Always Talking the Talk, But Not Always Walking the Walk

The religionists of our country seem to claim they are better and have more moral lives due to their affiliation with god/christ. And some fellow human beings are doing so, fanatically. Let's take a moment and look at the reality of it.

Divorce rates

They claim to be happier, specifically, because they have a god who sanctifies this holy union. Don't you think that if they really were then they would be the ones who stayed together forever? Well, they don't. That's my assumption but let's look at this report. Here's the snippet I found most interesting.

"	Divorce rates among conservative Christians were significantly higher than for other faith groups, and much higher than Atheists and Agnostics experience.

George Barna, president and founder of Barna Research Group, commented:

"While it may be alarming to discover that born again Christians are more likely than others to experience a divorce, that pattern has been in place for quite some time. Even more disturbing, perhaps, is that when those individuals experience a divorce many of them feel their community of faith provides rejection rather than support and healing. But the research also raises questions regarding the effectiveness of how churches minister to families. The ultimate responsibility for a marriage belongs to the husband and wife, but the high incidence of divorce within the Christian community challenges the idea that churches provide truly practical and life-changing support for marriages."

 I highly recommend you read the whole report, there are many other fascinating statistics on the subject. On this chart, I discovered that divorce rates would actually be greatly reduced if we would only just wait until we were in our mid to late thirties! The impression I've always gotten from the religious community is that it is better to go from your parent's house right into a marriage and then immediately procreate and multiply. Considering the main statistic that this country identifies primarily religious, it can be surmised that the majority of those people getting married early are the ones contributing to the high divorce rate. So, help me understand - they believe in the sanctity of marriage and better family values which equates into being more moral, right? WRONG!

Crime & Incarceration Rates

This chart reflects a variety of statistics, let's look at the murder and theft rate only. It says that the higher the religious identification, on average, the higher the rate than those who are not religiously affiliated. Hmmm? Sounds to me there's not a whole lot of morality going on with those religious folks if they have higher crime rates than non-believers. Another rather interesting statistic and backs up the previous chart, is that our jail cells have a HUGE population of religious identifying individuals. Close to a whopping 84% consider themselves religious. According to this report, less than 1% are atheists/agnostics. Somebody really has to explain to me how people who consider themselves as having a moral compass can claim such a large chunk of the prison population, if they expect me to swallow that their morality is a higher standard than mine.

Abortion rates

Looking at this from a purely numbers game, I ask the question - if only 10% to 15% of the people identify as non-believers and the 85% to 90% are believers, are you really going to tell me that all the atheists are the only ones getting abortions in this country? According to the Guttmacher Institute, a whopping 78% of women getting abortions claim to have a religious affiliation. I'm doing the math and that tells me 22% of abortions are carried out by atheists or agnostics. I do believe there's a whole lot of lying going on about what they believe and what they actually do. Doesn't hypocrisy automatically equal not moral for you, like it does for me?

To a religionist who claims their faith gives them morality, it should mean their lives reflect a code of conduct showing the world they can distinguish from right and wrong by their actions. If they live a life filled with deeds that are ethical, upstanding and of value to others, then we can say they are moral. So, in other words, if they pontificate that they are more moral, then I would expect to see the numbers truly reflecting that.

This article from 2005 'Societies Worse Off When They Have God On Their Side' agrees with me in my assumption. People of religion who claim to have the moral high ground need to start acting like atheists. Their morality would improve dramatically.