Claim about the impossibility of forgetting God if He existed

Claim:

“If God exists, it really wouldn't have anything to do with forgetting "Him."”

Answer:

I also exist, but a lot of people whom I would like to remember me, do not. I would like it very much that people would “find” me, but it is not always very easily accomplished.

I might, and sometimes do (at least to almost the same effect), of course stand up and shout: “Look at me, I also exist!” This might help, but not very often, if I really would want to make friends. I think the best strategy for me to befriend people is just to wait, or at least be quite patient. Even hide myself. I think that it is better that somebody else finds my good qualities, without myself always making them very explicit. It is good that people love me and I love other people.

God also wants that we would “find” Him and love Him. This is why, I think, it is very reasonable for Him to hide himself, so that we would learn to love Him even when He is not yet lovable, even when He is weak. This is the reason, I think, why Jesus chose to be such an outcast. Because, so we could see Him to be beautiful even when He was not. Because only in that manner one forms a relationship. And God wants a loving relationship with us.

Claim about the higher intelligence of Atheists

Claim:

"Atheists have been proven to have higher intelligence."

Answer:

To be able to answer to this, it would be interesting to see just where this "has been proven."

Claim about Catholic countries having high poverty and crime rates

Claim:

"The most catholic countries in Africa have some of the highest poverty and crime rates."

Answer:

I remind you of the point I made earlier: Religious affiliation need not be a very good indicator of religiosity. Finland, where I live, is perhaps the most Lutheran country in the world, with more than 80 percent of people belonging to the Luther church. Still, only about 1-2 percent of people attend services on a weekly basis and an overwhelming majority being for the gay marriages, for example. This granted, I do strongly believe, that Catholicism, were it exists, does a lot of good in Africa as well as in any other continent.

In Uganda, at least, which is a predominantly Catholic country the World Bank economists Reinikka and Svensson find that: "Working for God matters" in a paper titled "Working for God? Evaluating Service Delivery of Religious Not-for-Profit Health Care Providers in Uganda"

Claim about Atheists being underrepresented in prisons

Claim:

"In the United States, atheists are vastly underrepresented in prisons compared to the percentage of them in everyday life."

Answer:

It so turns out that it was easier to find articles related to religiousness and crime. Again, it seems, that all the evidence points to the opposite direction to what you suggest.

Lipford, McCormick and Tollison write in "Preaching matters" for example that:

"Taken as a whole, the results suggest that organized religion promotes certain public goods in an economy. Illegitime births and crime rates, for example, are negatively related to church membership by state, all else equal."

Akers and Cochran on on the other hand write in "Beyond Hellfire: An exploration of the variable effects of religiosity on adolescent marihuana and alcohol use" that:

"Sloane and Potvin (1986) find similar results and arrive at the same conclusion. As a consequence, we argue, with confidence, that religion truly does have demonstrable potent effects. These are of moderate magnitude but are consistent enough to be formulated into an empirical generalization: Religiosity is inversely related to delinquent behavior."

Evans, Cullen, Dunaway and Burton find in "Religion and Crime Reexamined" that:

"Religion, as indicated by religious activities, had direct personal effects on adult criminality as measured by a broad range of criminal acts. Further, the relationship held even with the introduction of secular controls, and did not depend on social and religious contexts. Thus, measured as an individual behavioral trait, religion's effects persist over a wide range of crime."

Wlliam Sims Bainbridge writes in "The Religious Ecology of Deviance" that:

"Substantial negative associations between rates of church membership and rates of crime and cultism survive statistical controls."

Claim about Atheists having lower divorce rates than Christians continued

Claim:

"In the United States, atheists have lower divorce rates than any of the christian sects."

Answer:

I read another article called "Reciprocal Effects of Religiosity, Cohabitation, and Marriage" which points to the fact religious people are more likely to marry. The article is written by Thornton, Axinn and Hill. They write:

"Low levels of religious importance and participation are related to high rates of cohabitation and low rates of marriage in that less religious young people are much more likely than their religious peers to cohabit than to marry. People without religious affiliations are also opt more for cohabitation and less for marriage than do people who identify with a religious group."

In this light it would not be surprising if the religious would divorce more in the sense that:

number of divorces of religious people/number of religious people > number of divorces of non-religious people/number of non-religious people.

But this is wrong way of looking at this question. The real question is whether the unions of religious people are more stable than the unions of non-religious people. In other words, out of those, religious and non-religious, WHO MARRY, how many divorce. So, the meaningful comparison would between:

number of divorces of religious people/number of religious people WHO MARRY

AND

number of divorces of non-religious people/number of non-religious people WHO MARRY

Claim about Atheists having lower divorce rates than Christians

Claim:

"In the United States, atheists have lower divorce rates than any of the christian sects."

Answer:

I am really not an expert on these topics, and know particularly little about the United States, but am now in the process of looking it up.

The first article on these topics I bounced into is called "The Effects of Religious Homogamy on Marital Satisfaction and Stability" by Heaton and Pratt. It doesn't discuss the actual divorce rates, but self-reported satisfaction in marriage and stability of marriage, so it is not exactly the same thing as you say, but I try to report any related findings as I go along.

First, it is good to note however, that religious affiliation is not necessarily a very good indicator of a person's religiosity. As the authors of the above article, Heaton and Pratt, point out: "Denominational affiliation may be the result of something completely unrelated to one's religious ideas, such as keeping the peace with one's parents, or trying to "fit in" better with one's associates." Thus Heaton and Pratt use two other measures of respondents religiosity, ie. church attendance and believe in the Bible.

Now, the first relevant finding is that according to this article at least, you seem to making a mistatement. The pairs with no religion reported by far the least marital stability followed by the Baptist, then Catholic, then moderate Protestant, then conservative Protestant, then conservative Protestant, then liberal Protestant and finally nondenominational Protestant.

There are also other relevant findings, which go against your claim, such as: "Results indicated that respondents who attended church frequently, and those who report strong convictions about the utility of the Bible were more likely to report their marriage was very happy and had a low chance of dissolution."

It is somewhat difficult to get hold of the published articles as I am not in Helsinki, where my university is, and have to depend mostly on the internet to provide the articles, and am now actually on a sick leave, but I will be coming back to you as I find more relevant information.