[+/-] Which comes first: mental illness or religion?
In a recent study of 39 Ohio and Michigan women - all acquitted by reason of insanity in the deaths of their children since the 1970s - about 15 had religious-themed delusions, said Dr. Susan Hatters Friedman, a psychiatry fellow at Case Western Reserve University.
Another study of 56 Michigan mothers referred for psychiatric evaluations from 1974-1976 after killing their children found nearly a fourth of them experienced religious delusions, said study co-author Dr. Catherine Lewis, an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut Health Center.
Deanna Laney, Andrea Yates, and others who kill their children commonly cite God, the devil and other religious influences for their actions.
These murderers are the same intolerant people screaming for tolerance of their beliefs. They are the same people who believe their beliefs are not being tolerated if an opposing belief is also tolerated. These bigots and cowards are the same people who voted for Chimpy McFlightsuit. These are the same people who are so secure in their beliefs –- lacking any room for doubt -- that they are willing to murder to prove it.
I believe that atheists are more moral than the religious:
- Atheists, being a moderate proportion of the USA population (about 8-16%) are disproportionately less numerous in the prison population (0.21%)
- Japan (the most atheistic nation in the G-8) has the lowest murder rate while the United States (the most Christian nation in the G-8) has the highest. Japan used to have much stronger religious faith, and a state religion, and guess what: Japan was remarkably aggressive and militaristic when "Shinto" was at its peak, and during WW2, when its Emperor was regarded as a God.
- Louisiana, with America's highest church attendance rate, has twice the national average murder rate.
- If atheism causes violence, why are right-wing fundamentalists unable to find a shred of statistical evidence to back that claim up?
Why do church steeples have lightening rods? Lack of confidence? :)
posted by Nanovirus @ 09:22 permalink
your thoughts? 8
8 Comments:
You can post stat after stat on this, but they won't see it. And I have always said the same, atheists are more "moral" than non-atheists. You don't see us going on crusades, invading other countries, basically being hypocrites. (shrugs)
Education couldn't have anything to do with this.
My guess is that most of the prison population could not define Atheism, and therefore would be unlikely to identify as such.
NYC has the most atheists in America and an extremely high murder rate. Coincidence?
Dave:
Since the NYC murder rate is at an all-time low, my guess is that you puled both of those "facts" out of your ass.
An all time low, but still not so good compared to real America.
And only at an all time low because Giuliani put the fear of Jesus into your progressive atheist friends.
You say: "If atheism causes violence, why are right-wing fundamentalists unable to find a shred of statistical evidence to back that claim up?"
Does the Gulag Archipelago ring a bell? How about Crime and Punishment? 1984? All these books deal with the problems and the cost in human terms of Godlessness in Government. If the Communists had not banished God from the public sphere, then they would never have been written. Today's modern Intellectuals are as afraid of God as the Communists were back then.
Holy shit! You're right! I'd better return all those satanic toys to the store. Wouldn't want my lil' ones strayin' from righteousness or something....
The artocities of the Soviet Union are often bandied about as showing that atheism causes people to do horrific things, but we need to remember that the USSR had its own state religion: Leninism. Marx, Lenin and Stalin were revered as demigods by many people. The press often showed Lenin and, later, Stalin, as handing out food and clothing to the peasants who had had almost nothing under the Tsar. They were treated as heros, prophets, father figures. I personally believe that it is the religious mindset that causes this adulation, since those with that personality will worship SOMETHING, no matter what.
Another reminder: The Jews in Russia suffered for centuries under Russian Orthodox Christians who murdered them, raped them, forced them to live in barren areas where raising crops was almost impossible. Catherine the Great ordered all the Jews out of Russia, until she conquered land to the northeast and had to deal with hundreds of thousands of Jews living there. She made laws that restricted their movements and their ability to do any business with Christians. The pogroms under the tsars are legendary in their cruelty.
Also, when the Soviet Untion fell and the people returned en masse to the churches, it showed that the USSR was NOT an atheist nation, only that the religions had gone underground. Government officials may have been atheists, but it is a good bet that the man in the street was a covert Christian. If this is true, then many of the horrible things done in the USSR were perpetrated by believers.
Jennifer Smith
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