Anything But an Atheist!

I like the concept of the video, but have two complaints: 

1)  It’s a bit sappy (and I’m a sappy person).  The music makes it sounds like we’ve been killed in a genocide. 

2)  Pat Tillman was a veteran, but only for conflict in Afghanistan.  To the best of my knowledge, he didn’t serve in Iraq. 

I’d love to see a survey where they asked people how much they admired/trusted various famous people. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if atheists came out on top.

The image of Jamie and Adam kept me from clicking play out of general principle.

Well our Christian brothers and sisters believe God will torture us (or at least remain separate from us) for eternity in an afterlife and to show their love for God, Christians are simply emulating what they feel their God wants by ostracizing atheists.   If God does it (so their logic goes), it must be good by definition.  Convenient isn’t it?

Great video.

1. That’s an awful lot of white dudes. 
2. I understand that a lot of progressive-minded folks resent being grouped in with Ayn Rand, but think about it this way: it really backs conservatives into a rhetorical corner when you point out that their beloved hero’s philosophy was centered on godlessness. 
3. Agree about the sappiness. We do need to maintain perspective.

…”the least violent, most tolerant, *MOST INTELLIGENT*, ”?!!!?  

WTF?  Is this person actually making the claim that we’re more intelligent than homosexuals (Jews, Muslims, etc?) ??!?!  WTF does that even mean?  Some of us ARE gay, Jews, immigrants, whatever…

Sorry, count me out.  I can’t back this mawkish pity-party.  Let’s all get in a circle and cry over how we’re so misunderstood.

Not sure I agree with the “Least violent, most tolerant, most intelligent, most progressive part”.  I think as a group, Quakers probably have us on least violent.  Intelligence is just such a flaky thing- and education intelligence.  I don’t think our reputation for intolerance is completely unfounded, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.  One could argue that all our lawsuits against state sponsored prayer are a sign of intolerance.  I know, I know.  But if we were really tolerant wouldn’t we just “go with the flow?”  Sometimes I’d rather not be tolerant.

I thought this video was a bit over dramatic to the point of silliness.  That said, I did like montage of famous/notable atheists,  many of whom I wasn’t aware that they share my nonbelief.

I thought Edison was a deist. Where does it say he was an atheist?

could that music be any worse?

I’ve been thinking that forever. I would like to see a “it gets better” for both atheists and high school students. One of the things I tell my kids over and over again that life gets so much better after high school.

Does anyone know of similar vilifying of atheists somewhere in Canada? I’ve lives in a few fairly large cities in Canada & not experienced anything near as nasty as the cases mentioned in the video.

“But a “dick”, as you so misogynistically put it?”

I don’t think that word means what you think it means…

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/misogyny

Christopher Hitchens is a neo-conservative (and kind of an asshole), but people don’t seem to feel uncomfortable associating atheism with him. Karl Rove is reportedly an atheist as well. Atheism doesn’t always denote left wing political views.

“WTF?  Is this person actually making the claim that we’re more intelligent than homosexuals (Jews, Muslims, etc?) ??!?!”

Not sure where you got this impression

I’m a female atheist and my husband is an Hispanic atheist. Believe me, we’ve been discriminated against and had terrible epithets thrown our way, but never because of our lack of religion. Prejudice against ethnic minorities and the “weaker sex” is, in our experience, much more prevalent than hatred of atheists.

Also, I do not consider myself any more intelligent, progressive, or tolerant than any other group. Where did that idea come from anyway? There’s no correlation at all, imo.

Sorry, meant to say “religious conservatives.” The people who co-opt her philosophies with no regard for their foundation in staunch atheism. 

I think the best way to combat prejudice against atheists is to keep pointing out that all theists are atheists too when it comes to the gods of religions other than their own.

Why?

I weep for your society: of the advanced, liberal democracies yours is the most backward in being rife with superstitionists in positions of power and influence.  Atheism in western Europe isn’t a show-stopper, and while we have to fight the influence of Xians and others we aren’t considered traitors or outcasts.

I don’t want to patronise you, my American friends, but somewhere from the DoI by educated and cultured men your society has been hijacked.

Short answer: Because I am a mechanical engineer.

