Thing is individuals calling for the elimination of government programs end up presuming that replacement programs will magically appear because somehow a "free market" is supposed to provide services for people who don't have money.  You almost never see such individuals actually doing anything constructive to help the poor.  They may throw a handout or two to people to help in time of crisis, but it isn't regular.  The focus isn't on taking over responsibilities of government, but just to dismantle government programs.  

As for your goal, how do you do it?  There are a lot of goals but people really don't do much on them.  Do you, at least, try to give 10% of your after tax income to help the poor?

The claim about conservatives giving more is in a book they will often cite in talkshow circiut they have in their bubble also.

A)  It's only a small sample size if you've never taken a class in expiermental methods.  100 candidates is generally a high number as far as a school or research boards IRB is concerned for such a project.

B)  That was specifically the faulty reporting I was talking about.  Like... the exact article.  Which is why i asked if you had scientific journal access.  Though regardless, I would point out that it's a scientific given that people act similarly with fake money as they do real money.  Simply because greedy people are generally greedy through self justification.

C)  The fact that research keeps showing this... over... and over again. 

D)  Nice job deflecting.  I guess i remembered that part wrong.  Thought it was because SHE was upset at how she donated in regards to Haiti.  It still in no way diminishes the actual points that you did a nice job trying to deflect from though.  Again, look back up at D and ask yourself... "Which is more likely."

Seems pretty obvious.

E) How isn't charity morality? It's the one thing that's more or less been seen as universally moral.  Sacrificing for others.  So unless you don't believe in moral relativism... I can't think of a better measure. 

A) Don't care, again 100 people leaves a 10% error.

B) Yeah, I'm sure every article that cites the study is wrong. LOL

C) Okay, source? Again, you've brought nothing to the table at all. And I've actually brought a counter-source, or did you miss that? 

D) Deflecting? haha, I made it abundantly clear that you don't have a damn clue what you're talking about and showed you the facts of the matter. It was not her atheism, but her friend's atheism which prompted the study. No, I don't have to think "what is most likely" I can read exactly why and don't need to assume, which you continue to do. Not very wise, not very wise at all.

E) Charity is an example of moral behavior, but it is not morality. Confining morality to one example and then making a judgement upon it is quite dimwitted.

It's pretty clear you have nothing to bring to the table and don't understand much about research, debate, morality, etc.

See ya.

There are a few issues here; one being that maintaining a high moral standard is never easy, for anyone regardless of religion or lack thereof. Another being that anything one does in the name of one deity or another might be regarded as immoral by another religion's morals or even through a more objective moral set, moral relativism and all that.

The lapses in ethics are simply down to human flaws and faults and the vast majority of religious people fail to follow their religion's moral codex often or even all the time. One simply cannot claim that religious people have superior morals simply due the amount of factors that could influence actions and how these are percieved by others or by an objective moral compass. The same goes for atheists though.

Hitchens' point still stands, religious people are in no way morally superior and morals can and have existed outside of supernatural belief systems throughout time. This argument is akin to the whole "Hitler was an atheist, I have now proven that atheism is evil" discussion (which is null and void since Hitler wasn't even an atheist), there are many tools and weak arguments like this to attempt to disarm and discredit people who have no faith or personal religion and they all ultimately fail in the task they were intended for.

A).  Your continued arguement of this point is just pure ignorance to social science Research methods...

B) Every article?  No... but quite a few do. If you follow science in the media at all, you sould know this.  They always get studies wrong and exagerrate what they say.

C) Your source wasn't a counter source.  That was talking about... God priming.  Do you know what god priming is?  If you had journal access you could look at that first article and find a numbr of supporting studies.   Since pretty much all research studies begin with a literature review.   Well that and the fact that said study was actually 3 studies that all came to the same conclusion.

D) Again... this seems to be pure ignorance to social sciences.  Social sciences collect data and then infer results.  Because you can't measure motivations and emotions like you can say, gravity.

E)  Again, do you or do you not believe in moral relatvism?  If you do.  Specific examples that have more or less always held consistant as moral are the only things you can measure to judge morality.

If you have two groups except one group thinks it's morally right to drink cofee, and the other thinks it's morally incorrect to drink coffee.... no comparison can be made on morallity based on drinking coffee.  This goes all the way up to crazy things like always forcing women to cover their heads.  If you believe in moral relatvism... you can't use those things for comparison.

It's clearly obvious that your the one who doesn't know anything about research.  Nor apparently moral relatvism.   Which is odd... being a moral absolutist who is an atheist honestly just makes you a pretty illogical atheist..

It's like being an atheist and believing in modal realism.

Your just giving up one "fantasy" for another.

Getting really tired of education you on matters you pretend to know.

A) Lol.

start reading: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/fact_sample.html

This sample is not befit of the masses and is simply born of convenience. Do you understand what this means or no?

B) Okay, you've posted no articles. I've posted 2. Again you bring forth nothing but suppositions. Do you have a rebuttal or not?

C) You argue that god priming is dissimilar when it isn't at all. You neglect to admit that religious folks are naturally primed, it permeates their life at all times. That study cited continues to show another study where priming is not born of God constructs, but of authoritative constructs and the same results are found, and again with simple moral constructs, and again...same results. Set aside your devotion to myopia and read my source.

D) There is no confirmation bias here. Results speak for themselves, despite my disagreement with the methodology.

