I for one never made that argument. The concept of morality itself is too ambiguous of a term to define objectively for statistical purposes. I too think that religion or lack of is merely what you make it. This is evidenced by the fact that there are good and bad people in every ideology and worldview, along with everything in between. That said however, your argument itself is a bit fallacious. For one, the assumption that incarceration rates are a good standard for judging morality by--which, in itself, is too ambiguous for statistical purposes--given that many people are framed, wrongly convicted, and/or guilty only of--for lack of a better term--"stupid" laws like the War on Drugs. That's not to mention the backgrounds of each of these individuals which may or may not mitigate their guilt to varying degrees, and the fact that many people who have committed the same crimes have not necessarily been incarcerated, given the unjustness of the system where money acts as a license to break the law. Just some things to think about. And then there is the fact that your statistics do not account for the amount of prisoners who converted *after* committing their crime, and therefore weren't under the guidance of their newfound religion at the time they were criminals. And then there is the fact that this only accounts for the United States and at a particular time. It does not account for the global population of religious and irreligious across the ages. In fact, I'd wager from a historical perspective that atheists have murdered more people than any individual religion ever has. The Marxist massacres perpetrated by atheistic despots and regimes of the 20th century have a higher body count than anything that was ever possible for religions prior to the advent of the industrial revolution. Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong along have a combined bodycount ranging around 100 million. And that's not taking into account the atrocities that their regimes continued to carry out even after their deaths, as well as the atrocities of Cambodia, the Viet Cong, Fidel Castro & Che Guavara, and other secular regimes. To be blunt, it wasn't a religious group that put my Orthodox people in the gulags. It was your kind. Now, that's not to say that atheism produces bad people or that you need religion to be good, but just to point out how unreliable your statistical method was in light of history, as well as the whole notion of statistically examining something as ambiguous with so many factors like morality which can't possibly be examined objectively in a statistical context.

100% of serial killers eat food. So if you eat food, you're a serial killer. That's how this works, right?

Anyone who thinks you have to be a Christian to have morals is dumb.

Seems our atheist government is more Anti-theist

And did you know 98% of convicted child molesters are strait? Interesting, is it not? How simple statistics can debunk such idiotic myths about gay people. (I'm talking to you Creationists!)

Some people, prisoners in the U.S. especially, are too mentally ill to understand the true meaning of repentance. They abuse the religion to feel absolved of their sins.

Everyone a sinner according to the bible, why is it a surprise?

Here's another interesting and also made-up fact: 99% of federal prisoners and trying to prove that they're rehabilitated and have found God so they can get out on parole. [spoiler]I'll be impressed if anyone can tell what's factually wrong with the above ignorant statement.[/spoiler] [spoiler]Although it would stand to reason that the above factor would drive up the Christianity percentage at least some.[/spoiler]

Clearly racism against Christians.

Read post wrong. GG.

Almost all fedoral prisoners are atheist

Not sure if I trust your source but it does make sense to me. Theists have the luxury of being able to justify their actions with loopholes and fine print in whatever book they adhere to. Atheists have no such luxury, we are forced to actually analyze the morality of our actions for ourselves.

Your source is very flawed OP here is the source that your source used http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/07/16/what-percentage-of-prisoners-are-atheists-its-a-lot-smaller-than-we-ever-imagined/ The source its self points out many flaws with the .02% statistic [quote]There were always a lot of problems with that information: The percentages did not take into account prisoners whose religious affiliations were unknown or who did not respond at all. The data in question is more than 15 years old. Whatever it may have represented in the past, it’s practically irrelevant now. There’s no link to any official document with this data, only HTML code that has gone unverified for well over a decade. The websites talking about this data aren’t unbiased. They’re clearly atheist sites trying to make atheists look good. While numbers don’t lie, without the primary documents, it’s hard to evaluate how objective this information is. Golumbaski, the research analyst, no longer works at the Federal Bureau of Prisons… so we couldn’t even confirm that she did this research. The Holysmoke.org website this information appears on doesn’t exactly exude credibility. It has been said that the U.S. doesn’t even keep any data on the religious beliefs of inmates. Tom Flynn once wrote in Free Inquiry: “… no prison I know of has permitted researchers to catalogue inmates’ religious affiliations. No such data has been kept by any department of corrections — or if kept, no such data has been released.” Simply put, if a pastor offered this as evidence that Christians were all-but-absent in the U.S. prison system, we’d mock the hell out of them. We’d ask for better evidence. We wouldn’t let them get away with such flimsy data.[/quote] while it later goes on to point out that it's actually less than .02% it also points out that the statistics only account for the federal prison population of about 200,000 people and of those 200,000 only the people who chose to take part in the survey are counted TL;DR OP's statistic is so flawed that it's basically meaningless

Shouldnt the religious affiliation of the general population be taken into account? It would stand to reason that if in country x where the majority of people are (Insert religion) that the majority of people in prison are of the same religion. I did some digging and I came across these stats for the UK. [quote]Christianity remained the largest group; 59% (33.2 million). This is down 13 percentage points since 2001 when 72% (37.3 million). It is the only group to have experienced a decrease in numbers between 2001 and 2011 despite population growth. The second largest response category in 2011 was no religion. This increased 10 percentage points. Interestingly, Christianity is not down everywhere. Newham, Haringey, Brent, Boston and Lambeth have all shown increases in the Christian population. Over 240,000 people highlighted an 'other religion' on their census form - including 176,632 Jedi Knights.[/quote] I also posted a graph for the stats of the prison systems in the UK. If you look at the graph there seems to be a relationship between country religious beliefs and the beliefs of the inmates. I am actually surprised this wasn't mentioned in the article you posted. I don't see why atheism would be exempted from being more or less moral than any other affiliation. Plus christians cant really talk about sin considering the bible tells that a lot of christians will not be accepted by god or will turn away (Matthew 24).

Duhh, the benefits of religion include emotional relief over guilt/fear/responsibility. People in prison probably need it to keep from crippling depression, man. Prison is a horrific, and grossly ineffective institute, anyway. Don't down on people for being there.

The Bible states basic principles that are fundamental in laws in America. If you are in jail, then you probably have broken a Bible principal as well as a law.

May may claim to be religious, but many probably aren't faithful, seeing as how the Bible states [b]No stealing[/b] [b]No murder[/b] [b]No lying[/b] [b]Do not covet[/b] [b]Do not commit adultery[/b]

I don't understand what you're trying to say here.