I’ve noticed that religious guys in prison are kind of like religious guys everywhere: they’re out-and-out victims of the confirmation bias. That is, they find a belief that seems to work for them, and run with it. No attempt is made to look at this belief critically. If they do any real studying on the belief, it’s always in support of it.
This is bad, whether the belief is religious or not. It turns off our critical thinking mechanism, and that is what prisoners need the most. Not faith, but rational thinking. And I’ve said it before, once you can think critically about God, it becomes a lot easier to do so about everything else in your life, particularly your behavior and decisions.
Dan Turner
DOC# 767569
I am agnostic so I do not go so far as to say there is no evidence of God, but I will go so far as to say there is little or no evidence of love, and certainly not in prison (there is very little evidence of love in the outside world, too, just passionate “love songs” but passion is not love, it is torture). To me, a religion without love must be false.