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Bogus Atheist Social Sciences

Are Christians More likely to Go to Prsion?

Boyd, not so swift


One attempt at this bogus atheist social sciences is a site by Boyd Swift. Swift, thought he would be a wrote the bureaus of prisons for stats, but unfortunately he doesn't know how to read a table.

His table demonstrates different percentages of religous faths among in mates. I will not reproduce the whole table, but Christians show up as:
Note that in this version, the names of a couple of religious groups remain non-standardized, and self-identified "Atheist" remains separate from "Unknown/None." Response Number % ---------------------------- -------- Catholic 29267 39.164% Protestant 26162 35.008% Muslim 5435 7.273% American Indian 2408 3.222% Nation 1734 2.320% Rasta 1485 1.987% Jewish 1325 1.773% Church of Christ 1303 1.744% Pentecostal 1093 1.463% Moorish 1066 1.426% Buddhist 882 1.180% Jehovah Witness 665 0.890% Adventist 621 0.831% Orthodox 375 0.502% Mormon 298 0.399% Scientology 190 0.254% Atheist 156 0.209% Hindu 119 0.159% Santeria 117 0.157% Sikh 14 0.019% Bahai 9 0.012% Krishna 7 0.009% ---------------------------- -------- Total Known Responses 74731 100.001% (rounding to 3 digits does this) Unknown/No Answer 18381 What's really intereting is what Adherents.com has to say about these stats and Swifts website. Here is a letter by researcher on Adherents.com who checked out Swift's data: Adherents.com

David Rice has written to us (23 October 2002) concerning the origin of the data in the table below: The data came from Denise Golumbaski, who was a Research Analyst for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The data was compiled from up-to-the-day figures on March 5th, 1997. (Note that as of the year 1999, Analyst Golumbaski is no longer working for the Federal Bureau of Prisons; I had telephoned Analyst Golumbaski to request the latest figures, and was told by another analyst that Golumbaski was no longer employed there.) The data was requested by Mr. Rod Swift, who passed it on to me for my web site. I later called the Federal Bureau of Prisons and confirmed that the data did in fact come from their database.

This is the actual data Swift had to work wtih and Rice documents that fact, here it is:

Catholic 29,267 31.432% Protestant 26,162 28.097% None/Atheist/Unknown 18,537 19.908% Muslim 5,435 5.837% American Indian 2,408 2.586% Nation of Islam 1,734 1.862% Rastafarian 1,485 1.595% Jewish 1,325 1.423% Church of Christ 1,303 1.399% Pentecostal 1,093 1.174% Moorish 1,066 1.145% Buddhist 882 0.947% Jehovah's Witnesses 665 0.714% Adventist 621 0.667% Eastern Orthodox 375 0.403% Latter-day Saints 298 0.320% Scientology 190 0.204% Hindu 119 0.128% Santeria 117 0.126% Sikh 14 0.015% Baha'i 9 0.010% ISKCON 7 0.008% -------------------- ------ -------- Total 93,112 100.000%

So in other words, the actual number of atheists is about a quarter as high as the Christians. It's not this tiny 0.something percent, it's actually pretty high.
atheists have reading comprehension problems, I've noticed this for a long time! I'm always finding that atheists misread evdience. This guy cant' read a table! He either purposely distorted it or was just too stupid interpret statistics intelligently.

The Religious A priori