The stigma of being an atheist in the US | Hacker News Reader

The stigma of being an atheist in the US

bbc.co.uk

40 pointsnmjenkins22 comments

When a Pew survey says that atheists are seen as less trustworthy than rapists in the US, you know the stigma is real.

When a whopping 78.4% (Pew 2014) identify as Christian, you know that Christian complaints that they are stigmatized by mainstream society are greatly overblown.

Name a single non-Christian President. The best you will be able to do is to speculate that one might have been Deist a very long time ago. According to these surveys, an atheist simply could not be elected President today. Christians occupy most political offices, so they cannot plausibly claim to lack political representation.

Rank and file Christians are just ordinary people, but they are manipulated by politicians and political preachers to believe they are being persecuted, that there is a War on Christmas, that Sharia will rule over them in their towns, etc. and that they must claim ever greater control of society in order to protect Christianity. Of course this means they should donate money to certain organizations, vote for certain candidates and silence religious minorities.

It also extends to more militant means. Nobody wants to discuss this in polite company, because it's unsettling and it makes many Christians angry and defensive, but a certain number of followers will respond violently, as in the case of abortion clinic bombers who are encouraged to escape from law enforcement, or men who are widely though quietly praised for shooting up a Unitarian church during Sunday morning service. I could go on. This isn't a majority of Christians, but the violence feeds on that substantial supporting population, and it relates to the way many Christians have been politically manipulated into hate.

Several recent popular movies present near future scenarios where Christians are systematically persecuted by non-Christians. Convincing people of this kind of falsehood is essential to building hate. This is widely seen as a plausible scenario, despite the fact that the majority of the country identifies as Christian and a disproportionate majority of our politicians identify as Christian. When you assume that this is reality, it feels more justified to infringe on others' constitutional rights and even to harm them. Whether you want to admit it or not, this is the same mechanism used to justify violence against Jews in Weimar Germany.

If Christianity is a religion of love and tolerance rather than hate and intolerance, then Christians should at least respect the Constitutional rights of religious minorities, including atheists, even if they disagree with them. A few denominations have good records for this, while others do not. But the former are quiet, and the latter control the drift of Christian politics in the US, which is to attack religious minorities and insist on absolute Christian supremacy as if it were a condition of survival.

I personally feel like the "Atheist" position in the US is much more vocal than in the rest of the world.

I'm an Atheist, but I leave people alone and don't try to press my view on the rest of mankind, just like I like to be treated by religious people. I feel there is a strong "anti-religion" movement that calls itself Atheist, and I feel it's giving the rest of us a bad rap.

tl;dr: I don't believe in god but don't care if you do.

I agree, and it is especially frustrating because, personally, most non-believers I meet are reasonable atheists, not the anti-theists you are referring to. There is a bit of a "vocal minority" effect happening, and it definitely makes the rest of us look bad.

"dedicated to those who do not believe in God, Atheist TV."

Wouldn't you have to phrase this as "... those who do not believe in any god, ..." ?

ie no capital, and catering for the multitude of deities they do not believe in.

> "It's one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life and I completely advocate people 'coming out'," says Mark Hatcher, from Black Atheists of America.

I am always amazed by how the American society seems to be divided. I don't understand much the rationale of having a 'black' atheist society, or rather I should understand that experiences are so different that a white non-believer can't even relate with a black non-believer ?

In the UK, we have a different name for atheists. We call it "Church of England".

I assume you're referring to the fact that it's just a "made up" church? [1] Some of the most fanatical church go-ers that I know of are C of E. Of course, that could be my limited experience.

I can see how in the US it can be hard to be an atheist, but as an atheist in the UK it can be a minefield too. Just sat in the pub having a discussion the other day with some people I've known for a while and they were shocked when they discovered I was an atheist and tried to go down the whole, "how can you not believe" yawn and started to get quite angry. I've had that a couple of times now and had to extricate myself with, "look, I can take you through my many years of thought that brought me to this conclusion that will have you seriously doubting your faith, or we can just accept that we both have different opinions."

[1] ...unlike all the other ones of course...

Just out of curiosity, May I ask the age group of the "some people" you referred to?

As a 30yr old in the UK I've not once had that once. In fact I've seen the inverse, people "coming out" as having belief and their friends being shocked, more frequently.

Doesn't mean they are any less made up than the Church of Latter Day Saints. There may be genuine concerns but at the end of the day it was just one guy who wanted a divorce as far as I know.

Yes, and that business about the transubstantiation, which for some reason C of E doesn't believe in but Roman Catholic does.

Even though it's pretty obvious to anyone who's been to a service that the wafer definitely doesn't turn into the actual body of christ - it's still a wafer.

is that meant to be a joke?

The Church of England does seem charmingly ambiguous about whether the whole "religion" thing should be taken too seriously or not.

Compared to the Church of Scotland - which when we had it inflicted upon us at school seemed more of the good old fashioned enternal-damnation/hell-fire/torment approach. Although the Church of Scotland is actually fairly cheery compared to some of the more extreme protestant sects that to be found in the remoter parts of Scotland.

NB If you've seen "Breaking the Waves" you get the idea..... :-)

Edit: Found this brilliant article that sort of sums it up: "Wee Frees told to 'cheer up' by own magazine".

For decades the ultra-Conservative Free Church of Scotland has been caricatured as gloomy and depressive, only truly content when it is opposing Sunday ferry services or chaining up play park swings on the Sabbath.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1575505/Wee-Frees-tol...

Probably partially. But there are quite a lot of cultural protestants in the UK, who go to church biannually, generally don't disagree with the archbishop of Canterbury's proclamations too vehemently, and overall, don't give much of a shit about the whole shebang.

Yeah. The CoE is where you go if you're one of those people who equates 'Christian' with 'decent human being', but don't really believe all nice old stories. They have cake and organise bake sales and cups of tea and they're generally very nice people and don't demand too much, and besides the church is in the middle of the village and it looks lovely so I'll chip in a bit to the roof fund because you wouldn't want it falling down, and we do have a bit of a sing on a sunday morning and it's not too boring, and the vicar was so good at poor uncle Alfie's funeral the other week...

I listened to an interview with our last Archbishop of Canterbury a little while ago, Dr Rowan Williams. You know, the guy that ran the show (even though the Queen is nominally in charge). He admitted he didn't really know there was a god, just that he thought there might be and really really hoped there was.

I don't know if this sort of 'religion' is familiar to americans/others?

Only partly, COE is the state religion in the England so it's taken as a sort of default. I know plenty of people who were married by COE vicars and will fill in COE on a census form but they don't actually believe in god or attend church and think people who do are strange.

Edit: Replaced UK with England!

"COE is the state religion in the UK so it's taken as a sort of default"

Not in the parts of the UK that aren't in England it isn't!

I strongly suspect so.

C of E is sort of the default religion in England, and I know a fair number of people (I used to be one of them) who would describe themselves as C of E but who don't really believe in God.

These days, it's changing though - 25% of the population as a whole (and around 40% of those under 50) described themselves as having no religion in the last census.

Yes, but also a bit true. See the Sea of Faith movement as an example.

As a person not living in the US, I have a hard time understanding how "closeted atheists" are feeling oppressed by this. Do strangers come up to people and ask about their religion, and is the problem that you have to lie? In Sweden nobody really cares what you believe in, and it's kind of a social taboo to even bring it up during dinners etc.

It's just like having to systemically lie about or not mention any other part of your life. We all do this about a variety of things every day.

> Do strangers come up to people and ask about their religion, and is the problem that you have to lie? There are certain situations where it can get awkward. E.g. if a boss or friend asks which church you attend.

I usually just elaborately lie and say I'm religious but "can't find a church I like".

That's actually pretty easy for me, because I grew up in a religious house and understand enough christian theology that I can pick something about any given church and maintain internal consistency in my complaints.

People sometimes think I'm pedantic, but usually don't know much systemic theology or church history, so I can just escalate the discussion to a point where they're unsure of themselves and come out looking a bit pedantic, but at least religious. They get to feel smug about the "emotional depth" of their belief, and I get out of the conversation without having make any dangerous lies (e.g. saying you attend a church you don't... bad idea).

That's way easier for me than the alternative, which usually involves an annoying and endless litany of invitations to the person's church or their friend's churches.

> and it's kind of a social taboo to even bring it up during dinners etc.

It's not formally acceptable to ask in a work setting, but depending on the part of the country, it's often informally acceptable (not talking about church-related things would be kind-of akin to a "no personal conversations at work" rule for much of the south and parts of the midwest).

Increasingly I'm coming around to the idea that the US is a place where extremist politics and religion is commonplace.

This is pretty off topic for HN. Religious wars are supposed to be about Emacs, Vim, and other, lesser, editors, not actual religions, or lack thereof.

Some of the people I consider very worthwhile to read here have very different views than my own on the topic, and I'm not really sure it's a good use of anyone's time to get into that.

You can downvote all you want, but: the article is dead.

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