Atheists have lowest divorce rate. Evangelical Christians have highest divorce rates.

[Asher]

It's pretty clear that Christians are not capable of monogamy.

[self biased]

oh, asher.

[Asher]

[Traianvs]

Well, atheists do not have to marry in the first place. So it'd make more sense to ask about
not MARRIAGES falling apart, but RELATIONSHIPS. And in this case I'm pretty sure the results would have been different. An atheist can have 10 quasi-marriage relationships in his life and they won't be counted in these stats, simply because they feel no religious pressure to get married.

I somewhat contend that. People often marry without having a religious ceremony accompanying it. There are a lot of (fiscal) benefits to being married. Over here that is. I imagine you catholic zealots think differently about this

[Heresson]

Ben Kenobi proved by his numbers I was right

[KrazyHorse]

I don't read his posts, but I'm going to guess that he either didn't provide a source
for his numbers, or his source didn't say what he claimed it said.

Anybody? How close am I?

[KrazyHorse]

Damnit, curiousity got the better of me:

a) No source for numbers (of course)
b) Even if we take the numbers at face value:

The question is never asked, what percentage of marriages entered are likely to result in divorce? That we don't know. AFAIK, only 21 percent of all atheists divorce, however, atheists are twice as likely to never marry, at 37 percent.

So, if we look at the remaining 63 percent of which 21 percent divorce, this means that about a third of all atheists who marry eventually divorce.

For the Protestants, who divorce at a rate of 27 percent, and 85 percent get married, this means that again, 27/85, or about 31 percent eventually divorce.

This excludes Catholics, for whom 85 percent also get married, and only 21 percent divorce, this gives us a number of just under 25 percent, which is significantly lower then for atheists and protestants.

This demonstrates once more that Ben is either disingenuous or just plain stupid.

The figures provided for divorce "rates" are for the percentage of the CURRENT population of each group which has undergone a divorce. You cannot compare that to the percentage of each population which will EVER get married and get a percentage of marriages which will end in divorce.

[KrazyHorse]

To explain further, the percentage you get from the above ridiculous calculation will drastically understate the percentage of marriages which end in divorce for ALL groups, and may do so by a significantly different factor for each group.

[RGBVideo]

troll thread

[RGBVideo]

oh, you got ben kenobi in

thread continues for 6 pages

4.5/10

[Asher]

And who ever said Finns were oblivious?

[Dr Strangelove]

It also doesn't take into account income and ethnicity, both of which are major factors.

I'm not sure what to make of Ben's points, since we don't know whether or not the surveyors computed their percentages from people who had ever been married. Even if the surveyors only computed the divorce rate among married atheists, if as Ben claims less than 2/3rds marry during their lifetime, comparing their divorce rate to the other groups is still problematic.

One factor to consider is that Catholics have the option to annul their marriages. This may artifactually lower the reported rate of dviorce among Catholics. Given how relatively close the divorce statistics are for the various Christian groups an artifact of only a few percentage points could be seriously misleading. In fact the difference between these groups is so relatively small that one might seriously ask whether there is a functional significance.

[Ben Kenobi]

http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-chapter-3.pdf

Source is here.

[Ben Kenobi]

I'm not sure what to make of Ben's points, since we don't know whether or not the surveyors computed their percentages from people who had ever been married.

Nope, the religious tolerance study looked at the total number of atheists who had ever been divorced. This includes the body of those who had never been married. It also means that all those who have been divorced more then once are only counted once.

It does not ask the question as to what percentage of marriages among atheists are likely to result in divorce. A lower bound is a third, and it will be higher when you take into account those who've divorced more then once.

One factor to consider is that Catholics have the option to annul their marriages. This may artifactually lower the reported rate of dviorce among Catholics. Given how relatively close the divorce statistics are for the various Christian groups an artifact of only a few percentage points could be seriously misleading. In fact the difference between these groups is so relatively small that one might seriously ask whether there is a functional significance.

A difference in a few percentage points is significant, given the fact that 'protestants' include non-evangelicals. I don't know how they score annulments. That's a good question, one that the religious tolerance folks don't address.

[Ben Kenobi]

The figures provided for divorce "rates" are for the percentage of the CURRENT population of each group which has undergone a divorce. You cannot compare that to the percentage of each population which will EVER get married and get a percentage of marriages which will end in divorce.

That's true, but I'm again assuming that the marriage rates won't change significantly over time.