to analyze how their beliefs
translate into action.
A 1992 Gallup study showed that church members are more
charitable than non-members: 78 percent of church members
had made donations of food, clothing or other property in
the previous year (as opposed to 66 percent of non-members);
54 percent had "directly helped" a needy neighbor (42
percent of non-members did so); and 37 percent "directly
helped" a homeless person (compared with 33 percent of
non-members).
Other surveys show that religious people are somewhat less
likely to drive while intoxicated or steal in the
workplace. But, as with the Josephson study, the manner
in which people characterize their religiosity does not
always seem to have a dramatic effect on the way they live
out their lives. Perhaps that's not surprising.
"One would like to believe that people who think of themselves
as devout Christians would also behave in a manner that is
in accord with Christian ethics," says Neuhaus. "But
pastorally and existentially, I know that that is not the
case -- and never has been the case."
Dear Mr. Swift:
The Federal Bureau of Prisons does have statistics on religious
affiliations of inmates. The following are total number of inmates per
religion category:
Sincerely,
Denise Golumbaski
It's surprising how many people remark to me, "You're an Atheist?
You must have no conscience about committing crime then." Nothing
could be further from the truth. In fact, if we examine the population
of our prisons, we see a very different picture.
In "The New Criminology," Max D. Schlapp and Edward E. Smith
say that two generations of statisticians found that the ratio of convicts
without religious training is about 1/10th of 1%. W.T. Root, Professor
of Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, examined 1,916 prisoners
and said, "Indifference to religion, due to thought, strengthens
character," adding that Unitarians, Agnostics, Atheists and
Free-Thinkers were absent from penitentiaries, or nearly so.
During 10 years in Sing-Sing, of those executed for murder 65% were
Catholics, 26% Protestants, 6% Hebrew, 2% Pagan, and less than 1/3 of
1% non-religious.
Steiner and Swancara surveyed Canadian prisons and found 1,294 Catholics,
435 Anglicans, 241 Methodists, 135 Baptists, and 1 Unitarian. Dr. Christian,
Superintendent of the N.Y. State Reformatories,checked records of 22,000
prison inmates and found only 4 college graduates. In "Who's
Who," 91% were college graduates; Christian commented that
"intelligence and knowledge produce right living," and,
"crime is the offspring of superstition and ignorance."
Surveyed Massachusetts reformatories found every inmate to be religious. In
Joliet Prison, there were 2,888 Catholics, 1,020 Baptists, 617 Methodists
and no prisoners identified as non-religious.
Michigan had 82,000 Baptists and 83,000 Jews in the state population; but in
the prisons, there were 22 times as many Baptists as Jews, and 18 times as
many Methodists as Jews. In Sing-Sing, there were 1,553 inmates, 855 of them
(over half) Catholics, 518 Protestants, 117 Jews, and 8 non-religious.
Steiner first surveyed 27 states and found 19,400 Christians, 5,000 with no
preference and only 3 Agnostics (one each in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and
Illinois). A later, more exhaustive survey found 60,605 Christians, 5,000
Jews, 131 Pagans, 4,000 "no preference," and only 3 Agnostics.
In one 19-state survey, Steiner found 15 non-believers, Spiritualists,
Theosophists, Deists, Pantheists and 1 Agnostic among nearly 83,000 inmates.
He labeled all 15 as "anti-christians." The Elmira, N.Y.
reformatory system overshadowed all others, with nearly 31,000 inmates,
including 15,694 Catholics (half) and 10,968 Protestants, 4,000 Jews,
325 refusing to answer, and 0 unbelievers.
In the East, over 64% of inmates are Roman Catholic. Throughout the
national prison population, they average 50%. A national census of the
general population found Catholics to be about 15% (and they count from
the diaper up). Hardly 12% are old enough to commit a crime, and half
of these are women. That leaves an adult Catholic population of 6%
supplying 50% of the prison population.
From AANEWS
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Green Pastures 017 - GP017.TXT
16/Oct/1996
Ken Stuart (32564ce4.3867760@news.zippo.com) wrote in part:
Year Number of State and Federal Prison Inmates
1980 330,000
1955 503,0000
1990 774,000
1994 1,054,000
Security Level Percentage
Minimum 31.5
Low 29.3
Medium 25.3
High 13.9
From: "Arthur C. Amann" <aca@erie.net>
Organization: Erie County Prison
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 13:05:52 -0500
Charles Fiterman (cef@geode.geodesic.com) wrote:
I suspect several factors. The big one is that most
crime in the United States is drug law related. While
atheists are tolerant of drug use by others they tend
to be a sober group who take their reality straight up.
The prevalence of Assemblies of god ministers committing -- and
getting away with -- child molestation is a horror of the first
magnitude. Reverend E. R. Schultz, District Secretary of the
Florida District of the Assemblies, told me of a seventy-five-
year-old pastor in his district who had recently been caught
molesting a twelve-year-old girl. He had told the girl that it
was time for her to learn about sex, that young boys would teach
her wrong, so he would teach her about it properly.
Nonreligious 876,232,000 15.99%
N-R + A = 1,116,542,000
From: Eric Kaestner <bbfi@baldwin.org>
Organization: Bible Believers Fellowship, Inc.
Date: 09/Oct/96
9/11/93 edition of the _San Jose Mercury News_.
NOT AS I PREACH, By Richard Scheinin
E-Mail to Rod Swift:
Adventist 621
American Indian 2408
Atheist 156
Bahai 9
Buddhist 882
Catholic 29267
Church of Christ 1303
Hindu 119
Jehovah Witness 665
Jewish 1325
Krishna 7
Moorish 1066
Mormon 298
Muslim 5435
Nation 1734
No Preference 13878
Orthodox 375
Pentecostal 1093
Protestant 26162
Rasta 1485
Santeria 117
Scientology 190
Sikh 14
Unknown 4503
--------------------------------
Total 96,968
I hope that this information is helpful to you.
Research Analyst
Federal Bureau of Prisons
STUDIES: ATHEISTS SUPPLY LESS THAN 1% OF PRISON POPULATIONS
by Wayne Aiken, North Carolina Director
AMERICAN ATHEISTS
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