Wednesday, July 04, 2012

Are crime rates higher in red states?

One popular atheist trope is to claim that crime rates are higher in red states and lower in blue states, which further correlates (so goes the argument) with higher or lower rates of religious adherence.

One problem with this comparison is the way it usually sakes over racial and socioeconomic demographics. But another problem is the question of how reliable crime stats are. For instance:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/nyregion/new-york-police-department-manipulates-crime-reports-study-finds.html?_r=2&ref=nyregion&pagewanted=print

1 comment:

  1. Not that I would endorse his theology, but Theodore Beale/Vox Day deals well with this in his book "the Irrational Atheist". He points out that the comparison is absurd because of its assumptions about religious voting demographics, but that, even if we take it, when you look at *counties*, the trend is precisely reversed, and red counties come out safer than blue counties.

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