Somewhat longer answer: 

They are entertaining, yes, and occasionally prove something. Unfortunately, their tests are designed for entertainment, rather than accuracy. It is not science (regardless of what XKCD thinks) and far too many people take Mythbusters results as gospel.

Nothing irks me more than someone citing Mythbusters as proof/disproof.

Fair enough, but two points. First, one of their stated goals for that entertainment, accurate or not, is to at least build up interest in thinking about science and seeing it in a positive light. The hope is, in part, that kids will want to become scientists, or at least learn more about science. Second, they’ve done a lot for the freethought movement outside the show, and I think there’s more than a little credit for them to be had there.

So you’re right, it can be a bit of a bother when people cite Mythbusters as scientific fact, but I wouldn’t personally hold that against them.

You know what was more depressing? The reaction I got from other atheists when I posted this earlier on my blog. I was told, verbatim: “Yeah, then look as the social and economic position of most atheists and see that how ever much people say they hate Atheists, your not the recipients of centuries of institutional and cultural violence. grow the fuck up. ”

Apparently hate is okay and shouldn’t bother me if it’s not institutionalized.

Well said. I think so often Atheists put way too much into the word that is not there. So many try to co-opt the word to somehow encompass the entirety of their worldview and it just does not work.

It simply means that we don’t believe there is evidence for the existence a god. The only way it affects our ethics, is in that we roundly reject the idea that anything is somehow moral because their deity says that it is.

I think PZ did a grave disservice to the community when he tried to shame people into being ashamed of being a dictionary atheist. The reality is that being an Atheist is no more descriptive to me, than being a Theist is to a Christian. It only tells you a little bit about the person.

It also would allow us to get away from the silly comparison to Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others. Because it would then be like forcing a Christian to defend Osama bin Laden. They are both Theists, No?

There has been a study that showed that there’s an inverted proportional relationship between religion and education, as in the more educated you are, the least religious you are and vice-versa.

There was at least one study if not more that showed that americans would vote for all minorities (for president) before they voted for atheists. Even an homosexual would be more likely to be named President. Don’t you think that tells a lot?

Having grown up a Theist, I’d disagree with your points. I know many Theists who “value evidence” and think very “critically”. They simply compartmentalize their religious beliefs into an untouchable box. Often due to brainwashing since they were children.

Also, go look at the comments over on Sam Harris’s facebook page on the Vaccine article he put up last week. You will see very clearly there, there are many atheists, that are prone to conspiracy theories. And could care less about evidence and critical thinking. As another example, look at the rush to judgement of the Norwegian shooter as being representative of the Christian Faith. Even though the evidence shows that at best is an overstatement of the truth.

All that said, I just don’t think the evidence supports your generalizations about Atheists and Theists. Possibly had you added “about religion” to your descriptions I would have agreed.

It still beats Christians poorly singing about the glory of their God.

“You will see very clearly there, there are many atheists, that are prone to conspiracy theories.”

*cough*Bill Maher*cough*

Yeah,  know, he calls himself an agnostic.  Same diff in that case.

Yeah, we’re lucky in that you can’t tell if a person is an atheist just by looking at him, and atheism isn’t something that most people are willing to be martyred for, so it’s easier to stay in the “closet” about it. So we’ve been able to escape the brunt of the religious persecution.

“least violent, most tolerant, most intelligent, most progressive”

Don’t forget handsome and modest 🙂

Even if you could tell an atheist just by looking, in this day and age, we’d still have it better than most groups (including atheists) in the 1950s.

No, we shouldn’t roll over and accept it.  But, one of the easiest ways to make what atheists go through seem piddling and not worth time to look at is to compare it against things that were blatantly worse.

 After thinking about it through the day, I realize that the term “misogynistic” was incorrect; my apologies.

Ah, well, that’s true.

I’ve received much more flack for being a woman and for being gay than I ever have for my godlessness. Once kids start saying “that’s so atheist” and “heathen” to bully each other, then I’ll start to agree. Once there are laws telling atheists who we can marry or what we can do with our bodies, then sure.  As an atheist I am not LEGISLATIVELY discriminated against. However as a woman and a lesbian, I am.

