Christianity does not lead to a more moral population

One of the "arguments" many theists use to justify the need for religion is that without religion there would be no need for morality, therefore without religion people would commit more crime.  While there's probably many ways to look at this issue, I think one of the best would be to look at crime statistics.  Let's start with the United States.  Roughly 75% of the US population is made up of Christians while the prison population is made up of over 80% Christians (83.75% according to the poll I found).  I guess the argument could be made that this is a statistical anomaly, until you look at the atheist numbers.  Atheists make up about 10% of the US population and yet only account for .2% of the prison population, that's not two percent, that's point two percent.  That is beyond a statistical anomaly.

We can also look at the prison population by country.  The top 5 least religious countries are:
1) Sweden
2) Vietnam
3) Denmark
4) Norway
5) Japan

The United States ranks 44th and yet has the highest prison population by far.  The US has 5 percent of the world's population, but accounts for nearly 1/4 of the prisoner population.  On the other hand, the countries listed above rank 174, 121, 169, 170, and 193, respectively.  In addition, a Pitzer survey concluded, "high levels of organic atheism are strongly correlated with high levels of societal health, such as low homicide rates, low poverty rates, low infant mortality rates, and low illiteracy rates, as well as high levels of educational attainment, per capita income, and gender equality. Most nations characterized by high degrees of individual and societal security have the highest rates of organic atheism, and conversely, nations characterized by low degrees of individual and societal security have the lowest rates of organic atheism. In some societies, particularly Europe, atheism is growing. However, throughout much of the world -- particularly nations with high birth rates -- atheism is barely discernible."

We need another Gene Roddenberry

On this day in 1969 we landed on the moon.  It made me start thinking.  A few days ago there was an image floating around showing that we had reached the date that Marty McFly travels to in "Back to the Future II".  When the movie came out we were imagining hoverboards, auto fitting clothing, flying cars, and personal nuclear fusion power plants.  I then saw a preview for Total Recall, which stated that it takes place in the year 2082.  Obviously I haven't seen the remake yet, but based on the original it's certainly not an optimistic vision of the future.

So, it made me wonder, when and why did we loose our optimism for the future?  We've gone from hoping for and imagining the best to, in many ways, just hoping we'll still be here.  Don't get me wrong, I love William Gibson and Philip K. Dick as much as anyone and I think that Gibson's future is probably where we're headed, but I also love Start Trek and would like to think that we can achieve that in the distant future.

It might be cliche, but I at least partially blame the politicians.  The politicians on both sides, for nearly every position, campaign by saying that the entire world is going to burn if their oponent gets elected instead of focussing on how great things could be if we had a vision.  Of course, the public is to blame as well for buying into it.

I think we need a new JFK or a new Roddenberry.  We need someone that can offer us a positive vision for the future and show us a path to get there.  I think we saw hints of that when Obama was elected.  Now before everyone starts bitching and moaning and saying whether or not Obama is a great president or a terrible one, I think nearly everyone can agree that for a large part of the American population we at least had some hope for a while.  Sadly, it didn't last, but that's not the point of this post.  The point is, as I stated earlier, when and why did we loose our optimism?  Or, have we not lost it and I'm interpreting things incorrectly?