The other day Mark over at Proud Atheists posted an article titled What If All Atheists Left America? What he wrote is based on the video that he had in the post. It’s very well done, in my opinion and I had to share it with you. It’s 2:18 minutes long:
What is even better is if you go to youtube’s page for it, in the description, the creator, ConversationWithA, lists all the sources used to put it together. Here is the list: (I’ve added a few notes where relevant. My notes are marked with an *)
SOURCES:
Over 10% of American population are atheist:
http://www.atheistempire.com/reference/stats/index.php
*ARIS 2008: Americans claiming no religion has now increased to 15 percent. Given the estimated growth of the American adult population since the last census from 207 million to 228 million, that reflects an additional 4.7 million “Nones.”
Less than 0.25% of prisoners are atheist:
http://holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm
*Atheist Empire: “Out of convicted rapists, 57% admitted to reading pornography. 95% admitted to reading the Bible.”
*1997 stats from Federal Bureau of Prisons: Atheist: 0.209% (It would be good if someone would do this study again)
Majority of Nobel Prize winners atheist:
The Religiosity and Religious Affiliation of Nobel Prize Winners (Beit-Hallahmi, 1989)
*List of Atheists in Science and Technology (includes Nobel Prize winners, of course)
Majority of University professors atheist:
Religion and Spirituality among University Scientists (Ecklund, 2007)
Majority of scientists atheist:
http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Scientists_and_atheism
*List of Atheists in Science and Technology
Atheist Intellectuals:
http://brainz.org/50-most-brilliant-atheists-all-time/
http://www.celebatheists.com/?title=Category:Atheist
Atheist Celebrities:
http://www.celebatheists.com/?title=Main_Page
*Atheists in Film, Radio, TV and Theater
Poverty rate lower among atheists:
Society Without God (Zuckerman, 2008)
*Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment
IQ higher among atheists:
http://www.interfaith.org/2008/06/20/study-links-atheism-to-high-iq/
*The study was done by Richard Lynn.
Illiteracy rate lower among atheists:
United Nations Human Development Report (2004)
Average Income higher among atheists:
United Nations Human Development Report (2004)
Divorce rate lower among atheists:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm
Teen pregnancy rate lower among atheists:
http://www.americablog.com/2009/01/red-states-dominate-teen-pregnancy.html
Abortions lower among atheists:
Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look (Paul, 2005)
*The above study is here in full.
STD infection lower among atheists:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article571206.ece
Crime rate lower among atheists:
Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look (Paul, 2005)
*The above study is here in full.
Homicide rate lower among atheists:
Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look (Paul, 2005)
*The above study is here in full.
Percentage of atheists in the countries mentioned:
http://www.adherents.com
Thanks for the plug, Neece!
Great job at providing sources in support of your views.
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Neece Reply:
August 13th, 2009 at 2:05 am
You’re welcome, Mark. Thanks for posting the original article that inspired me.
The sources aren’t my views directly, they are the ones that were used to make the video and are not hand-picked just to support one view at all. They are relevant studies.
There were a few that the author of the video provided that were a bit controversial but I added links to wikipedia for them, so that people can do the research and decide for themselves if they want to listen to those studies or not.
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It’s a nice little video, but right off the bat you’ve got two typos.
“It’s” is the plural of “it”.
“Its” is the possessive of “it”.
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GMNightmare Reply:
August 13th, 2009 at 12:18 am
Huh, a grammar nazi that doesn’t actually know grammar.
No Dale, “it’s” is the conjecture of “it” and “is”.
The plurals of it (and there are two) are “them” or “they”. As “it” can be used as an object or a subject, “they” refers to subjects and “them” refers to objects.
So therefore:
“It’s very well done, in my opinion and I had to share it with you. It’s 2:18 minutes long:”
Goes to:
“It is very well done, in my opinion and I had to share it with you. It is 2:18 minutes long:”
The only actual grammar mistake is the use of “minutes” in “2:18 minutes”, as it translates to “2 minutes and 18 seconds… minutes long.”
.
Which really, doesn’t matter at all anyways. Why the hell did you point it out anyways?
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Neece Reply:
August 13th, 2009 at 2:08 am
Thanks GMN. I’m not going to talk grammar with you. I use what sounds best and try to remember what I was taught in school to the best of my ability. Unfortunately that was long ago. So for the 2:18 minutes reference, it seems like the best way to say it, in the least awkward manner. I think people get what I’m after.
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Neece Reply:
August 13th, 2009 at 2:06 am
I didn’t make the video, which is clearly stated in the article. Thanks for being a pedantic grammar nazi. That really adds to the dialogue.
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I’ve seen the video before, it is very good I would say… but lacks the sources in the video. It would be very persuasive if it cited the sources during…
It is nice to see the sources though, excellent.
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Neece Reply:
August 13th, 2009 at 2:11 am
The sources aren’t provided in the video, but are provided on the page for the video, which I provided. So they are there, readily available, from the author of the video, which I think is valid.
I added more where I found them lacking, either because I was able to find them or I felt a different source actually provided better information.
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