Since when are atheists the most progressive? What evidence do you have to support that? My parents are atheist/agnostic and they were still mad at me when I came out as a lesbian! Also, they’re both Republicans.

No, Tillman participated in the initial invasion as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Only later (after finishing Ranger School) did he serve in Afghanistan.

The study in question did not in any useful way establish that claim.

Oh, bull.

First, you are misrepresenting the claim in the video. The video does not assert, as you pretend it does, “that athests are the most hated and mistreated minority.” The actual claim in the video (at 0:50) is that atheists are “the most hated and mistrusted minority in the United States.” It reflects poorly on you that you see fit to respond to that claim by dishonestly misrepresenting it.

Then, the University of Minnesota study ( http://tinyurl.com/mnljwa ) found, on the basis of a wide range of survey results, that “atheists are less likely to be accepted, publicly and privately, than any others from a long list of ethnic, religious, and other minority groups”—a status that the researchers noted was a severe “distrust of atheists.” That is precisely what the claim you are attacking asserts. How, pray tell, could one possibly find sociological evidence of hatred of a minority, other than in the very findings the Minnesota data support?

The study in question did not in any useful way establish that claim.

I don’t think anyone asked you what is or is not “useful.” And your willful blindness to the atheophobia that’s all over the Minnesota researchers’ results doesn’t amount to much.

And in fact plenty of atheophobia is institutionalized. It constantly frosts me that so few people are aware that atheist parents in the U.S. are routinely denied custody of their children in divorce disputes, on the overt and specific grounds that the parents in question aren’t religious. (UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh compiled 70+ court decisions to this effect at http://tinyurl.com/yov2rh .) No American court has ever ruled that it’s illegal to discriminate against irreligious parents this way.

How the hell could the abuse be more “institutionalized” than that?

but I missed Robert A. Heinlein  – who was outspokenly rude about all forms of superstition, in spite of what the movie people (Paul Verhoeven?) did with his Starship Troopers in film 3.
 
Why bother to call it atheism – a lack of susceptibility to superstition and rejection of century old con-games is my preferred description.

I am surprised that so many people are surprised that atheists are hated in America.
In England, religion is closely linked to patriotism, Queen EII is the head of the church, one is therefore respectful.  But that’s about it. The local vicar is usually the vicar because it is a family tradition, like coal mining once was. Local Anglican private schools are actually the cheapest form of private (called public) school – by a factor of 1:10 – so a good place to send the children!
 
However, in America religion is BIG BUSINESS, televangelists making millions, huge rallies being organised, summer camps, books, weddings, collections every Sunday.

For the average hard working American, it would hurt to admit that they have been conned out of their money (up to 10% of their income), and that their parents and their parents’ parents, for generations, have been giving it away to parasites who have been selling pie-in-the-sky and jam-tomorrow* and never had to deliver.
So they deny it, and since these crooks want to go on making money from their lies (even if a priest believes in a god, saying he knows what that god is thinking is still a lie) they have to pretend we are evil people since we teach freedom from dependency.

In a nutshell, the pushers hate people who try to wean their ‘clients off the drug, and so they tell the junkies that we are trying to kill them.

Of course they hate us! Wouldn’t you?

*(The much quoted, non-conned R.A.Heinlein.)  

Atheism has a morality far more inclusive and advanced than any theology. The arguments for being ‘religious’ get weaker by the day, hence the increased hate from theists I think. I wrote a bit more about it today – http://wp.me/p1u5Um-9T – and hope it helps someone make their own case for why Atheism is the more rational choice.

The video says atheists are the most hated group….

Well, as repeated social science as shown, by several measures we are. And that fact is callously and ignorantly pooh-poohed all the time, including on this thread.

The fact that atheists are mistreated by the believing majority in American society is not a minor, marginal quibble. We have human rights, just like anyone else, and it’s not inappropriate or stupid for us to point out that they frequently are disrespected and ignored by powerful people and institutions.

The Oppression Olympics involves arguing that your minority is treated worse than any other one, and that therefore others’ complaints and demands are illegitimate. It’s disgusting because such comparisons trivialize very real injustice. Social science showing that Americans profess to hate atheists more than they do other minorities is not the Olympics, especially because more hate ≠ worse treatment. (Hate, especially of the kind measured by those studies, is not equivalent to Oppression.)

