No, You Don't Need God to be a Good Person — Why Don't Many Americans Get This?

[Rob H.]

Excerpt follows--full article is here.

No, You Don't Need God to be a Good Person — Why Don't Many Americans Get This?
Most of the developed world agrees that you don't need religion to be moral.
March 13, 2014
By CJ Werleman

...

So what of the U.S.? A comparatively eye-popping 53 percent of Americans essentially believe atheists and agnostics are living in sin. Despite the fact that a research analyst at the Federal Bureau of Prisons determined that atheists are thoroughly under-represented in the places where rapists, thieves and murders invariably end up: prisons. While atheists make upward of 15 percent of the U.S. population, they only make up 0.2 percent of the prison population.

...

Drilling down further, a 2011 Barna Group study titled "Diversity of Faith in Various U.S. Cities" found that “the cities with the highest proportion of residents who describe themselves as Christian are all in the South.” Leaders are Shreveport (98%), Birmingham (96%), Charlotte (96%), and Greenville (94%). The cities with the lowest percentage of religiosity include New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. David Kinnaman, who authored the Barna study, said the research “confirmed many spiritual assumptions about various regions of the country. The South hosts many of the nation’s Christians, while the West and Northeast play to more secular stereotypes.”

In an earlier piece, I wrote that the primary reason for abject child poverty in these Southern states is that more than a third of children have parents who lack secure employment, decent wages and healthcare. But thanks to religion, these poor saps vote for the party that rejects Medicaid expansion, opposes early education expansion, legislates larger cuts to education, and slashes food stamps to make room for oil and agriculture subsidies on top of tax cuts and loopholes for corporations and the wealthy. Essentially, the Republican Party has convinced tens of millions of Southerners that a vote for a public display of the Ten Commandments is more important to a Christian’s needs than a vote against cuts in education spending, food stamp reductions, the elimination of school lunches and the abolition of healthcare programs.

...

While the Republican Party retains its monolithic hold on the South, the rest of America remains deprived of universal healthcare, electric cars, sensible gun control laws, carbon emission bans, a progressive tax structure that underpins massive public investment, and collective bargaining laws that would compress the income inequality gap. In other words, without the South’s religiosity, "America" would again look like a developed, secular country, a country where it’s probable for an atheist to be elected into public office, and where the other 50 million law-abiding atheists wouldn’t be looked upon as rapists, thieves and murderers.

FWIW, I live in the South (specifically Tennessee, home of the "Monkey Bill" and the "Don't Say Gay Bill&quot and I see this kind of mind-boggling stupidity all the time.

[progressoid]

1. It's pretty prevalent here in the midwest too.

[AlbertCat]

2. So... religion in the South is our nation's problem.

Uh huh..... riiiiiiiight.

It's not a lack of education everywhere and the role of money (most of which is not in the South) in politics. It's the South.... like AZ, WI, NJ, ND, SD, AK....

[JNelson6563]

4. They said that's their experience.

I think you're seeing south bashing where it isn't really. Just one person's first-hand experience.

Julie

[Warpy]

6. The south is different

One thing a newcomer to a neighborhood is asked is what church he attends. If he answers "none," he's generally regarded with deep suspicion. He'll also be bombarded with religious tracts and seemingly genteel requests to sample this or that church that are bullying just under the surface.

In the midwest, that question isn't asked. People don't want to know. The "I'm not religious" closet is assumed to house a believer who simply hasn't found the right church.

Yes, I have lived in both regions. No, I don't live there now and for very good reasons.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. This belief is centered in the South

Belief in God as Basis for Morality

Is belief in God necessary for an individual to be moral or have good values? Figure 4 shows that exactly 50% of Americans say yes. But comparatively, such a position is more Southern. Among the four U.S. regions, the South is the only region above the national norm. Nearly 60% of Southerners consider belief in God the foundation for morality. Within the North American-North Atlantic community of countries and regions, it may be said the South, on this measure, is the most religiously exceptional. Among non-Southerners, Midwesterners are the closest to the national norm. However, when comparing the South with the Northeast and West, there is nearly a 15-20% gap. Interestingly, the gap between the American Northeast and West and Canada (13%, 11%) is smaller than the gap between the American South and the Northeast and West (16%, 17%).

Canada 30.2%
West 41.5%
Northeast 43.4%
Midwest 49.4%
United States 50.0%
South 59.0%

http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/6/8/9/0/pages68909/p68909-11.php

[Ron Obvious]

3. This always threw me for a loop when I moved to the US...

Granted, it was Texas, but I couldn't wrap my head around the question: "why don't you commit murder and rape or kill yourself then?", when I explained I wasn't religious.

It finally dawned on me that the best reply was: "So that's what YOU really want to do, and it's only your fear of God holding you back?".

That usually made them pause at least a little bit. Some even finally admitted that we both derive our morals from somewhere other than a book. It's a start.

[Warpy]

5. Church propaganda mostly

Churches, temples and mosques all teach that people are savages unless they are tamed by subservience to god or gods.

They completely ignore the fact that true sociopaths are rare and rarer still are the ones who haven't been socialized enough to go through life without being a wrecking ball.

They totally ignore the fact that atheists have considered the type of world they'd rather live in, one with people treating each other decently versus one in which anything goes and murder is just one of those things to be put up with.

Propaganda is one of the things that keeps the butts in the pews (or on the prayer rugs) and they all are guilty of it.

[Iggo]

7. Because if I don't need a god to be afraid of, then they don't either.

It's a little much all at once.

[Vashta Nerada]

8. It makes me wonder if xtians only follow morality laws from the buybull only out of fear of gawd.

If that's the case, then they've got more issues than I imagined.

[Curmudgeoness]

9. I am a decent human being.

And I am an atheist. I find that my being moral and living a decent life helps others to realize that their thinking is flawed when they find out that I am an atheist. That is not the first thing that people will know about me, but the more people who know me, then find out that I do not believe in god or religion, the more this false idea that they have will disappear. Since most people I know have always just assumed that I am religious, it is a great way to change their minds on who atheists are.

[onager]

11. Google "Barna Group" for hours of fun.

Barna Group polls are often cited by secular/atheist writers...which is sort of funny, since its founder George Barna is a very devout Fundamentalist Xian.

IIRC, he started Barna Group expecting to see his biases about Xian belief patterns confirmed. When they were not, to his credit, he didn't cook the numbers. He just straight-up reported what he found.

Result: his findings often drive Fundies into a towering rage, which makes me happy.

It was Barna who reported that Xians are more likely to be divorced than atheists. That one really pissed off the Pat Robertson types. Though Barna guessed it was true partly because atheist couples are more likely to "live in sin" and thus have more stable relationships already before tying the knot. He doesn't jigger his numbers, but his personal beliefs sometimes lead him to...interesting interpretations of the data. Like that one.

After 9/11, all the religiosos were bragging that the tragedy brought more Americans back to church and kept them there. Nope, that killjoy Barna reported - his polls showed a small increase in church attendance for a couple of weeks after 9/11. Then it dropped back to its normal low rate.

In the OP this caught my eye: Leaders are Shreveport (98%), Birmingham (96%), Charlotte (96%), and Greenville (94%).

That's Greenville, SC, home of Bob Jones University. I grew up not far from that city. Frankly, I'm surprised only 94% of the residents describe themselves as "devout Xians." And I bet the preachers are doubling their begging efforts right now for money to "reach out" to that annoying 6% of heathens in their midst.