Thread: Your Favorite Director at it again.

Originally Posted by iLLusioN

I think religion has a hell of a lot less to do with it than social and economic inequality and the division of families while children are growing up. If you look at the countries with the best rates for violent crime(not gun crime), they have significantly better social and economic equality.

The economic inequality in this country is absolutely ridiculous compared to anywhere else in the world. Depending on which study you read anywhere from 60-75% of the money in the country is owned by 10% of the people. 40% of the wealth is owned by 1%. That's insane.

Then I guess it's a good thing that 60-75% of the taxes are also paid by 10% of the people. You do understand that there is no "pie", right? There is no "limit" to the money. Someone can own 1 trillion dollars, and it won't affect the other 299 million from having a million, right? It's one of the less fortunate realities of the Fiat System. In short, every dollar we print, is legal tender. Income disparity is an illusion. Opportunity is not. I have a feeling that what you're talking about is opportunity to make money, not necessarily the actual accumulation of wealth. I'm obviously putting words in your mouth, so I'll refrain from insinuating otherwise until you comment.

Originally Posted by iLLusioN

Welfare isn't the way to fix it either. IMO welfare is a great idea and has it's place....as a stop gap to help people on hard times until they can get on their feet again. You won't fix anything until the bottom 50% is doing better than scraping by with barely enough to eat and put a roof over their heads. Investing in the bottom 70% is at an all time low. Meaning those people don't make enough to feel comfortable investing money into anything - which means they probably aren't doing as good as loans make them look. The economic inequality is obviously worse in inner cities, which is why they consistently have the worst crime rates. They also have the worst education systems....because they have no money to pay for a good one. Want to know how the big prison corporations predict how much the crime is going to grow? They do some pretty basic calculations based on the rate of illiteracy. IMO if you get money back in the middle and lower classes then you will get more money into the education system...which will lead to less crime. Of course I don't think you can get money back to the lower class without getting money(and properly using it) into the education system first. It all falls back to the money.

As for division of families, I've no idea how to fix that one. I know so many people that have gotten divorced after the first big fight, or got married to "fix" their relationship problems(cause that's the smart thing to do right?). So few are willing to stick it out and deal with the adversity of living with another human being nowadays. I think a good part of the problem has to do with how we as a society view marriage. It's no longer viewed as a permanent union...it's just one of many. My grandparents just had they 60th Anniversary....I'm not convinced that anyone will be able to claim that when I'm their age.

Just my opinion. Take it for what it's worth.

How would you fix this? That's the question Ira posed to me. What policies, from any source (Federal, State, City) would you look to in order to shape the change you are looking for? Can we make changes as a people without government that can solve these issues? Like you, I do think that crime, particularly violent crime, are products that originate from economics. So how we do solve that? Do you feel that pouring money into a group of people who don't have the skills to build wealth in the first place would be akin to pouring water down a well with no bottom? At what point do we need to reevaluate how we distribute wealth (as opposed to not distributing it)?

It´s all about education. Now stfu.

Originally Posted by Ranger10

Here's the thing. You base every argument on every post you write on these forums with what you claim to be "facts". How do you really know who is Christian? How do you really know is just using that term to describe themselves? How do you know that guns and mass murder are related to secularism, or something else? I don't. That's like saying, "I KNOW I've collected 100 apples, but I admit I have no way of knowing which ones have worms in them".

Do you have a better metric? On what facts are you basing your claim?

I made my comments based on my opinion. Things that I notice and what I am able to draw conclusions from. My opinion is based on observation, not census data. Yet, you're trying to argue your point as if I was skewing existing numbers to fit my hypothesis. The difference between you and I is that I purposely make my observations on opinion, but unlike you, I don't pass them off as fact.

Your statements were of an objective, factual nature. You weren't saying "New York has the best pizza," which would be a subjective opinion, equal to all others. You were making statements about facts. Saying that it's an opinion doesn't make you immune to being wrong. I can claim to be of the opinion that I can bend spoons with my mind. I would be wrong.

The whole point of this forum is to debate theories and hypotheses that come from you, not see who can regurgitate the work someone else has already done so you can pass if off as the basis for your own opinion. That's lazy. It demonstrates that you have no ability to think for yourself. Most of the facts you people cite in here are already filled with fallacies and inaccurate collection methods anyway. Why can't you form an opinion of your own? Is it so hard?

I made an observation about how I think religion plays a part in gun control. And, as predicted, the atheists seem to have gotten their panties in a bunch. Funny how making observations based on opinion can lead to predictable behavior isn't it? Gee... I guess that's the point I was making all along.

Somebody write this down so I can point to it later and call it "fact".

I haven't mentioned any opinion, I just stated that your claims are factually incorrect. I don't care about your opinion, and I don't know why you'd care about mine.

Originally Posted by -Lazarus-

There are no "most religious areas of the US" anymore. Though many claim to be believers in God, Less than 20% of Americans actually regularly attend church. Some studies have even put the number at less than 5%. This is significant toward this discussion.

