Why do Americans still dislike atheists?

Interesting article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...slike-atheists/2011/02/18/AFqgnwGF_story.html

 

They do?

I had no idea, most of the atheists I know are American. I think people in general hate those that challenge their identity and personal beliefs.

 

Atheists have the gall to question unquestionable authority, perhaps? The last thing some authority figures want is for people who will question everything to actually do so.

 

It's kind of funny I never once have heard a conversation about atheism except on the Internet.I think people hate atheists in my area so maybe that's a big part of someone not proclaiming their beliefs.

 

I think it's more the pushy "evangelist" atheists that people in general dislike.
There are those people who do have a problem with those who do not share their beliefs, but this is far from restricted to the religious.

 

The problem with this Washington Post article is that it doesn't really cite any evidence--even anecdotal evidence--that this anti-atheist sentiment even exists. We're just supposed to take his word for it. Besides being bad journalism, it offers no opportunity for anyone to disagree.

 

I was raised atheist in the United States. My father is not only atheist, but a professor of evolutionary biology at a major university. Aside from him getting occasional hate-mail postcards from religious evangelicals, neither of us have ever run into any trouble. Neither of us have ever been harrassed just for who we are. It's certainly not comparable to what my Arab-American, Persian-American, and Muslim-American friends have sometimes experienced (edit: and my LGBT friends).

 

I've always considered myself open minded and not easily led by the mainstream belief in any particular area I reside in.
It is very difficult and in the past for some people dangerous to speak a more liberal or different belief about things.

So really it is understandable that people have let themselves become repressed in some ways as to how vocal and open they approach subjects.
For the mere fact of just living a peaceful life and not being discriminated against for not following the herd. But some people are very open to new thought but they won't express it in public very often.

 

It's in their constitution.

(no seriously, it is).

 

No, seriously, it isn't.

 

Some individual state constitutions in the USA are written to prevent atheists from holding public office.

 

Those provisions are unenforceable under the United States Constitution. The provisions are unfortunate relics from a previous era, but have no legal effect nowadays.

And those unenforceable relics only appear in a few state constitutions anyway.

 

Awesome!

Thankyou for educating me.

(no, seriously)

 

I’d have to agree, for an example, there was a barn burnt down here recently containing several horses (yes they were killed); all because the man who owned it was gay.
http://www.whiznews.com/content/video/384783

 

Never mind horses. This is what happened last week to a transgendered girl who had the audacity to be seen in public (in a McDonald's restaurant, to be specific). She was beaten by two girls who never met her before until she was having seizures on the floor. A third person stood by, filming the entire incident.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/mcdonalds-beating-caught-tape-hate-crime/story?id=13450499

These incidents are disturbingly common for LGBT individuals. I'm not sure if anything like this has EVER happened to an atheist. So the Boy Scouts won't let me in? Big whoop. I'm not losing any sleep over it.

 

Well, it kind of hits home with me given that I live close to where it happened. Besides, next time it could be a house; and who’s to say just how deeply this event could affect someone. I know I’d be decimated if it were me.

I read about this not to long after it happened, and it’s pretty sorry behavior if you ask me. A lot of people were throwing around that it was because she was a prostitute and that she propositioned someone’s boyfriend. Then it was because she was in the women’s bathroom, and finally, I started hearing that it was a combination of the two. But honestly, it’s just because a lot of people don’t like what’s different.

I simply don’t know. My understanding is that, there were environments where non-believers of differing stripes were under threat of ‘pain and death’ from one religion or another. However, when discussing this, we (or rather, I) have to take into account that the term ‘atheist’ while used in the past to get people killed (Giulio Cesare Vanini for example), simply wasn’t used in the same way then, as it is now. I will say that atheists as we know them now, likely wouldn’t have fared well in certain environments in the past.

 

Being an Eagle Scout and a Buddhist I can tell you that Boy Scouts aren't required to believe in God.

Of course it is encouraged and many Boy Scout troops are sponsored by local churches. Faith is seen as a virtue in Scouts but its not a requirement.

I just wanted to point that out b/c that article had no factual verification.

Please don't get me wrong though. Even if that fact was true it's not persecution it's exclusion from a private organization.

That article falsely assumes Gayism, Sexism, Rascism, and sectarian violence is less than anti-atheism.

 

The Scouts allow in people who adhere to a non-theistic religion. They do not, however, let in agnostics/atheists in the sense of people who neither believe in God nor are members of an organized religion.

The written policy:

How it's been enforced:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Scouting

 

Well its not really enforced.

Well, I won't dispute the written mandate, I vaguely remember that but I know that there were atheists in my troop, most of them were in my patrol.

Don't get me wrong I think Scouting was kind of dumb outside of camping out and doing outdoors activities like shooting guns, wilderness survival, kayaking, etc.

Back to the OP I think that article still took anti-atheism waay overboard but yea I'd have to say in general I think America's been moving to the right the past like 15 years.