GLBTs and ethnic minorities, among others, generally do get more potent abuse in the United States than atheists do. The point of calling out the Olympics is to recognize that making that comparison has no benefit but plenty of cost. Atheophobic mistreatment is wrong and should be corrected regardless of whether it’s worse or less bad than other kinds of mistreatment.

…then went on to say we’re also the most intelligent, etc. That didn’t
sit well with me because it ignored the fact that every atheist is
unique.

I think “most intelligent” is stupid (we have human rights even if we’re ignorant morons), but what does our uniqueness have to do with anything? Every gay man and lesbian, every member of an ethnic minority, every woman is unique, too. That shouldn’t, and generally doesn’t, prevent those minorities from advocating for their shared interests. Atheists’ uniqueness is not itself unique.

We may be just another “minority”, although I don’t even like resorting
to that kind of self-classification. It’s dangerous to try to put
people into categories and then start defining that group’s general
characteristics.

Well, tough. We’re a category whether any of us likes it or not. As the social-science data demonstrate, Americans have no problem categorizing (and despising) us regardless of whether we want them to do so. Fighting the very idea that atheists have anti-bigotry and anti-discrimination interests in common doesn’t do a thing to make us less of a category (and thus a minority and, indeed, a community); it merely makes it harder for us to fight the majority’s privilege and abuse.

We have no choice whether to be a minority, a category. That status is thust on us by the atheophobic society we live in. The only choice is whether to fight back or not—and if we do, there is unavoidably strength in numbers. That happens to be the same position that every despised minority in American history has been in.

Pick two atheists at random. What are the odds they have anything else in common?

Pick two gay men at random. What are the odds they have anything else in common? No better than the same odds for two random atheists. And yet the GLBT community is, as it should be, a political force.

Recognizing the way we, as a minority community, are seen and treated by the majority does not deny individual uniqueness. It merely takes seriously the way that individual atheists actually are treated. Atomistic disorganization doesn’t help anyone but the bigots who benefit from standing on our necks.

Alexandra:

This video tried to play oppression olympics claiming atheists are more hated than anyone else in this count[r]y.

No, that claim is the finding of a substantial amount of social science. And given that hatred is not oppression, it’s not the Oppression Olympics, either.

As numerous studies have shown, more Americans are willing to attest to antipathy toward atheists than toward any other minority. That’s a fact, not a complaint about oppression.

I was just trying to point out that a pol[l] indicating people don’t think we share their vision of America doesn’t translate to us being the most despised minority.

You clearly haven’t read the University of Minnesota study. The point about respondents believing that atheists don’t share their vision of America was one portion of the Minnesota researchers’ conclusions; it isn’t even close to the extent of the atheophobia the study found.

I wonder: what evidence would you accept as support for the notion that X% of Americans hate atheists? What would it take? Do you expect poll respondents to answer “yes” to the question “Do you hate atheists?” Do you doubt any assertion about homophobia, sexism, or racism that isn’t backed up by declarations that are that overt?

In no way did I say that the discrimination faced by women or gender and sexuality minorities is worse that that faced by atheists.

Oh, please. That’s precisely what your entire account implies:

I’ve received much more fla[k] for being a woman and for being gay than I ever have for my godlessness. Once kids start saying “that’s so atheist” and “heathen” to bully each other, then I’ll start to agree. Once there are laws telling atheists who we can marry or what we can do with our bodies, then sure.  As an atheist I am not LEGISLATIVELY discriminated against. However as a woman and a lesbian, I am.

What exactly is the point of any of that, if not to argue that “the discrimination faced by women or gender and sexuality minorities is worse that that faced by atheists”? Every distinction you draw in that paragraph has no purpose other than that.

Come on, now. Stop running away from what you very clearly argued.

That’s why I said this is the discrimination “I’ve experienced.”

Right—you were trying out the old “the plural of anecdote is data” argument. Unfortunately, it’s a fallacy.

I never argued anti-atheist prejudice doesn’t exist.  I never said discrimination has to be from the government for it to matter.

