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Comment by qubax | Hacker News Reader

> and atheists in the USA seem to have some sort of uphill battle to be recognised as people who could be vaguely competent at anything.

If you are from the UK, what could you possibly know about the US? I'm atheist and have been since 12 or so. My parents are christian. Never had any issues like you described in my entire life.

Stop believing exaggerated nonsense from for-profit companies like the new yorker as truths. It's more clickbait fiction than anything.

Sure the US may be more religious than other countries. But there are plenty of atheists and agnostics and every other religion and non-religions around. And people get along fine.

Frankly, my perception of the UK ( which I've never visited but I've read about so that makes an exper ) is that the atheists in the UK are far more zealous and militant than the religious in the US. But I'm guessing I know as much about the UK as you do about the US.

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I've lived in the US for my entire life, I've live in both the north and south. Traveled large portions of the country. I've also traveled internationally numerous times. To say that Atheists in the US are hated is putting it mildly. There have been research studies into it, and the results were Atheists were one of the most distrusted groups in America and rated lower than Muslims and actual rapists. You can look up the Pew study, The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Study, The University of Minnesota study and there's more. Every single one disproves your point. If you've been an Atheist in America and haven't seen this, then you're putting on blinders or live in a liberal city.

Edit: Typo. Also real billboard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_atheist...

I feel like I know a bit about the USA because about 70% of the internet and social media is taken up with discussions of your politics and society.

But yes I might have overreached a bit.

I'm glad to hear that your (un)religious opinion hasn't affected your life, but I'm thinking specifically about the political arena: The fact that Bernie Sanders has to deny being an atheist, and that Zuckerberg has to suddenly pretend to be religious because he has political ambitions. Things like that just dont happen over here. No-one is particularly interested in the religion or lack thereof of politicians, and it really doesn't get discussed much. (edit: Northern Ireland is a very complicated exception to this)

Perhaps quoting Chomsky here isn't a great idea but according to him, the United States is a very fundamentalist, religious country – one of the most extreme in the world. https://chomsky.info/01312016/

re: Zealous Atheists in the UK - well we did produce Dawkins but generally atheists over here dont have much to complain about because we are a genuinely secular society. People like Dawkins tend to turn their attention to other countries. And because we're secular, most people don't really have to spend much time thinking what they 'are' at all, in that sense.

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