Imagine our surprise: They hate us
25 March 2006 by RonAs if we didn’t know: Atheists identified as America’s most distrusted minority, according to new U of M study. It’s just the press release so far; we’ll look for the actual numbers. But a taste of the content:
Americans’ increasing acceptance of religious diversity doesn’t extend to those who don’t believe in a god, according to a national survey by researchers in the University of Minnesota’s department of sociology… Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.
Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. “Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years”… today’s atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past—they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society.
That’s right; we’re the new Jewish Communists — the new bogeyman for the 21st century.
25 March 2006, on 9:05 pm
The theists have doubts…they want their crutch…they know we are right, but they love their crutch. Atheists are a threat to their delusional beliefs and if we manage to take their crutch away, they will have to face the reality of their mortality. Most people cannot face the fact that life ends…they want to live forever. We all would like to live forever, but it isn’t going to happen and no wishful thinking will change that. We are representatives of reason and reality and they hate us for it. Most people can’t handle the truth.
25 March 2006, on 10:03 pm
Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public.
The article is not far off. I would change “Even though” to “Because” and tada! There’s the explanation.
25 March 2006, on 11:52 pm
I’ll only feel that this study does me justice if I show up as a caricature in a Looney Tunes.
26 March 2006, on 6:38 am
Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify
not me i am an out and proud atheist who is now a card carrying member of american atheist funny thing is it took this same study to make me join this org
26 March 2006, on 10:46 am
I have my doubts about the percent being that small. Most atheists simply do not admit or talk about it. I am prob on the rolls of a couple of churches from my younger days. I wonder if I am being counted as a christian several times in their polls?
26 March 2006, on 12:36 pm
I think the religious-right are the real threat to american way of life. We founded this country on secular framework to allow freedom of religion and to prevent persecution. The ones who are in danger are the people who do not wish to have morality legislated. I see our freedoms eroding everyday from the efforts of over zealous uneducated christian majority. Just because the majority of people believe something doesn’t make it true. Also atheists are becoming more organized, but you’ll see a gay man in the oval office before you see an atheist.
26 March 2006, on 1:11 pm
How easy it is for the religious to use their PEACEFUL religions to do so much harm to our world. Atheism is mostly misunderstood as satanism or some other worship. What we need to make clear to people is how we do not believe in god but also how we do believe IN the importance of the issues at hand. Such as equality, justice, freedom etc.. And not just for ourselves but or everyone. Including the religious. They are so terrified of their own shadows that we need only to educate them and bring them along to a rational acceptance of us as human beings.
26 March 2006, on 1:23 pm
Atheism is mostly misunderstood as satanism or some other worship.
My 40-year-old brother considers me and my family “satanists” and I can’t convince him otherwise. He isn’t even a hard-core xian! He is a xmas and easter xian! But he is a better person than we are…yeah right.
26 March 2006, on 1:57 pm
“Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in ’sharing their vision of American society.’”
Once again proving that what many people view as “mainstream America” is homophobic, xenophobic, racist, and intolerant. In other words, we welcome anyone and everyone that will immeidately assimilate to white, protestant culture.
26 March 2006, on 3:37 pm
stardust,
Did you explain to your brother that atheists don’t believe in a devil, that’s another stupid christian delusion ? Atheists don’t believe in a devil any more than they believe in a fantasy god or an imaginary friend jeebus so they can’t possibly be “satanists”.
26 March 2006, on 4:07 pm
Did you explain to your brother that atheists don’t believe in a devil, that’s another stupid christian delusion
Yeah, I told him that a million times but he wants to believe what he wants to believe, especially after he has had a few beers. I don’t go around him much. My other brother is on the fence between atheism and “don’t know”…and my sister…well she is a Baptist! (The family religion roots is German Lutheran, however my sister’s daughter married a guy who couldn’t pass the BAR so got a “calling” from “the lord” to be a Baptist minister, converted my niece…and my sister followed. I was really sad about that because all our lives we have been really close and this religion bullshit has driven a wedge between us. I think we would get along better if she wasn’t following a fundie religion. My parents who go twice a year to the Lutheran church don’t really bother me about being an atheist except for sending those annoying “gawd loves you” forwards. But my youngest brother really pushes this satan thing every time we talk, but that isn’t very often since I avoid him. He told my one son that he was a satanist and my son told him that he was a delusional drunken uneducated fool. That started a family war that lasted a few weeks!
26 March 2006, on 5:26 pm
Stardust
It sounds like you taught your son properly.LOL Good for him.