No, you just implied those things, by sarcastically writing about bullies using “that’s so atheist” and “heathen,” and by shouting “LEGISLATIVELY.” Again, you’re just pretending you didn’t say what you obviously said. It doesn’t work.

And I mentioned my less than tolerant non-theist parents  as an example of how we are not some monolithic  group like the video claims.

Nonsense. That video never asserts that we’re anything close to “monolithic.”

Come, now. Such evasion and disingenuousness is beneath you.

“Atheism has a morality far more inclusive and advanced than any theology.”

Tony, I’m sorry to be a pedant, but atheism has no morality whatsoever.

Describing the morality of atheists is akin to describing the morality of people who don’t believe in leprechauns.

Well, if you go by numbers, atheists tend towards the left and progressiveness.  But the belief that binds atheists together also allows for many, diverse views.  I may think of Ayn Rand as a criminal – and I share no love of libertarians (like say Penn Jillette) who I think of as short-sighted – but that doesn’t mean she isn’t a well-known name who is also atheist.

Perhaps.  But those are just paraphrasing polls and studies.  Too few people identify as such for it to be very statistically meaningful.

Some states have ‘lower’ average IQs than others.  It just happens.

It’s just a reference to social studies.  Correlation does not imply causation.

I’m pretty sure those white coats they often wear are indeed lab coats.

There’s paraphrasing and there’s going so far out on a limb that you lose credibility.  And what group do you mean with “too few people identify as such”?  There are enough self identified atheists in this country to make statistically meaningful statements.

What for me makes the ‘non voilent’ thing worse is that even if it’s true, it’s a correlation, not a causation, so we bring back the Stalin/Pol Pot/Mao thing.  

Atheism isn’t itself a moral system, but I’d argue that most atheists are more moral (or at least have better morals) than the religious. The abrahamic religions in particular have a lot of trash “morality” mixed in with the few good obvious things.

As someone who’s studied social science and read the Minnesota polls, I still don’t see where “repeated social science [h]as shown, by several measures we are [the most hated group]”

I’m not pooh-poohing, I’m just sincerely interested in a citation for what you’re referencing.

 Which is annoying… it’s right up there with people not knowing the difference between Agnostic and Gnostic as applied to Theism and Atheism…  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stated “I’m an Agnostic Atheist” only to be told that it’s an oxymoron.

But yeah, if you could actually explain these things to people it’d solve 90% of the problems.  Just like I don’t mind 90% of christians… just the 10% who knock on my door in the morning or who beat the hell out of me at school as a kid.

  1.
Atheists have the lowest percentage of inmates both for violent crime
and crime overall, as reported in 2009 (and since then, I believe), both
relative to the population of atheists and directly compared to other
groups.

“Citing four different studies, Zuckerman states: “Murder rates are actually lower in more secular nations and higher in more religious nations where belief in God is widespread.” He also states: “Of the top 50 safest cities in the world, nearly all are in relatively non-religious countries.”Within the United States, we see the same pattern. Citing census data, he writes: “And within America, the states with the highest murder rates tend to be the highly religious, such as Louisiana and Alabama, but the states with the lowest murder rates tend to be the among the least religious in the country, such as Vermont and Oregon.”And these findings are not limited to murder rates, as rates of all violent crime tend to be higher in “religious” states. Zuckerman also points out that atheists are very much under-represented
in the American prison population (only 0.2%).” — summary from
Psychology Today of part of an article by Phil Zuckerman.Article itself
(In PDF): http://www.pitzer.edu/academic…

2.  Atheists average roughly 6 points higher than their religious
counterparts, and there’s a high correlation between low religiosity and
high IQ and it’s inverse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R….

3.  Related to #1, and most of the direct evidence ranges from
anecdotal to being somewhat unclear in methodology.  It’s really a hard
thing to put numbers to, aside from looking at crime stats… unless, ya
know, you count that while there are countries executing people for how
they were born based on religious law, no secular nations do such a
thing, I suppose.  I agree with the premise, both personally and through
the law, but I see no discernible way to present a positive case
logically. 

Note that there is no direct statement concerning whether or not
atheism/irreligious stances cause these behaviours or the inverse, but
the group as a whole *does* have these observable characteristics,
regardless of source.