From: woodhams@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Michael Woodhams)
Subject: Religion (Duck! incoming flames!)
Originator: news@ernie.Princeton.EDU
Keywords: interesting facts, major fire at parliament
Organization: Princeton University Observatory
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 02:47:21 GMT

In article <1992Jul28.223617.22357@massey.ac.nz> news@massey.ac.nz (USENET News System) writes:

>but did you know that the largest group of people represented in New
>Zealand prisons is not Polynesians as many claim, but in fact
>Christians (or something like that anyway, less than 50% of NZ`s
>population claims to be religious, yet somewhere around 80% of the
>prisoners are religious)
>
>ps don't quote me on this, I'm too lazy to go and look up the actual
>figures in the library.

In fact, I suspect you will find the largest group of people
represented in New Zealand prisons are Humans, closely followed by
non-hermaphrodites and people with toenails, and with men quite high
on the list. The important statistic is how OVERrepresented a group
is, or more accurately the ratio between the probability that a group
member will be in prison to the probability a non-group member will
be.

Quite some time ago (>5 years?) I saw a small article in the Grapevine
magazine (disclaimer: I DON'T normally read this. It was open at my
grandparents' and I saw the word "Atheist" and investigated.)
(Explanation: Grapevine is a free magazine about A4 sized (for
Americans, about letter sized) newsprint with a definite christian
outlook, but not blatant enough to put off most non-christians.) The
article was entitled "Atheist not flavour of the month" or some such,
and started off stating that only some small number (say .7%) of
people had ticked the box "Atheist" in the 1980 census. They then
went on to list the major religions in NZ which was something very
like Anglican 1st, Protestant 2nd, No Religion 3rd, Catholic 4th. As I
remember it, there was not a large spread between these, so No
Religion was a little under 20% of the population.

I later went to the library to check, and THERE WAS NO "ATHEIST" BOX
in the census form. There was a "No Religion" box, and a box for
"Other" with space to specify. Therefore, to be counted as an atheist
in the census, one had to pass over "no religion", choose "other"
(implying atheism is a religion) and write "atheist." This severely
undercounts atheists (I'm pretty sure I was one of the undercounted.)
I think the 1985 census had an "Atheist/Agnostic" box.

If your statistics are true, we then have to consider why. Some
possibilities that come to mind:

Prisoners think they have a better chance of parole if they are
christian.

The bible is the only book in the prison library with sex and
violence.

People turn to religion under stress (such as being imprisoned.)

Both christianity and imprisonment are correlated with some other
factor (such as social/economic status or sanity) and there is no
causative relationship either way between christianity and
imprisonment.

Christianity weakens morals. (Bertrand Russell argued that linking
morality and religion is dangerous. When a person brought up in such a
way rejects religion as illogical, they may also reject the morals
that were artificially attached.)

The government or other organisations evangelize prisoners more
strongly than the rest of the population.


As a final aside, I once saw a segment on the TV news about Carrington
mental hospital. At the end, they panned the camera down a corridor
with glimpses through doors into inmates rooms, and came to a holt on a
scrawled message on the wall "Jesus loves me." Obviously a committed
christian.

Michael W.