Conservatives aren't winning any more friends than they already have among religious minorities by suggesting that what really led to the incident in Tucson in which a Jewish member of Congress was nearly killed was the lack of a "a saving faith in Jesus Christ," but I'm not all that sold on the moral superiority of atheists, either. Amanda Marcotte writes:
For the record, it actually seems like atheists are underrepresented in prison populations. But I would caution against reading causation into what is almost surely just correlation; many of the factors that make it likelier someone will be an atheist also make it likelier that they won't go to prison. I just don't think there's much of a relationship between criminality and religion one way or another.
If one looks through history, you can find plenty of examples of atrocities committed by believers (the Crusades) as nonbelievers (Stalin). I generally don't write about religious belief not just because I'm not interested in debating mine but because just as one can neither prove nor disprove the existence of G_d, one can't plausibly argue that religious belief or its absence leads inherently toward morality or depravity.
To paraphrase Julian Sanchez, though, if the only way for you to respect others is to believe that someone wielding omnipotent powers is constantly watching you, then you probably aren't a very good person to begin with. Still, if you are that kind of person, I'm glad you've found religion.
