Portland Considers Protection Against Discrimination for Atheists, Agnostics | Hacker News Reader

Portland Considers Protection Against Discrimination for Atheists, Agnostics

opb.org

30 pointslaurex8 comments

As a European atheist, I’ve never experienced any form of discrimination neither in my native lands nor in the United States, but the mere prospect of it in the latter somehow never fails to send an ominous shudder down my spine.

I am a portland agnostic and have never experienced discrimination that I've detected. Then again, I've never been invited to the best mormon parties, so I could be missing out.

I also don't generally discuss my religious beliefs unless directly questioned about it -- and since being so-questioned is quite rude, I would likely try to avoid the person questioning me going forward -- thus avoiding any discrimination risk.

My family are all southern fried baptist. I lied to my grandfather who asked me on his deathbed if "I was saved". Otherwise, religion is just not on my mental radar.

Amusingly, the reverse discriminatory problem is sort of true. If someone goes out of their way to tell me about their religious beliefs, I will think less of them. I'm trying to work on this about myself, though.

I think there are bigger problems to solve personally, but this one seems like a cheap "win" so hey, why not I guess?

$0.02

Its hard, atheists generally don't care and won't try to convert anyone. But every religion created by man is about spreading the message to the heathens. If you're Christian you simply cannot accept atheism.

> every religion created by man is about spreading the message to the heathens

I'm not even sure if most religions are like that. Christianity and Islam seem to, and the Krishna Consciousness people, and the Scientologists, but Judaism and polytheists mostly don't. Haven't seen much Buddhist proselytizing either. It varies.

Dawkins and Harris and the other New Atheists certainly try to spread their atheism though.

Judiasm says that they don't, but they do. Many Hindus believe everyone is already Hindu. Buddhism is not a religion.

IIRC some relatively recent polls in the US showed that a signifant proportion of Americans didn't trust atheists or something to that effect. It was mentioned in that stupid documentary that Pinker did about atheism.

I can think of no place where such a protection is less nessecary.

Why not have discrimination protection for political views first?

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