7 Startling Facts: An Up Close Look at Church Attendance in America - ChurchLeaders.com - Christian Leadership Blogs, Articles, Videos, How To's, and Free Resources

Some studies. Some studies find that the vast majority of Americans believe in a god or gods, with a huge fluctuation between states.
U.S. Religion Map and Religious Populations - U.S. Religious Landscape Study - Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

Guess which states have the highest divorce, crime and teenage pregnancy rates?

And before anyone here tries to say that belief in God is all that is needed and church is unnecessary - there does seem to be a correlation between divorce rates, murder rates, and other social problems and the lack of a churchgoing public.

Oh, there's a correlation alright.

Church attendance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States

Violent crime:
http://204.62.19.52/maps/UCRVioCrim06.jpg

Teenage pregnancy:
http://www.mikecooper.com/2012/06/the-best-state-in-the-union/

This is the problem when we generalize - we don't represent every single person so someone can poke holes by pointing to the odd example. But generally speaking, a churchgoing people are a more peaceful, moral people in societal terms. And a secular world that is dominated by churchgoing people, even secular people are generally a more moral people.

Do you have any evidence to back this up, or should we just take your word as fact? Because I can point to some pretty religious parts of the world and religious times in history that suggest otherwise.

Why is this? My opinion is that it is a result of morals which come from an authority that is beyond man, rather than the "Do what thou will" mentality of modern day secular society, which goes unchecked, having no other significant moral viewpoint to compete with it.

Also your comment that the most religious periods in the US were the most violent is a guess at best and goes back to points I have made previously in this forum. 50 years ago or hell almost any time in our past as a nation the United States was a far less violent place than it is today.

Really? Slave trade, the trail of tears, the KKK, mob lynchings, have you heard of these?

In fairness wicked you cant go by a map of highest divorce rate and call it proof of anything. It is becoming popular to go to a state with favorable divorce laws to do the process.

Originally Posted by Ranger10

That's just it. I like having conversations with people whose sole purpose isn't to regurgitate what someone else calls facts. I can have that debate without you. I can look on the internet all I want and find 100 different studies created by a 100 different people, with a 100 different conclusions. I come here, because I want to have an educated, and sometimes spirited debate, with people who are smart enough to come up with their own conclusions. How is this so hard for you to comprehend?

These aren't "what someone else calls facts," they're just facts. And no, I don't agree that it takes more intelligence to make shit up than it does to inform yourself of the facts before forming an argument.

Name one fact I used in my statements. Just one.

Sure:

Originally Posted by Ranger10

3) Now... this is that part that all the atheists here are gonna complain and whine about. But when we were a nation that promoted and taught Christian values, we didn't have all the issues with mass shootings. But we still had guns. Lots of them. In fact, we were a country that had excelled at war... and yet, no mass shootings. Why? Now you may say, there are other countries in this world who are predominantly atheist and they don't have mass shootings. You may even point to their overall lack of guns in the country as a reason for this data point. Fair enough. But violence and death is no less prevalent there. Each country you can name has a severe, problematic issue within is societal framework that creates and promotes violence. Are we now saying, violence is okay, unless it happens by a gun. Then it crosses the line?

You are stating that we didn't have mass shootings at some vague previous point in history, and that at that point, we were more religious. If I'm reading this wrong, feel free to clarify.

Then you are missing the point. I don't engage in these debates with you, or anyone else, because I know there will be a clear "winner". That's asinine. This isn't a contest to see who can find the most obscure and peer reviewed source of irrefutable evidence and boldly make claims about who is right and who is wrong. It's about intelligent people observing the world around them and making educated statements to one another. Perhaps if we all remembered that, then this forum wouldn't be filled with such vitriol and disdain.

I didn't post anything obscure, it's all public data that will turn up with a simple search.

You seem to be wanting me to distill my opinions down to a level that you can quantify with facts that you recognize. I'm not interested in that. You can do that on your own. My opinions about certain things in this world are an extrapolation of m own observations, supposition and straight up guessing all combined into one world view, rooted in what I think is absolute truth. To say that it's somehow less valued, or educated as say someone who only makes decisions based on what others have done before you, is disingenuous. Some of the greatest minds in history have made guesses about something, then pursued them their whole lives, only to find they were true all along.

I want someone who can engage in an intelligent discussion that doesn't have to run and hide behind a bunch of made up "facts" just to make themselves feel intelligent. If that's not you, then you can bow out and let someone else take over.

What you're describing is anecdotal evidence, and it's terrible at actually separating truth from fiction. The scientific method was developed in part because the system that you're describing is so unsuccessful. Science has been extremely successful.

I don't have the means to go around the country polling people about divorce rates, homicide rates, etc. I also can't go back in time to measure historic data. Until I can, the next-best thing is the data that others have collected. I have worked in science, so I guess that I have been the "creator" of data, if that's so important to you. The way that I see it, data is data, and unless it's somehow flawed, it doesn't matter who "created" it. Furthermore, unless you can travel back in time, I doubt that you're taking your own measurements of religion and violence throughout US history.

If I want to make a statement like "the world was more violent when the US was more religious," I can either make stuff up and call it my "opinion," or I can look at actual measurements that have been taken of violence and religiosity. I choose the former. If you don't like that, you're free to put me on ignore, I won't hold it against you.