Tag: Crime

Research Shows Link Between Conservative Christianity and Crime

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in authoritarian politics, Christian Nationalism, Conservative Christianity, Crime, Criminogenic, Fundamentalism, fundamentalist Christian, Terrorism, United States, violent biblical passages, violent crime

Research Shows Link Between Conservative Christianity and Crime
by Michael Stone

Christian fundamentalism is toxic: Recent research in criminology demonstrates a strong correlation between high rates of violent crime and conservative Christianity.

In The Devil You Know, the Surprising Link Between Conservative Christianity and Crime, Elicka Peterson Sparks, an associate professor of criminology at Appalachian State University, demonstrates that “fundamentalist Christian ideology is criminogenic – in others words it actually causes [crime].”

Of particular concern is “Christian Nationalism,” defined as a political ideology steeped in “a Christian right to rule,” and entailing a false revisionist history specifically focused on America’s founding fathers as devout Christians who did not believe in separation of church and state.

Pointing out that the United States has more fundamentalist Christians than any other nation, Sparks notes:

The United States also has a very high rate of violent crime, and particularly high rates of lethal violence – compared to other similarly situated nations.

This is not a coincidence…this belief system, and the culture it inspires, lends itself to many types of criminal activity including the promotion of violent crimes against a variety of victims, terrorism against those of different faiths, and even crimes against the environment.

Why does religion cause crime? Sparks answers that question with three points:

  1. the explicit theology of violence present in fundamentalist religions;

  2. the psychology attendant in insulating oneself from fear of death through religion;

  3. and the promulgation of laws, policies, and programs to address crime that stem from this belief system.

Noting the violent biblical passages often cited by religious conservatives, their sense of righteousness, their dogmatic mindset that tolerates no dissent, and their support for harshly punitive measures toward “sinners,” Sparks shows that their worldview is the ideal seedbed for violence.

Bottom line: Conservative Christianity’s toxic mixture of fundamentalism, authoritarian politics, patriotism, and retributory justice actually causes crime.

For more information on this topic see: The Devil You Know, the Surprising Link Between Conservative Christianity and Crime.

(Image via Twitter)

(Image via Twitter)

Surely You Don’t Believe You Have Free Will?!

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Free Will, Philosophy, Science

Surely You Don’t Believe You Have Free Will?!

Road Closed

Whether or not we have the degree of free will most of us like to believe we have, I don’t see how that would be a get-out-of-jail-free card. When it comes to being held responsible for our actions—however determined—we are.

Strict determinism, the kind that says everything we do is already set for us, would mean that if you go far enough back in time, or manage to obtain a “high” enough perspective to see every single pattern of actions unfolding from one to the next, then you have no free will, no way to make your own choices.

No one can get that kind of omniscient perspective, however, and that is clear to atheists. No God or gods, no supernatural being to set it all in motion or to direct it one way or another. The best science can do, for now, is trace an action back in time as far as possible in order to make good guesses as to all the predetermining factors that went into a particular decision by a particular person at a specific point in time. Both psychology, neuroscience, and physics are helpful in such lookings-back.

HOW WE DECIDE

Based on my own education in social psychology and human development, my philosophical views are grounded in humanism. The fact is that we all make decisions based on what we know at the time, what we believe to be true or the way our brains are habituated to come to conclusions. That resembles like a form of free will, though mitigated by all that we don’t know or that we misbelieve or a lack of imagination of options that might indeed be available to us at any turning point.

If we’re necessarily ignorant of many of the factors that have gone into any one of our choices, does that mean we’re blameless for our “mistakes,” for our actions that are deemed immoral by most other individuals? Sometimes I figure it doesn’t matter where we place actual blame, because, as a society, a group of people attempting to live peacefully with one another, the greatest good is to agree on a few major points of law and then to corral bad actors away from the rest of us.

DEFINITIONS

A good definition of free will is that we can imagine future courses of action, decide which one to pursue regardless of competing desires we may have, and that we make such decisions without unreasonable external or internal pressure. Such free will is not magical, nor does it depend on a soul or suchlike which is totally free of any physical process. Our decisions are not determined in such a way that they aren’t influenced by our conscious thoughts. We would hate to think that no matter what we try to do, our decisions are inevitable.

The findings of neuroscience suggest that our actions (little ones, like pressing a button) are caused by unconscious processes that don’t even enter our awareness until a bit later. That certain neural activity precedes “decisions” doesn’t mean you have no choice. But it may mean that we probably do have less free will than we think.

