Read some more down-thread and now I'm *really*
> confused. Am I arguing with Joseph, or Dennis,
> or both? They seem to be arguing with each other;
> but about what? And who's on which side? Somebody
> hand me a playbill, fer Chrissake.
>
Final post tonight: I think maybe you're arguing with yourself? :-D
I'm not party to any debate right now as far as I can tell. Dennis' preference for statistics on arrests, convictions, and sentences, rather than reported crimes, could lead to him missing a big part of the picture, but I haven't said so yet, and really don't know enough about the two data sets to make the claim.
On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 4:54 AM, Michael Smith <mjs at smithbowen.net> wrote:
Wouldn't surprise me. But are you thinking of some particular
> implausible causation claim?
>
Pretty much any claim that's ever been made here about the political effects of evangelical Christianity should suffice. Those assertions are particularly fun, since the people making them have to exclude huge chunks of the data set - mainline Lutheran and Methodist churches, pretty much anyone who's not white - before there's even a correlation to which they can point.
-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."