Atheists/Agnostics Have Lower Divorce Rates

Barna report: Variation in divorce rates among Christian faith groups:

 

Denomination (in order of decreasing divorce rate)	% who have been divorced
Non-denominational **	34%
Baptists	29%
Mainline Protestants	25%
Mormons	24%
Catholics	21%
Lutherans	21%

Variation in divorce rates by religion:

 

 

Religion	% have been divorced
Jews	30%
Born-again Christians	27%
Other Christians	24%
Atheists, Agnostics	21%

 

 

Ron Barrier, Spokespersonn for American Atheists remarked on these findings with some rather caustic comments against organized religion. He said:

“These findings confirm what I have been saying these last five years. Since Atheist ethics are of a higher caliber than religious morals, it stands to reason that our families would be dedicated more to each other than to some invisible monitor in the sky.  With Atheism, women and men are equally responsible for a healthy marriage.  There is no room in Atheist ethics for the type of ’submissive’ nonsense preached by Baptists and other Christian and/or Jewish groups.  Atheists reject, and rightly so, the primitive patriarchal attitudes so prevalent in many religions with respect to marriage.”

StopTheReligiousRight.org had some scathing comments as well:

“We hear an awful lot from conservatives in the Bible Belt and on the TV about how we all should be living. Certainly a culture that teaches the conservative religious values of the Christian right must have clean living written all over it. And lots of ripe fruit from their morally superior lives abounding.”

“It doesn’t. Far from it. People that talk the loudest may be the ones walking the slowest. Joining its history of Biblically correct bigotry and discrimination, it is an area with the highest divorce, murder, STD/HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, single parent homes, infant mortality, and obesity rates in the nation. As a region, the Bible Belt has the poorest health care systems and the lowest rates of high school graduation.”  

 

 

Link to Article

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm