[btilly]

...amazingly, think of themselves as good people. They even go to church, amazingly enough.

Why would going to church be evidence that they are good people?

Look at how people act, not what they say. When you look at crime rates, divorce statistics, and so on, atheists seem to behave more morally than evangelical Christians.

I guess my point is never underestimate "incentive-caused bias"

Take that a step farther. When you already believe yourself to be a worthless sinner who has a blank check of forgiveness from Jesus, what incentive do you have to not act like a worthless sinner?

[loup-vaillant]

> Why would going to church be evidence that they are good people?

I've heard from a Skepticon talk that some studies show that it is. They give more to charity, participate more in their communities, things like that.

At the very least, going to Church is most probably evidence that one is either striving to be a good person or already think of themselves as good persons. That last hypothesis would explain how they can sleep at night.

> Take that a step farther. When you already believe yourself to be a worthless sinner who has a blank check of forgiveness from Jesus, what incentive do you have to not act like a worthless sinner?

Aren't you supposed to make amends first? At the very least, show some contrition, and promise you won't do it again?

[brianwawok]

According to Sola Fide[0], faith is the only thing that matters for going to the "good place" or the "bad place". So no, you are not supposed to make amends and promise not to do it again to go to the "good place".

Now to not strawman the argument, it is more complex than that. The wiki link does an OK job explaining some of it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_fide

[Natanael_L]

I find that a bit surprising;

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James+2%3A14-26...

[brianwawok]

Well, most of the ~900 million protestants in the world agree with some version of it. Obviously it is a slightly more complex topic.

[reitanqild]

The Bible is very clear about forgiveness by faith alone but also that whoever pledges faith to Christ is supposed to stop sinning.

This is mentioned again and again and again by Jesus and the apostles and it is a mystery how anyone can get away with saying anything else.

[usaphp]

"When you look at crime rates, divorce statistics, and so on, atheists seem to behave more morally than evangelical Christians."

Do you have data source for this?

[philh]

ISTR looking into the divorce statistics once, and mostly finding articles that (through malice or stupidity) compared divorce rates per capita, instead of per marriage. Evangelicals had a higher divorce rate than atheists, but married evangelicals had a lower rate.

Don't put too much weight on this.

[btilly]

First thing I found in Google is http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/382901/little-religion-....

If you identify evangelical Christians by self-identification, my statement is clearly true. Digging into the difference between self-identification and religious practice is not something that I saw before, and is a fascinating data point.

[philh]

Like I warned about in my sibling comment, the map is comparing divorce rates per capita, not per marriage. It does not say what you claim. (Also, eyeballing it I couldn't even tell you whether the south has an unusually high divorce rate per capita. It's an awful presentation of the wrong data.)

The bar chart is comparing divorce rates per marriage, and does not find that religious affiliation affects divorce rate; but churchgoing does, at least in some religious groups.