Bugsy, Sorry mate, but you haven't done your research...

Firstly, the data is purportedly from the 'Federal Bureau' of prisons and is timed to line up with the survey from said organisation which contains details on all prison populations....not just federal. But even if you accept that only federal statistics were released in email, the difference is still outside the standard error given in the real report.

Secondly, the survey where all the information is gathered is also available and contains no questions regarding religious affiliation. This makes it highly improbable that the information was easily available for response to an email request.

Finally, urban legends like this often invoke the name of someone who sounds 'authoratative' (which the poster/emailer has personally confirmed!).

Rstuart....David Nicholls, the president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia Inc., tells us that atheism is the default ethical position of humanity...shouldn't this mean that people of 'no religion' would be considered atheists?

Rstuart
"What triggered this thought was seeing posts on the link you dislike from sociologists, who said the figures were essentially meaningless because religion was a lousy way to predict crime rates."

Actually, they said that not using a multivariate analysis with the many other possible factors make statistical results meaningless, not that religion as a factor in and of itself was meaningless.

of course, all this is beside the point, as the question is not 'does a particular belief system cause people to obey the law more than others?' (Note: the important phrase is 'obey the law', not 'behave morally', which would be nigh impossible to determine considering the different belief systems have different moral rules). This isn't to say your question is bad or meaningless, just that the question being discussed is whether there is an objective foundation for morality without reference to God.

Bugsy
"In fact, when taken as a full quote, he is not "making a clear concise statement" about anything you seem to be arguing about at all. He actually makes the case AGAINST you."

I really think you need to read a bit more carefully. The quote is from the conclusion of his book 'A very short introduction to ethics"
and he does indeed say that he cannot find a foundation for ethics because nature doesn't have a concern for 'right' or 'wrong', or from earlier in the book where he discusses how nature has 'is', but no 'ought'. Blackburn's solution is naive optimism that we should accept there must be some sort of foundation we don't know about and behave as if our moral views match it (i.e. attempt to enforce our views on others).

Grey,

While the data quoted may be a myth, as it is difficult to corroborate without contacting the US Federal BOP the figures actually do line up somewhat. Your 'debunking' of the figures leaves a lot to be desired however. Lets go over it again:

The figure as at Sept 30 of all inmates in Federal Prison (NOTE: NOT "State and Federal, just Federal) stands at 98,944 inmates.
Refer TABLE 1.15
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cpus97.pdf

The data presented in the Swift article link states that at 5 March 1997 the total number of inmates was 96968.

The data does not not appear to be "timed to line up" (they were nearly 6 months apart), there was no "standard of error" presented, even though the difference in the numbers was 1976 inmates (or less than 2% and less than the numbers held in custody and not surveyed). If I am in error, could you please point me to where the where the "standard error" was stated for the Federal inmate total?

Whatever, it sure as hell wasn't the order of magnitude you're making it out to be.

After cruising around the Federal Bureaus website, it does appear that they do actually take religious data, although it appears that they don't release it in their publications. They register most offenders through the entry surveys, for chaplaincy services etc.

As for the Blackburn quote, whatever he was saying (and I'm sure your later interpretation was closer to what he was trying to say), it sure wasn't "So without something outside of nature, he is saying those concepts [ie morality etc] don't exist." That's your interpretation, not his. It's a "god of the gaps" argument as far as I can tell.

I read plenty carefully, I suggest you write more carefully. Mate.

Oh, and just as a disambiguation on your definitions there Grey old fella:

Many people state they are non-religious and yet retain a belief in God or Gods. A lot of people even here state they are not religious and yet don't class themselves as atheistic in that they do believe in a higher power or multi-dimensional beings that deliver eggs once a year or whatever. The point is, that to state that you are an atheist means that you do not believe that any gods exist (by definition), one can still believe 'religion' is bunk and not be an atheist (I actually like these people, they are far less certain about things).

There you go, I hope you are less confused, because you repeated it so many times it was getting annoying.

Grey: "Actually, they said that not using a multivariate analysis ..."

I don't recall seeing those words on any web page I looked at. To see if I missed some I googled the terms below, which is just the original search I did with the word "multivariate" included.

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=Golumbaski+multivariate+FBI+prison

That search returns no hits, so I am pretty sure no page I looked at said anything about multivariate analysis.

Grey: "question being discussed is whether there is an objective foundation for morality"

Is it? I provided the prison in my answer to this post from Graham:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7544#118236

Read it. Its a hypothetical conversation between myself and a thief, where I try to convince the thief stealing is wrong. I loose the argument. If the thief's behaviour does indeed depend on whether he has an "objective foundation for his morality" then I would loose in real life, and we would be overrun with secular thieves. But what I try and show is when you measure what happens in real life, to real people who stole, it appears whether they have an "objective foundation to their morality" doesn't effect their behaviour.

The point I am making is whether there is, or is not, an "objective foundation for morality" is irrelevant. The question is about as meaningful as asking how many angels fit on the head of a pin. I don't want to get in the way of you seeking an answer it of course, but don't for a second think I am debating about it one way of the other. I don't care what the answer is. Frankly I think this sort of logic is about a relevant to human behaviour as Freud's theories on penis envy.

Rstuart...I may have been getting my wires crossed with thinking about other recent posts. Essentially correlating claimed religion with any other variable may or may not be useful (based on the research results). I would suggest it isn't (as I think actions and involvement in religious activities would be a better indicator of true belief), but the other point is that any such study MUST do a multivariate analysis as there are many other contributing factors. Without such analysis any suggested results are completely worthless. For example, you can find a correlation between women taking Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and reduction in risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), whilst in fact HRT increases the risk of CHD, but other variables involved in those taking HRT were the real reason behind the reduction in risk of CHD.

Regarding your hypothetical dialog. Unfortunately, it only shows that objective morality is not sufficient, as opposed to showing that it is not necessary.