I particularly like the sophisticated comment someone (R.A.) posted on NYTimes.com:

I would argue that as we approach making a decision, we observe competing outcome scenarios predicted by subconscious processes. We then sense how we feel about these scenarios based on dopamine production. Our feelings can then influence the subconscious creating more nuanced outcome scenarios. All of this happens again and again in the nonlinear environment of the brain and is subjected to all kinds of butterfly effects. Eventually the decision happens and we act. Our recollection of how the scenarios changed based on our emotional responses makes some of us think we had complete control over the outcome.

YOU WILL READ THIS BOOK (OR NOT)

Free Will

A recent book showcases its stance by its title: Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility (Lexington Books, 2013). It’s a compilation of 16 essays (all but one original for this volume), edited by Gregg D. Caruso, assistant professor of philosophy and chair of the humanities department at Corning Community College, SUNY. The contributors are an international array of philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists, many of them also professors and authors.

One of the issues explored in the volume is what is the responsibility of professionals in light of the way the mass media headlines the scientific claim that free will probably doesn’t exist. Will individuals and crowds run around doing horrible things (more than usual!)? Some worry about that possibility, while other essayists contend that our lives wouldn’t significantly change if we accepted a lack of free will.

The authors of one chapter that tackles a possible “dark side of believing in free will,” admits that the research thus far is “preliminary and messy,” but suggests that a belief in free will seems to correlate with a belief in right-wing authoritarianism, among other things.

The topic of moral responsibility is a huge and complicated one, and I relish the idea that academics and others are debating it. Can we agree that we should be held morally responsible even if we accept that our stance is based on non-philosophical reasons? I’d like to think so.

Religion Aids Criminals Justify Their Crimes

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Criminals, Criminogenic, Religion

New Study Suggests Religion May Help Criminals Justify Their Crimes

By Justin Peters

An inmate reads his bible.

An inmate reads his bible at the minimum-security facility known as the Carol Vance Unit, March 24, 2001, near Houston, Texas.
Photo by Joe Raedle/Newsmakers

In 1996, noted criminologist Jewel asked a question that has long haunted those hoodlums prone to pondering the existential consequences of their actions: “Who will save your souls after those lies that you told, boy?” For generations of American crooks, the answer has been “religious do-gooders.” As a 2006 Federal Bureau of Prisons report put it, “faith groups have become involved in offering formal programs within prison to bring about not only the spiritual salvation of the inmates but their rehabilitation in the profane world as well.” The idea is that spiritual rebirth may help tame the criminal impulse, and set wild hearts on the straight and narrow.

Maybe not. A new study in the academic journal Theoretical Criminology (hat tip to the Vancouver Sun) suggests that, far from causing offenders to repent of their sins, religious instruction might actually encourage crime. The authors surveyed 48 “hardcore street offenders” in and around Atlanta, in hopes of determining what effect, if any, religion has on their behavior. While the vast majority of those surveyed (45 out of 48 people) claimed to be religious, the authors found that the interviewees “seemed to go out of their way to reconcile their belief in God with their serious predatory offending. They frequently employed elaborate and creative rationalizations in the process and actively exploit religious doctrine to justify their crimes.”

First of all, many interviewees had only a vague notion of the central tenets of their faiths. Take, for example, an 18-year-old robber whose “street name” was Que:

Que: I believe in God and the Bible and stuff. I believe in Christmas, and uh, you know the commitments and what not.

Int: You mean the Commandments?

Que: Yeah that. I believe in that.

Int: Can you name any of them?

Que: Ahhh … well, I don’t know … like don’t steal, and uh, don’t cheat and shit like that. Uhmm … I can’t remember the rest.

Often, the authors found, these knowledge gaps were self-serving. “God has to forgive everyone, even if they don’t believe in him,” insisted one 33-year-old enforcer for a drug gang, with a vested interest in avoiding damnation for the murders he had committed. A 23-year-old robber called Young Stunna suggested that the circumstances of his upbringing would absolve him of his crimes: “Jesus knows I ain’t have no choice, you know? He know I got a decent heart. He know I’m stuck in the hood and just doing what I gotta do to survive.”

Indeed, many of those surveyed used their understandings of faith to justify their own criminal behavior. A 25-year-old drug dealer called Cool suggested that God doesn’t mind when you do bad things to bad people:

Also another thing is this; if you doing some wrong to another bad person, like if I go rob a dope dealer or a molester or something, then it don’t count against me because it’s like I’m giving punishment to them for Jesus. That’s God’s will. Oh you molested some kids? Well now I’m [God] sending Cool over your house to get your ass.

