Belief in Christianity saves lives in the USA
In the 1950s when school children openly prayed and read the Bible and Christianity was at its peak, 91%, the murder rate per 100,000 stood around 4.2%. Today, religion is taken out of school and Christianity in the USA stands at 73% in 2012, the murder rate per 100,000 is around 6.0%.
I see a clear correlation about being a Christian nation and less violence. Are there other factors involved, of course, but Christianity has a major role.
yes
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no
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This will probably shock some people that I would say this but I think there is some truth to this... although there is a lot more to it than just less Christianity like the breakdown of the family unit and increasing entitlements. Having said that, I have no idea if your numbers are correct and I really don't care. lol Side: yes
I'm sure some people were saved by finding Jesus. I wouldn't go so far as to say that Christianity ins schools has a direct correlation to the murder rate though. Why wasn't the murder rate zero when Christianity was supreme? How come every non Christian isn't a murderer? Honestly I think if a person has to go to their pastor to ask for forgiveness about almost killing someone that it's just a matter of time until they get tired of that, and that they were crazy before religion, religion has just dampened it. Side: yes
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In the 1950s when school children openly did the cha cha and jive was at its peak, 91%, the murder rate per 100,000 stood around 4.2%. Today, cha cha and jive is taken out of school and and a lower percentage of people are doing the cha cha, the murder rate per 100,000 is around 6.0%. Side: no
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Here is a chart that shows the murder rate compared to Internet explorer market share. http://gizmodo.com/5977989/ You are going to have to justify the how it works to attribute any cause being religion in schools or lack thereof. Your evidence isn't very convincing. It has been 50 years (1962) since prayer has been in school and you don't provide any baseline we can compare the data you used to. The data you provide also seems to be out of date. Some other folks have already provided more up to date links. Even if you were to use this data look the 12 years shown on your data that prayer was in school there was fluctuating homicide rates some large jumps. '57 to '58 is a huge jump of .8 points, the largest single increase in homicide on the list you provide. The only thing the information shows is homicides went from 4.6 to 10.2 then down to 5.6 by recent data. If no prayer in schools increased the homicide rate how did the rate go back down then? Obviously there are much greater factors that feed into this issue otherwise there wouldn't have been such a large swing both ways over time. Side: no
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There are numerous flaws in your argument, but lets just start with the first and most glaring one. You didn't include any sources to back up you claims and your numbers are wrong. I looked up the 2012 homicide statistics on the FBI's website and it says in 2012 the murder rate was 4.8, not 6.0 like you claim. So right off the bat your argument is shown to be fallacious. So once you can provide some correct numbers from reputable sources for all the years between 1950 to 2012, then we can talk about all the other problems with your argument. Side: no
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my source is: crime in the United States, 2008 FBI, uniform crime reports. They only had data up til 2007 on the website I saw. And the website had the murder rate for every year from 1950 through 2007. Year Homicide rate 1950 4.6 1951 4.4 1952 4.6 1953 4.5 1954 4.2 1955 4.1 1956 4.1 1957 4.0 1958 4.8 1959 4.9 1960 5.1 1961 4.8 1962 4.6 1963 4.6 1964 4.9 1965 5.1 1966 5.6 1967 6.2 1968 6.9 1969 7.3 1970 7.9 1971 8.6 1972 9.0 1973 9.4 1974 9.8 1975 9.6 1976 8.8 1977 8.8 1978 9.0 1979 9.7 1980 10.2 1981 9.8 1982 9.1 1983 8.3 1984 7.9 1985 7.9 1986 8.6 1987 8.3 1988 8.4 1989 8.7 1990 9.4 1991 9.8 1992 9.3 1993 9.5 1994 9.0 1995 8.2 1996 7.4 1997 6.8 1998 6.3 1999 5.7 2000 5.5 2001 5.6 2002 5.6 2003 5.7 2004 5.5 2005 5.9 2006 6.1 2007 5.9 Source: Crime in the United States, 2008, FBI, Uniform Crime Reports. Information Please® Database, © 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Crime Rates for Selected Large Cities, 2005 Crime Data Murder Victims, by Weapons Used
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Read more: Homicide Rate (per 100,000), 1950–2007 | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/ Side: yes
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Ok, now that we have the murder rates lets compare that to the percent of Christians in the US during those years. I was only able to find stats for 1990 through 2008 and they show a 10% decline in Christianity. During that same time period the number of murder decreased as well. So, if we take your assumption that the correlation between murder rates and the number of Christians actually means something, then Christianity doesn't save lives like you stated, it does just the opposite. Side: yes
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