Answering the Atheist

The Inmate Indicator

Some atheists like to pull up polls of the religion of prison inmates as support for their moral superiority. The argument goes “there are higher numbers of Protestants and Catholics in prison than atheists, therefore atheists are more moral.” On the surface this is convincing… but here are three things you need to keep in mind before letting yourself be swayed by this tactic:

A) There are more Protestants and Catholics than atheists, period! Naturally, the larger the group, the more people from that group will be in prison versus a smaller group.

B) Are these Protestants and Catholics nominal, or practicing? By practicing, do these inmates read their Bibles semi-regularly, pray semi-regularly, and attend religious services semi-regularly? If not, they are nominal “believers” who aren’t actually following their faith. Most Protestant/Catholic inmates fall into the nominal camp.

C) What about all the almost-atheists in the poll? This is VERY important. While the self-proclaimed atheists in prison may be few, what about those who would label themselves agnostic, secular, or non-religious?

It’s a fact that very few people will actually call themselves atheists, but so many more will take the less pronounced stance of agnosticism, secularism, or “no religion”. What about these groups in the poll? See if you can find these numbers out. My guess is they balance the whole “Protestants and Catholics vs. atheists” thing out, because now it becomes “Protestants and Catholics vs. atheists, agnostics, secularists, and non-religious”.

Whenever an atheist tries this argument, keep these three things in mind.

Is Religion the Problem?

Atheists love to point out how many people Christian nations have murdered, but they’ve actually been much, much worse. I’ll write a post about this later, but in the 20th century ALONE, let’s rack up SOME of the atheist* casualties:

The total killings of the Chinese government since 1949: 32-61.7 million people.

The total killings of the U.S.S.R. during the reigns of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev (1917-1959): 66.7 million people.

Total from ONLY China and Soviet Russia during SOME of the 20th century: 98.7-128.4 million people massacred.

Have Christian nations unjustly killed many people? Yes. Is this terrible and inexcusable? Yes. Should this be pointed out? Certainly.

But to act as if the atrocities committed by Christian countries even compare to the massacres of atheistic governments is absolutely silly.

If you are a Christian, admit that Christian nations have done wrong things. But do not admit that religion is the reason for all mass murders.

Keep this in mind: atheist governments have killed over 100 million people in the 20th century alone. That’s the only stat you really need to know to put this argument to bed.

Summary

Both atheists and Christians have a list of arguments we like to use against each other. I mention a couple of atheist favorites here. It’s impossible to remember everything, but that’s why we keep references around! Just know there are answers to everything. If you can’t answer someone on the spot, just politely admit that and say, “Give me some time, I’ll get back to you on that.” If they are respectful and actually want a productive conversation, they’ll be fine with a non-answer because they’ll understand you aren’t a walking apologetical encyclopedia.

*A common atheistic response to the “atheists have killed more people than Christians” argument is this: “Christians have killed in the name of religion, while atheists have killed for some other non-religious reason. Because of this, Christian killings are worse.” For me, does it matter whether one kills in the name of religion, economy, ethnicity, political beliefs, or whatever else? The very fact that your religion or lack-of justifies murdering those who disagree with you in any area is the problem.

My response is this, “Okay, so you wouldn’t want me to kill you because you are an atheist, but you’d be fine with me killing you because you disagree with me politically?” That’s basically what the atheist is saying.

No, it doesn’t matter why one murders another. Atheist and Christian murders are equally wrong.

**I didn’t even mention the atrocities of Germany and Cambodia, both led by leaders who despised religion.

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