Now Grey, don't get too confused will you? Haven't learned the difference between US State and Federal prisons yet?

To quote from your linked paper:

"Federal inmates were surveyed for the first time
in 1991. During the period that interviews were
conducted, 1,409 State prisons held
1,059,607 inmates, and 127 Federal
prisons held 89,072 inmates. Since 1991,
when the previous survey was conducted,
the State and Federal prison population
grew by 51%."

Now, it becomes obvious that the number of Federal inmates is approximately 8.4% (in 1991)

Now at Table 1.15 "Table 1.15. Number of sentenced inmates in Federal prisons, by the most serious offense, 1990 and 1995-97"

We see the total as being 98,944 inmates held by federal prisons in 1997, but that is certainly within the limits of error, because people get incarcerated and released on an ongoing basis, as evidenced by the 3856 held in temporary custody (in first link). It is quite apparent that Denise Golumbaski worked for a Federal agency and supplied data on Federal prisons and is not an "urban myth".

To try and have this evidence discredited by a confusion on your part won't stand. What you should do now is try change tactics and claim that it is irrelevant to the discussion, even though you have already engaged with it and tried to discredit it.

Ludwig,

I would go the other way. Governments are chasing their tales because the plebs are demanding the government to fix their every woe. It's impossible to pass laws for every eventuality and all human behaviour. The Nanny state is a failure. It breeds people who take no responsibility for their own lives, and no respect for themselves. It also disempowers people who have an ounce of common sense.

Grey,

I found the US figures hard to swallow myself, which is why I quoted the UK figures. For what its worth, I thought Denise Golumbaski's signature and title lent it weight - urban legends tend to avoid such easily verifiable facts. The FBI and Ms Golumbaski have had 10 years to publish an objection, and AFAICT they haven't.

But on reflection you are right in one aspect - my choice of "declared Atheist" was fortuitous. Declared Atheists (as opposed to someone who doesn't bother to say what they believe in) are a fairly well defined mob. They have higher education levels, higher income levels, and since declaring yourself to be an atheist carries some stigma, particularly in the US, they have thought long and hard about their moral stance. Where my good luck comes in is that people who have good education, high levels of income, and have spent a long time thinking about society and what makes it work aren't likely to be criminals. If atheists tended to come from the other end of society the figures would of been reversed. Theists come from a broad cross section of society and so you would expect their crime rates would match the general population - which is in fact what you see. If there was some way of selecting well educated, higher income, pious theists I expect their figures would be similar to the atheists.

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. Having a job, race, gender, income levels, assets - these all show good correlation to crime rates. Religion doesn't - which is what your and my searches of the www seem to reflect, BTW, because if they did someone would be crowing about it.

Which, of course, all goes to support my point. Having a absolute basis for your morals, as opposed to an absolute moral system has no effect on behaviour.

Pericles – you say: “How about being your own "ultimate authority"?” Of course an atheist can be their own ultimate authority. That is exactly what the original article was saying. The point is though that all moral statements then by an individual have only the weight or authority of that individual.

But you immediately contradict yourself by then making pronouncements about the wrongdoing of others, as you perceive them, and you expect others to take notice of what you say. No, if we are our own ultimate authorities then by definition we don’t need to listen to anyone else. The child abuser just has to say that by his own ultimate authority he has not done wrong and no one can say that that is incorrect.

In contrast, it is quite correct to condemn hypocritical Christians who say one thing and do another. They claim that there is a standard of objective morality given by God that they aspire to and so it makes sense to measure them against that standard. But there is no standard for the atheist – he is his/her own ultimate authority and he/she can declare anything to be “moral” for themselves, including abusing children if they so desire.

Yabby – you say: “even you would know the difference between machines and
organisms, which are biological entities”. The defining characteristic of a machine is not what it is made of – it can be made of anything. What defines something as a machine is simply that it has no control over what it does: outside forces or the nature of its physical make-up compel it to do or not do things.

If people are machines then, appearances to the contrary, we have no control over any of our actions, thoughts or beliefs. All these things are driven by the mindless physics of matter. And if that is true then all discussion and debate is just a waste of time. But of course, if it is true then we can’t stop ourselves from doing whatever we happen to do anyway!

my god. GP really believes this crap. he really believes christians are aspiring to an objective morality.

GP, organisms of various species do in fact have brains, that can
be programmed by their environment. Now if a church, sect, cult
etc gets hold of a 5 year old child and brainwashes its mind to
believe certain things, how free is that child really?