In the end, the authors found, “there is reason to believe that these rationalizations and justifications may play a criminogenic role in their decision making.”

A couple points. First, this is a really small sample size, and it’s possible that if the authors had surveyed more people over a broader geographical area, their results would have been different. Second, as the authors themselves acknowledge, criminals certainly aren’t the only ones who tend to misunderstand religious teachings, or to contort them for their own benefit. Granted, there aren’t usually violent consequences when your Aunt Sue misunderstands something in the Bible; the worst that happens is that she’s just a little more unbearable at Thanksgiving dinner. But, still, the Theoretical Criminology study shouldn’t be interpreted as conclusive evidence that faith-based outreach and rehabilitation programs are worthless.

But the point is, neither is there conclusive evidence that religion on its own actually helps rehabilitate criminals. This becomes a policy question when we’re talking about prisons. As that Bureau of Prisons report put it, while “religious programs in the correctional setting have been the single most common form of institutional programming for inmates,” nobody really knows whether those programs are effective. There’s not much good data. People tend to use tautological arguments to support religion-based rehabilitation programs. That’s not good enough. If we’re going to talk about whether religion helps rehabilitate criminals, we need to insist on data. Don’t just take it on faith.

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How to Tell If You’re Dating a Sociopath

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Culture, Dating, Sociopath

How to Tell If You’re Dating a Sociopath

A few years ago I dated a man who said that he loved me.

But hundreds of unanswered phone calls and dates that only I showed up for made that hard to believe. Still I knew that if I was patient and loved him hard enough that he would eventually change.

It took a phone call from the wife that he conveniently forgot to mention to make me realize that that probably wasn’t going to happen.

Many experiences (and a master’s degree) later, I’ve come to understand that my former lover, and those like him, are sociopaths: a unique breed of individual that is incapable of empathy or any other proper connection to other human beings.

Now when you think of the term “sociopath,” it might conjure up images of the lone stranger who gets off by dismembering people in his backyard. While this may be true, the term isn’t reserved for only felons and serial killers.

This is because the sociopath’s desire doesn’t have to be murder. Sometimes it’s money. Sometimes it’s sex. Sometimes it’s control. And while many people have these same aspirations, what makes a sociopath a sociopath is that they are more than willing to hurt someone to get what they want. So if your feelings or your well-being have to be sacrificed in order for them to achieve that need, that’s exactly what will have to happen.

They’re the man who sleeps with his partner just for her paycheck; the boyfriend that has sex with his girl’s sister, or even the husband that has managed to keep a secret, second family on the side. Most heartbreaking are the partners who think they can love or pray these individuals into being better people. But unfortunately, that’s simply not possible. Because unlike most people who suffer from some sort of mental disorder, sociopaths are perfectly happy being just the way they are. It’s the people that they come across who are miserable. So the only way to ensure that you’re not hurt by a sociopath is simple: stay away.

And what are the criteria for a diagnosable sociopath?

1. Unlawful Behavior Sociopaths are arrogant creatures who often think they can operate above the law. Because of this, they may repeatedly perform criminal acts. However, because they are usually crafty and highly intelligent, they rarely get caught.

2. Deceitfulness Lying! But not the random or compulsive variety. Sociopaths lie for a purpose, which usually includes some type of financial, sexual, or political gain. Lies may be grandiose in nature and are told as a vehicle of control.

3. Impulsivity Sociopaths act on instinct and without thoroughly planning ahead. They may enter relationships quickly and passionately, but lose interest just as fast.

4. Aggressiveness Sociopaths are usually easily irritated and may be prone to repeated physical fights.

5. Reckless Disregard Sociopaths are likely to partake in risky, thrill seeking behaviors as they constantly need to be stimulated. In the context of relationships, this includes highly promiscuous sexual behavior usually without protection.

6. Irresponsibility You know that person that can’t seem to hold down a job? Not because they’re lazy, but because they just don’t want to work? They may just be a sociopath that thinks they’re too good for a regular nine to five.

7. Lack of Remorse Sociopaths don’t feel bad about anything. This includes not returning your calls or sleeping with your best friend. And to add insult to injury, sociopaths will come up with reasons to rationalize their messed up behavior. Her friend wanted me and what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Right?

Bottom line is a sociopath has one concern: himself. And while they know their behavior is devastating to those around them, they’re charming enough to make sure that there are always people in their lives to take advantage of.

You just have to make sure you’re not one of them.