E) Morality isn't as simple as you'd like with reductionist nonsense like relativism. Naturally it is relative because it is subjective, but there are certain absolutes with morality - murder for instance is universally immoral.

Lol, now you're not only putting words in my mouth but attacking this imaginary straw man. Hahah.

Do you have anything to bring to the table in regard to sources or just endless suppositions?

A) Not sure why you thought that would prove your point.   I find hilarious that you think a respected peer journal would just publish a study that didn't have an adequte sample size.  I mean, maybe your not familiar with the current journal scene but competition to get into peer reviewed journals is harder then it's ever been, to the point of where a bunch of other "Scam" journals have been started up specifically to get peoples money.

100 people is... pretty standard.

http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/en/d/Js6169e/7.4.html

for example uses it for all the examples.

If your doing a full qualatative study?   You generally see a sample size of like... 15 people.

This was a study where they had to bring people in individually.  Not some mass internet email survey question like in the link you posted.

B)  Except... you didn't post any articles... so... i'm not sure i get your point.  You posted news reports about some articles..

If you have scientific journal access.  review that first study.  Check out that study the news article talks about... and look at their literature review.  Otherwise, i'm not sure how this is going to help you.  I mean, i could post the names of the studies from there... but if you can't read them... what's the point? 

I mean shit,  Grahm Haidt 210, Noreyzarin and Shariff 2008,

C)  Your point is that religious people are generally more generous because they're always god primed?   I'm not sure what your point is.  The fact that they are always god primed means that in practice they are going to donate more to charity and act more charitable when not prodded to be.  Which again, was my original statement.  You are going a long way and reaching to simply just agree with me.

D)  Again... the results do speak for themselves... you just need to learn how to scientifically read results.   What do the results say?  Without prodding.  Religious people give more money.  (Again, my original point, which you now seem to be agreeing with.)   They aren't much effected by compassionate videos, a tiny bit, not alot.  While atheists give almost nothing when not prodded, but give a lot more when prodded by sick children.

That's all the research says.  Anything past that is inference by the researchers.  Even the researchers would tell you as such.  

E) Is murder universally immoral?  There have been plenty of societies who thought it perfectly ok for a husband to kill his wife for example.  Or a man to kill his slave.  Or hell another person's slave.

What makes murder universally immoral?   If morallity doesn't come from society... where does absolute moral points come from?

Though in short... this arguement is just silly now, because you've done enough deflecting and rolling around to the point of where you've adopted MY original point and are pretending it's your own.

That is...

"on average the less religious you are the more prodding that is needed to get you to help others."

Re-read my statement, because you didn't understand any of it.

What don't you understand about "not statistically significant?" I mean, I understand you have some learning disability, but are you incapable of comprehending explicit statements here?

Priming was not an admittance that religious people are more charitable. You obviously didn't read my point or deliberately ignored it ( as usual ). I alluded to the two futher studies concerning authoritative priming and moral priming, which confirm that it has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with what sort of priming factors are involved. In both regards, BOTH types of people were more charitable. 

LOL@linking a medical source for a PSYCHOLOGICAL study. 

LOL@news articles not being articles.

Like I said, it finds that religious people respond mechanistically to charity i.e. funds set aside without thought. Emotionless, compassionless, just simply handing over money because they feel like they must. It isn't born of compassion or altruism, it's based on indoctrination.

Arguing for murder using the 1800s as an example? Haha, in this time murder is universally accepted as an immoral behavior. Morals change as society changes. (Note society, not religion.)

Again putting words in my mouth.

You seem to be quite clueless. I won't be replying anymore to someone so set on peddling bullshit. Peace.

News articles aren't articles.  I'm talking scientific articles here.  As in peer reviewed studies.

Outside that...  Sample sizes are sample sizes.    Tell you what, have accecss to a college?  Go ask any a proffesor.  They'll tell you it's fine.  I mean... even you long gave up this point... since you know.  The study you posted...  had a sample size of 50.  Half that.

Also... had you read the literature in THAT study... well...

If your wondering why the correlation was their but not significant... well that's because they had two difference experimental groups.  This one was theists vs atheists... while the other was religious people vs atheists.  That is, those who are particularly religious vs just being a catholic who hasn't been to church for 15 years.

They got rid of that squishy middle of people who beieve but aren't actually religious and mostly do out of tokenism of what they grew up with/society.

outside that... the fact that you can't debate that in the 1800's murder wasn't immoral... still completely blows up your arguement about there being "moral absolutes".

Nevermind there are still plenty of cultures around where you can kill people for shaming you and people will look the other way.

He never states that atheists don't commit terrible acts. Also, being more religious does not at all mean you have less 'moral lapses' as you put it. Then there's the definition of what's immoral and what's sin. In the 3 Abrahamic religions, being gay is a terrible sin. To some atheists or to people from other religions there's nothing immoral about that.

So it all comes down to perspectives from person to person which is why a separation of church and state is good because it's supposed to prevent people enforcing their (religious) views of what's moral on others. Crimes should be things that are objectively wrong (as in causing harm in the literal sense) like violent acts, infringing on others' rights and property and so on.

Like Hitchens mentions some of the most horrible acts are committed in the name of religion (which is supposed to represent a moral compass for individuals and societies).

I don't remember that Christianity calls drinking or smoking sinful either and if divorce is wrong in Christianity then the majority of Christians in america are major sinners because divorce and remarriage and re-divorce is rampant.