[Phys-L] Re: Are Prisoners More Religious? (was: god friendly science)

[Robert Cohen <Robert.Cohen@PO-BOX.ESU.EDU>]

Let me suggest two other reasons that make any conclusions difficult:

1. One's conclusion rests on whether the "unknown/no answer" group can
be further broken down into roughly the same percentages as that in the
first table.  Is that a good assumption?

2. How one defines one's religion is not straightforward.  Consider, for
example, the survey of the Jewish population conducted by the United
Jewish Communities (see
<http://www.ujc.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=83784>).  They ended
up defining the Jewish population in two ways:

---The broad definition includes anyone:
* Whose religion is Jewish, or
* Whose religion is Jewish and something else, or
* Who has no religion and has at least one Jewish parent or a Jewish
upbringing, or
* Who has a non-monotheistic religion, and has at least one Jewish
parent or a Jewish upbringing.
led to a population of 5.5 million (or 1.96% of the 2000 US population).

---If limited to those "with stronger Jewish connections", the number
was 4.3 million (or 1.53% of the 2000 US population).

Which number do you compare to the 1.773% in the federal prisons?

____________________________________________________
Robert Cohen; 570-422-3428; www.esu.edu/~bbq
East Stroudsburg University; E. Stroudsburg, PA 18301

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Forum for Physics Educators
> [mailto:PHYS-L@list1.ucc.nau.edu] On Behalf Of Hugh Haskell
> Sent: Friday, May 27, 2005 1:44 AM
<snip>
> > The Federal Bureau of Prisons does have statistics on religious
> > affiliations of inmates.  The following are total number of
> inmates per
> > religion category:
> >
> > 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
> > ----------------------------
> > Total Convicted        93112  80.259% (74731) prisoners'
> religion is known.
> > Held in Custody         3856  (not surveyed due to temporary custody)
> > ----------------------------
> > Total In Prisons       96968
<snip>
> As I said before, This data does not prove that atheists are
> more moral people than Christians. There are lots of reasons
> why the results may be as they are that have nothing to do
> with relative morality of different groups. It is also true
> that the conditions are such in many prisons that prisoners
> who profess religion get better treatment than those who do
> not (as long as the religion they profess conforms to what
> the prison officials see as a "legitimate" one), so there may
> be a  fraction of "jailhouse conversions" in the data above
> that can distort the results.
>
> I make no claims about this data showing that atheists are
> inherently better people than Christians, only that the data
> is certainly not consistent with claims that Christians are
> more moral than atheists.
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