Post by  Shayla Pierce

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Anti-Equality Christian Lawyer Indicted On Federal Child Pornography Charges

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Christain Liars, Christian Bigots, Christian Child Abuse, Christian Hypocrites, Religious Sadists

Christian attorney indicted on federal child pornography charges
By Arturo Garcia
Lisa Biron via FB page

Federal agents arrested a Christian New Hampshire lawyer Saturday and accused her of allegedly driving a teen girl to Canada and cajoling her into allowing her to film her having sex.

The Concord Monitor reported that Biron was arrested by FBI officials Friday before a scheduled hearing on child pornography possession charges stemming from an Oct. 9 arrest.

The federal indictment against Biron — who has been linked to Alliance Defending Freedom, a right-wing lawyers group that says on its website it advocates for “religious liberty, the sanctity of life, and marriage and family” — includes charges of not only possessing child pornography, but five counts of sexually exploiting a child and one count of transportation with intent to engage in child pornography.

According to the New Hampshire Union Leader, Police had been investigating Biron since September, when they received a tip that she had child pornography on her computer. That led to the Oct. 9 arrest, and seven subsequent counts of child pornography possession at the district level.

But the FBI pursued the search further, and federal prosecutors are also accusing Biron of driving the girl to Ontario, Canada, and recording four digital videos of her having sex and taking a digital photograph between May 25 and May 28.

A U.S. District Court judge ordered Biron to be held without bail in part due to violations of bail conditions from the earlier charges. Biron was found to have disobeyed orders to only use her laptop for work purposes and to not have any weapons; agents discovered 200 rounds of ammunition, though no gun, at her home.

[Image via Lisa Byron Facebook community page]
Raw Story (http://s.tt/1u6v9)

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KKK OK But Not WikiLeaks For Some Payment Processors!

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Wikileaks

Visa, MasterCard and Pay Pal suffered online outages when they came under attack from WikiLeaks supporters waging cyber-war against the firms they accuse of stifling the project’s activities by stopping payment processing.


Click to enlarge

The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is currently in a British jail fighting extradition to Sweden on sex crime allegations.

The US government has presented no charges against  Assange, but the absence of solid accusations did not stop American government officials from reportedly putting pressure at the highest level to cut off Wikileaks’ funding supply.

The senior executive of America’s money transfer giant, Pay Pal, said the State Department had written to the company, claiming the online whistleblower had illegally leaked documents. So Pay Pal, along with MasterCard and Visa no longer accept cash donations for the controversial website.

“It’s the threat of this that has some impact on national security. And when you say that, in the United States, everybody, you know, wets their pants and they do what they’re told,” scorned Sam Husseini, the communications director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. “It’s a misconception in some cases that people think the US is purely a money-driven society. It is not. The government has certain prerogatives, particularly over national security.”

It appears that no court ruling or legal procedures were needed to crackdown on the media organization.

Jeff Paterson, Project Director of Courage to Resist organization, believes the situation with WikiLeaks is outrageous.

“Wikileaks has not been charged with a single US crime,” he said, “and here the country’s financial institutions are taking action on behalf of our state department to extinguish this whistleblower’s website.”

Later, Pay Pal backtracked on its reasons for acting on the US government’s request, while MasterCard and Visa were most evasive on the issue.

But the general explanation they give for not accepting donation payments for WikiLeaks is that the site “encourages, promotes, facilitates or instructs others to engage in illegal activity.”

But, on the other hand, neither MasterCard nor Visa have any problems processing donations for, say, the Ku Klux Klan – a racist, anti-Semitic movement with a history of extreme violence, with goals of racial segregation and white supremacy. And yet it takes seconds to make a donation for the Klan, using your Visa or MasterCard. In this case, MasterCard and Visa are saying, it is all about business. But they are not saying that when it comes to WikiLeaks.

A number of senators, including the Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee Joe Lieberman, were quick to pat those companies on the back for cutting off cash to WikiLeaks.

But some cannot help asking: if US officials are so down on WikiLeaks, why are they not after the WikiLeaks’ partner newspapers?

”One other incredible thing about the persecution is that so many people are falsely reporting that WikiLeaks has dumped 250,000 documents but it’s not true at all. They were only putting stuff up on their webpage, when the New York Times, [German] Der Spiegel, [British] The Guardian or [Spanish] El Pais were putting them up. They were very useful to the US government in some ways,” Sam Husseini reminded.

There is a lot of mystery surrounding WikiLeaks. But what is on the surface now, are examples of double standards: everyone is after WikiLeaks, but not, for example, the New York Times. The question is why?