26 March 2006, on 5:46 pm
26 March 2006, on 6:15 pm
Another article on this survery – http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2006/03/24/67686
These religious bastards are so deluded they just don’t get it. One christian who is the head of some wackadoo christian fellowship actually admits that “Atheists seem to be concerned with the human good” but goes on to say “I don’t believe that anybody is really an atheist. I believe that deep down everyone knows there is a god.” WHAT A DUMBASS !! PROVE YOUR BELIEFS OR SHUT UP !!
This just makes me despise religion even more.
26 March 2006, on 10:39 pm
“The family religion roots is German Lutheran, however my sister’s daughter married a guy who couldn’t pass the BAR so got a “calling” from “the lord” to be a Baptist minister.”
How true is that scenario. “I’m not smart enough to do what I want but I’m plenty smart to tell people what gawd wants.”
27 March 2006, on 1:04 pm
“Did you explain to your brother that atheists don’t believe in a devil, that’s another stupid christian delusion ? Atheists don’t believe in a devil any more than they believe in a fantasy god or an imaginary friend jeebus so they can’t possibly be “satanists”.”
According to my parents’ charming logic – choosing not to worship or believe in god is only possible if satan is in control of your life, so not believing in satan is an act of satanism in and of itself, even if you don’t know that you are doing His nefarious works. They pray daily that I will remove the blinders and allow gawd’s light to burn through the veiling mists that satan has drawn over my true sight. Hallelujah.
“The family religion roots is German Lutheran, however my sister’s daughter married a guy who couldn’t pass the BAR so got a “calling” from “the lord” to be a Baptist minister.”
Ah…I think this is the same “lord” that told my aunt and uncle to stay at their missionary post in Jerusalem rather than returning to the States to care for my grandparents. Once my grandparents had to be put in a home, “the lord” had them retire from mission work and return to try to buy my grandparents’ house at a steep discount. Apparently, “the lord” thought it’d make a decent rental property. Too bad “the lord” won’t ever find it in his imaginary omnipotent heart to give my mother back the two years of her life that she spent lovingly wiping her in-laws’ asses in his name while their actual children did nothing.
27 March 2006, on 3:41 pm
It’s to a point anymore that when I changed my long standing self-description from “agnostic” to “atheist”, my utterly non-religious-in-any-way, agnostic gf said, “You’re not really an atheist, are you?”
27 March 2006, on 8:00 pm
Even atheists are scared of atheists.
27 March 2006, on 8:11 pm
I had a similar exchange with a woman recently. She said she despised religion. I said that I did, too, and that I am an atheist. She said “What? You don’t believe in anything?? Like an energy, like the goddess, like something higher than ourselves that watches over the cosmos?”
Apparently this was going way too far for her. She just wanted to leave it at “I despise religion.”
27 March 2006, on 8:35 pm
A lot of people do; I had lunch with a Catholic co-worker today who has “doubts” about her “faith” and is “sad” about having those doubts (her words). She wishes she could be “happy” again like she was in those halcyon days before she began to doubt; when I tried to point out how positive this transition and questioning could be, she insisted that she’s too “weak” to be without faith and that she “needs” it to survive. How fucked up is that?
27 March 2006, on 8:52 pm
she insisted that she’s too “weak” to be without faith and that she “needs” it to survive.
I have a friend I really don’t see much anymore and she said the same exact thing that she can’t survive without believing in SOMETHING. I asked her “why not try believing in yourself?” and she got pissed off at me! She is hopelessly sad and trying to believe in a supernatural sky daddy is doing her no good at all. It’s rather pathetic.
27 March 2006, on 10:55 pm
Technically isn’t an agnostic someone who doesn’t believe in anything while an atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in a higher being ? Of course these are generally the same thing since the foolishness about there being something greater always leads to a higher being of some sort.
As for the comment:
“she insisted that she’s too “weak” to be without faith and that she “needs” it to survive.”
translation:
she insisted that she’s too “weak” to be without the collective and that she “needs” to plug in to her Borg alcove to survive.
What a bunch of losers to want to be part of the christian Borg collective.
By the way if you unfold a cube you get a cross.
28 March 2006, on 1:45 am
EoR, I’ve always understood agnostic to mean that you don’t know if a gawd exists or not while an atheist doesn’t believe in the existence of a gawd.
21 June 2006, on 5:03 pm
[...] Reader Trent tells us that the new Harper’s index has picked up the “Atheists as most distrusted minority in America” theme (see our earlier post, Imagine our surprise: They hate us) in the new (July) edition: “Rank of atheists among minorities whom Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry: 1 [...]