Time Immortal

Agnostic writes in with a question about author Vox Day:

I’m curious what the evidence is for Vox’s statement that atheists are orders of magnitude more likely to commit murder. I know it his/her statement, but you obviously endorse it.

I’d be surprised that there is evidence of a difference at all, but certainly not a 100 fold difference.

btw - I agree with your take on the Darwin Fish - it seems an openly hostile gesture.

Vox is nothing if not open: his book, The Irrational Atheist can be downloaded for free (although I’m only going to link to the purchaseable version at Amazon.com — finding the freebie is left as an exercise to the good Reader). And it is within the pages of said book that his evidence for the statement can be found.

I can summarize it in brief, but cannot hope to do it justice without spending much more time on this post than I have to spend. Essentially, he approaches the question from a variety of directions, and by looking at different bits of data. For example, he picks apart Sam Harris “red state” argument (which incorrectly concluded that Christians committed more crimes than did non-religious folk) by breaking the analysis down past the state level and looking at things county by county.

And he notes that crime is consistently highest in “blue” counties (e.g. Democrat-supporting counties). This observation is then correlated against various bits of demographic information — including the fact that atheists and agnostics tend to be much more likely to vote “blue” than “red.”

Of course, correlation does not imply causation; more investigation is needed. Indeed, the above was basically just a glorious take-down of Harris’ errors.

To support his actual point, Vox draws on evidence from both the United States and Britain which demonstrates that while there are certainly more Christians in prison than non-Christians in both countries (which one would expect: there tend to be more Christians than non-Christians in both countries), Christianity in the prisons is actually under-represented when compared to its prevalence in the general population. Irreligion of all stripes is, on the other hand, over-represented in the prison population when compared against its prevalence in the general population, to the tune of over 300%.

As noted, it is best to just consult Vox’s book, if one wants the hard figures, and more and better exegesis with the data. But hopefully that outlines, if only broadly, where the statement originates from.

Don’t take my word for it, of course. Take Imam Abdul Makin’s word for it, instead. What’s interesting is the imam’s unusual frankness about the subject — the permissibility of rape and murder directed by Muslims at non-Muslims — which I suspect may have had something to do with the fact that the interviewer was a woman (or should that be “was but a lowly woman”?).

N.W. : But our Prophet was sent as a mercy for all the humanity; he never hurt any body in his life?

Imam : Yes he never hurt a Muslim in his life. But Allah said non-Muslim are lowest beasts and worst creatures in ayas 8.22,8.55,95.5 and 98.6 and Muslim are ordered to kill them.

N.W. : But did prophet approve of killing them and raping their wives?

Imam : Yes he did. He not only approved of such acts, he and his sahabas practiced it regularly under Allah’s orders. He was helpless in it… If you don’t believe me , you have to believe sahih hadiths. I will quote you two hadiths about his typical day after a raid. These hadiths are about the raid on jewish village Khaibar whose chief was Kinana who had gorgeous 17 year old wife Safia. Prophet tortured and beheaded Kinana in front of Safia and raped her all night afterwards.

It kind of reminds me of that line from an episode of Battlestar Galactica: “Your girlfriend’s from a lovely family; good people, great values.” Here we have, yet again, an Islamic community leader openly advocating for the rape and murder of “the infidel” and using the Koran (and the hadiths) to justify his standpoint. And yet somehow, the producers of Law and Order get it in their heads that maniacal fundamentalist Christians are the real problem?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

From Sam Harris’ own pen, by way of Jonah Goldberg at The Corner:

Harris tells us, for example, that “we must find our way to a time when faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it. Given the present state of the world, there appears to be no other future worth wanting.” I am glad that I am old enough that I shall not see the future of reason as laid down by Harris; but I am puzzled by the status of the compulsion in the first sentence that I have quoted. Is Harris writing of a historical inevitability? Of a categorical imperative? Or is he merely making a legislative proposal? This is who-will-rid-me-of-this-troublesome-priest language, ambiguous no doubt, but not open to a generous interpretation.

It becomes even more sinister when considered in conjunction with the following sentences, quite possibly the most disgraceful that I have read in a book by a man posing as a rationalist: “The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live.”

Every regime in history which has made atheism an explicit policy of the state has shown an unusual, almost casual, willingness to engage in widespread bouts of murder and torture of those who do not conform to the enlightened vision of the ruling classes. Which makes sense — power is, after all, the logical outcome of atheism applied on a wide scale, and power must necessarily be maintained with demonstrations thereof.

Harris spells it out rather plainly, first by longing for a time when “faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it” (did you note the latent positivism, O Reader?) and then suggesting a short while later that some propositions (including, perhaps, faith claims not grounded in evidence?) are sufficiently threatening to the enterprises of an atheistic state that it may even be moral to kill those engaging in such propositions.

Such thinking — very obviously a logical outcome of atheistic thought — leads us once again to the gulag, just as it has in the past.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: Mark Shea)