Boston bombings

[Inferno]

Aught3 wrote:
It's a statistical inference. If 70% of the population is religious then around 70% of a subset of that population would be expected to be religious. Therefore, murderers being a subset of the population would be expected to be about 70% religious. That's a majority.


And yet, we know that inference to actually be wrong, it vastly underestimates the amount of religious people in prisons. The amount of atheists in prison has always been on the order of 0.01-0.33%, which would make the religious amount 99.67-99.99%. (Search for "prison", you'll find four studies.)

The data showing prisoners are <1% atheist and therefore the vast majority of murders are expected to be religious is congruous with the inference I outlined above. Both point to a majority of murderers being religious.

Agreed, but you said 70%, thus actually underestimating the population.
You're still right that they're a majority, of course.

 

[Vivre]

Apparently, Russia warned the US about the bombers in 2011. The article is in dutch but I hope most of you will understand it well enough.

RTAmerica - Did FBI ignore Russia's warnings on Boston bombing suspects?

 

[Metalgod]

It's a statistical inference. If 70% of the population is religious then around 70% of a subset of that population would be expected to be religious. Therefore, murderers being a subset of the population would be expected to be about 70% religious. That's a majority.

And yet, we know that inference to actually be wrong, it vastly underestimates the amount of religious people in prisons. The amount of atheists in prison has always been on the order of 0.01-0.33%, which would make the religious amount 99.67-99.99%. (Search for "prison", you'll find four studies.)

For the sake of fairness, I have to mention a 2012... err... survey? Here's the problem with this "survey": While the previous four actually counted the number of individuals in prisons, this survey focuses on chaplain's beliefs about prisoners. For example, in previous studies Catholics ranked 1st with 40%, protestants second with 35% and atheists (including non-religious?) among the lowest ones with 0.21%.
Yet the 2012 survey ranked protestants first (50%), Catholics second (14%) and the non-religious... third (10%).
So take that 2012 survey with a pinch of salt.

So let's go with the numbers from the earlier surveys, they look like they're more representative.

I would say most of the murders and bombings in the US are not done by religious people.

That's a bold claim, so let's check it out. The clearance rate in 2004 was 62.6% for murder, which is what we're interested in. (The less serious the crime, the less likely it's to be cleared up. Burglary: 13%, Car theft: 13%, Rape: 42%, etc.)

So out of 100 people in prison, we expect about 99 to be religious, one non-religious. That's the first scenario.
I'll actually be nice and check out the second possibility: 85 are religious and 10 are non-religious. (5% didn't respond)

Accepting the 62.6% clearance rate, we can expect another 60 people to have evaded persecution. (100 people = 62.6%, 160 =~100%)

We further have to assume that every single one of those sixty people are non-religious (a bold assumption if there ever was one) and add them into the mix. We're now left with either 99 vs 61 or 85 vs 70. That hardly constitutes a majority... and that's giving you the absolute best case possible.

So no matter how we look at it, your claim is simply false.

When you say the vast majority of abortion clinic bombing you imply there has been more than..1?

Well, yes, actually. Wikipedia lists six bombings and five arsons, another eight were killed, anthrax-threats (655 cases) have been made... And from what I can tell, most of them are associated with "Army of God". A religious crime if ever there was one.

No. I think you dont understand the amount of gang related crime in the US.

I don't know much about gangs in the U.S., so this is an actual question instead of me setting the record straight. How many of the people in gangs are religious?
Oh wait, actually I can simply check out various sources: The LATimes says "[m]ost gang members are religious", so does Streetgangs ("It is typical for gang members to belong to or be affiliated with organized religion.") and a myriad of other, non-reliable sources.

Would you agree with that assessment?

IBSpify, I have a serious question for you, why do you think that there has not been countless cases in the US of students commiting mass murder or raping female students or setting off explosives in schools where they teach students to respect God?

Although this question is addressed to someone who's not me, I'll take a shot at it.
I, for one, am not suggesting that being religious necessarily makes you do these things. Very often, religious people act contrary to their dogmas and teachings. A mere "respect of God" won't necessarily lead you there.
What will have a stronger impact is reading various religious texts (The Koran, the Bible, etc.) and interpreting them as the one true word. If you actually take them seriously, you should be out there stoning people who work on Saturdays.
However, my claim is that non-religion makes you less likely to commit a crime.

Now you might say "that's the same thing", but it really isn't. Let me explain.
A baseline percentage is always 100. Going up (110, 120, etc.) means something increases, in this case crimes by people, going down (90, 80, etc.) means something decreases, again crimes by people.

Now your question implies a non-religious baseline of 100, and the religious one going up.
My answer suggests the opposite: A religious baseline of 100, and the non-religious going down.

The conclusion is rather simple: Of the crimes that happen, most should be done by religious people, but we should not expect the number of crimes to rise. (Maybe they would even fall...)

In fact, that is exactly what is happening: I already showed above that most crimes are done by religious people and a further quick peak at crime statistics show that all crimes are in decline. (Property crimes form a slight exception: They were on the rise until 1990 and have since declined to nearly comparable levels.)

you are aware that gang members can be religious correct? In fact some gangs are vary religious, non religious people typically do not get Christ and Crosses tattooed on them, yet that is fairly common among gang members.

I apologize. What I said was probably wrong. I would at least say that the majority of all criminals in the US are religous. But tobe honest. I dont even know what religous means.