"Atheists Need To Shut Up"

Since I started blogging I've had a chance to read a number of blogs written by other atheists which has been illuminating about the differences between the types of non-believers. One thing we all share though is that in America, we are the least trusted minority and most people think its OK to discriminate against us and then tell us to shut up. Here are a few stories from the past few months that I've followed.

1) Atheists are the least trusted minority.

When asked which groups did not share their vision of American society, 39.5 percent of those interviewed mentioned atheists. Asked the same question about Muslims and homosexuals, the figures dropped to a slightly less depressing 26.3 percent and 22.6 percent, respectively. For Hispanics, Jews, Asian-Americans and African-Americans, they fell further to 7.6 percent, 7.4 percent, 7.0 percent and 4.6 percent, respectively.

The study contains other results, but these are sufficient to underline its gist: Atheists are seen by many Americans (especially conservative Christians) as alien and are, in the words of sociologist Penny Edgell, the study's lead researcher, "a glaring exception to the rule of increasing tolerance over the last 30 years."

Edgell also maintains that atheists seem to be outside the limits of American morality, which has largely been defined by religion.

Many of those interviewed saw atheists as cultural elitists, amoral materialists, or given to criminal behavior or drugs. She states, "Our findings seem to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the common good."

Of course, it should go without saying, but won't, that belief in God isn't at all necessary to have a keen ethical concern for others.

I like that line "given to criminal behavior or drugs". Considering atheists make up about 10% of the American population but only 1% of the prison population, we must be really sneaky.

2) CNN Panel Concludes Atheists Need to Shut Up

Here's the scoop: CNN ran a story about how a family of atheists were discriminated against when they tried to stand up for their rights in a situation about prayer in school. Leaving that topic aside right now, CNN then followed the story up with a panel of people to talk about atheism that included no atheists. As the blog I linked to noted:

In summary, what a ridiculous panel. Our great mainstream media can get a panel of people in a room to discuss atheism (none of which are atheists by the way) and agree that we need to shut up.

Rights are important.. unless your an atheist. In that case, just fall in with the majority and shut up. Nice.

EDIT: Its worth noting that after many people complained CNN redid the panel and included an atheist (or two?). But not before the original one aired.

3) Professor: An Atheist Should Not Be President

The blog post by Brent Rasmussen is a bit filled with anger, but considering he's been told that no matter how qualified he is for the job his lack of religious belief should bar him from being president you could perhaps forgive him a little. Here is the op-ed piece that inspired his post:

Still, Steve believes - correctly in my view - that in general the differences between religious believers are less important than the differences between believers and nonbelievers, and that this distinction is and ought to be relevant to political life.

That belief helps explain why, for example, Americans say they are far less likely to vote for an atheist for president than for members of various groups (women, Jews, ethnic minorities) who have been excluded historically from presidential consideration.

Now among liberals, the knee-jerk reaction to such poll data is to condemn the intolerance it represents. Yet I think there are good reasons for refusing to vote for an atheist for president - subject to the caveat that I also believe genuine atheism, like genuinely orthodox religious belief, is actually quite rare.

[...]

Conversely, when one presses a purported atheist, one almost always finds that the person believes in various propositions that simply don't make sense without a belief in some source of an ultimate moral order, i.e., what most people would call "God." For instance, almost everyone who claims to be an atheist still makes lots of "ought" statements, as in "we ought to preserve biological diversity," or what have you.

The latter view is that of the famed biologist Edward O. Wilson, in his new book The Creation. Written in the form of a letter to a pastor of the Southern Baptist faith in which Wilson was brought up, Wilson argues that atheists like him and religious believers ought to agree that preserving biological diversity, and therefore in the long run humanity, is a profound moral imperative.

Wilson is a brilliant man, but this kind of thing has always seemed to me nonsensical on its face. After all, the human race has existed for an eye-blink of cosmological time and will certainly cease to exist in another eye-blink or two.

The only response a genuine atheist would have to that fact is, so what? Which helps explain why there are almost no genuine atheists.

[Emphasis Mine]
You see that? Its OK to refuse to vote for an atheist for president because true atheists don't exist, or if they do, they wouldn't really care about the world around them or anyone in it. That is what we call a strawman argument: define your opponent's views in such a way that its obvious your argument is correct against them. By redefining all (or almost all) atheists as closet theists, he gets around the obvious intolerance of saying he wouldn't vote for an atheist for president.

Of course we are left with the question of what would he do if someone claiming to be an atheist who makes these "ought" statements was running for president (like the current political climate would ever let that happen! HA!).

* * * * *

Why does this climate exist? Simple: many people of faith cannot comprehend of a person without faith having a similar moral compass and ethics as they do. This creates two possibilities: either the atheist is basing their morals on a religious upbringing and are secretly theists, or they are truly amoral people that care for no one but themselves.

The only way to combat this distorted view is to make people aware of the atheists around them and how they are often good caring people with families they love. We are not amoral and are just as likely to have principles and stick to them (or not) as would a theist.

Sigh. We are not evil.