The Truth About Religion in the U.S.

Religion is harmful.  This is just fact.

I've been more than mildly irritated by Facebook lately because of two images that popped up back to back on a friend's newsfeed.

The first was this:

Is it true that atheists are suing for the removal of the cross from the 9/11 memorial?  Absolutely it is.

An organization called American Atheists is suing the memorial, demanding that the cross be removed.  Here is what the president of American Atheists said to CBS News about the lawsuit:

"This shrine is a cross," Silverman told CBS News on Thursday. "It was picked up, trimmed, polished, the word 'Jesus' was carved on top of it, it was prayed over in front of a church for five years, and then it was installed in the WTC memorial with no warning by a priest in a religious service where in the ground was consecrated. This is a working Christian shrine in the memorial and then they had the gall to say it's not religious in nature, that it represents everybody. That's not true. It does not represent Jews, Muslims, Mormons or atheists, and they all had deaths on 9/11."

Silverman said that the museum should either remove the cross or acknowledge everybody else who died in the tragedy in a manner equal to Christians. "We're talking about public lands, we're talking about public funds, we're talking about congressionally ordered public funds. We're talking about an 18-foot memorial, this is grossly inappropriate. We feel very strongly that this is an attempt to Christianize 9/11, to make it about Christians, even though it's not about Christians at all."


Here's what I don't understand.  Why is this a miracle again?  Oh, 3,000 people died horribly painful and brutal deaths.  But there's a cross, so Jesus loves us!  If Jesus loves us so much, why the fuck didn't he prevent the disaster in the first place?  How do you call the death of 3,000 people a miracle?  You know what that cross is?  It's a piece of metal that happens to be shaped like a cross, because that's the way steel beams are shaped in the infrastructure of buildings at every point where they cross one another.  Go look at any building that's under construction and you'll find a few hundred crosses.  That doesn't mean God is speaking through every building that was constructed in the last hundred years.

Also, Mr. Silverman left one more obvious point out of his argument.  If there was no religion, there would have been no 9/11 in the first place.  Muslim religious extremists perpetrated the bombing because we in the U.S. are viewed as infidels.  Of course, Christians may argue "that's Muslim faith!  Christians are peaceful and loving and would never do such a thing!"  Yeah?  Tell that to the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition or the  Westboro Baptist Church.  Religion has done more harm to this world and been responsible for the deaths of more people than any other single entity, yet the flocks of God/Allah/Yahweh press on, completely unable to see the harm they leave in their wake.  It's more than a little disturbing.
Here is the second image that set me off. 

I've heard this argument again and again over the years.  Unfortunately, born-again Christian e-card makers aren't known for their excellent fact-checking abilities.

Fact: Catholics/Protestants make up 75% of the U.S. Prison population.  They make up about 76% of the U.S. population (51% Protestant, 23.9% Catholic, 1.7% Mormon).

Atheists and those who identify as "no religious affiliation" on surveys make up less than 0.3% of the U.S. Prison population.  They make up about 15% of the U.S. population.

So, if atheists are so evil, and if God is so good, please, someone tell me, why are atheists almost non-existent in the United States prison population?  Shouldn't we make up about 15% of it?  I guess we aren't pulling our weight.

It seems to me that this picture has it backwards.  A little less bible reading and holy rolling will probably keep you out of prison.  Why, you ask?  Let me tell you.

Let's address the old-schoolers first.  By this, I mean Catholics, Presbyterians, Lutherans and the rest of the sit-down-and-listen-then-stand-up-and-sing-a-hymn churches.  How many people do you know that went to Catholic school?  Because those are some of the most guilt-ridden fucking people I've ever met.  The same goes for anyone who goes to any kind of "Christian-oriented" school.  By the time they get out of that place, their self-esteem is so low (and generally their education is so poor) that it's no wonder that a decent percentage of them go out and rape the first girl they can find or stab the first convenient store clerk that comes across their path.  This type of religious education damages people.  Sometimes beyond repair.  It's psychologically harmful, and more than just a little bit in many cases.

Then we have the "New Christians."  The Southern Baptists, the Pentecostals, and pretty much any church that calls itself "non-denominational" in this day and age.  These people...oh, these fucking people.  They do what they want, when they want, how they want.  Why?  Because if you sit your ass in a pew on Sunday and repent, none of it matters!  These fuckers actually believe that if you stab someone on Saturday and repent on Sunday, you get to go to heaven.  They believe this crap to the point that they completely take their life on earth for granted, since they believe they get an eternity in paradise to make up for any lost time here.  Even the majority that don't go to prison spend half of their time praying and wasting their life away for God.

So why is the atheist population in prison so low?  Because we believe we have one life to live.  There is no eternity, no paradise.  I only get 60-80 years here, so why would I want to blow any of that time in prison?  Our morals are determined by the society we grew up in, not in a bronze-age book that is barely applicable to modern society.  We have no conflicts between societal law and biblical law.  With a combination of evolution and societal mores, we have reached a point where we don't need a religion to tell us what is right or wrong.  One look at the prison population statistics makes it obvious the Bible is less effective at moral education than the human intellect is.

So, surprise, once again a horribly inaccurate picture based on no fact whatsoever gets 150,000 shares on Facebook and I'll either get flamed for this blog or no one will ever read it.  C'est la vie.