Reply To: Burn Baby Burn
@ Simon
The premise though, that you postulate, implies that a religious god DOES provide morality.
This is simply not the case.
When HUMANS wrote down what they believed to be morals (How bad can you beat a slave before you are being unfair, etc), they simply ascribed what THEY felt to be moral, at the time they wrote it, to what god wanted.
We did not GET our morality FROM gods, we GAVE our morality TO gods.
😀
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@ Strega
As for the prison statistics, as a rule of thumb, the people in prison, just as with the people outside the prison, are statistically, essentially whatever religion their parents were.
IE: Whatever they were raised to believe, is what they believe.
So, sure, many claim to “find god” in prison…and the parole boards are quite familiar with this pattern of claims, and even occasional happenings. Statistically though, if raised a Catholic, or a Baptist, Muslim or a Protestant, etc, the prisoner remains as he was raised.
The “transformation” of the prisoners is not from atheist to theist…its from theist to theist, and, statistically, lasts until they are released, whereupon they find trouble, and not god…or both.
The recidivism rate for those claiming to have found god in prison is about the same as for those that don’t.
In a nut shell, the most common reason for being in prison, when I speak with prisoners, is “I didn’t think I’d get caught…and, I can still pray for forgiveness”.
That tells me that it was simply that some people are unfair to others, for whatever their reasons, and that asking the gods for forgiveness was a get out of hell free card….so they can avoid the responsibility for their actions.
