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University of Minnesota Study on American Attitudes Towards Atheists & Atheism

JMorris

Democratic Socialist
im sure there has already been threads about this, as its a few years old, but i couldnt find any threads after doing a search, so ill create one now.

Research Finds that Atheists are Most Despised, Most Distrusted Minority


By Austin Cline, About.com Guide

Every single study that has ever looked at the issue has revealed massive amounts of bigotry and prejudice against atheists in America. The most recent data shows that atheists are more distrusted and despised than any other minority and that an atheist is the least likely person that Americans would vote for in a presidential election. It's not just that atheists are hated, though, but also that atheists seem to represent everything about modernity which Americans dislike or fear.


The most recent study was conducted by the University of Minnesota, which found that atheists ranked lower than "Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in 'sharing their vision of American society.' Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry." The results from two of the most important questions were:


This group does not at all agree with my vision of American society...

  • Atheist: 39.6%
    Muslims: 26.3%
    Homosexuals: 22.6%
    Hispanics: 20%
    Conservative Christians: 13.5%
    Recent Immigrants: 12.5%
    Jews: 7.6%

I would disapprove if my child wanted to marry a member of this group....

  • Atheist: 47.6%
    Muslim: 33.5%
    African-American 27.2%
    Asian-Americans: 18.5%
    Hispanics: 18.5%
    Jews: 11.8%
    Conservative Christians: 6.9%
    Whites: 2.3%

Lead researcher Penny Edgell said that she was surprised by this: "We thought that in the wake of 9/11, people would target Muslims. Frankly, we expected atheists to be a throwaway group." Nevertheless, the numbers are so extreme that she was led to conclude that they are "a glaring exception to the rule of increasing tolerance over the last 30 years." It's not that bigotry and discrimination against Muslims is appropriate, but at least it's not hard to understand where such attitudes would come from.


Every group except atheists is being shown much greater tolerance and acceptance than 30 years ago. "Our analysis shows that attitudes about atheists have not followed the same historical pattern as that for previously marginalized religious groups. It is possible that the increasing tolerance for religious diversity may have heightened awareness of religion itself as the basis for solidarity in American life and sharpened the boundary between believers and nonbelievers in our collective imagination."


Some respondents associated atheism with illegal behavior, like drug use and prostitution: "that is, with immoral people who threaten respectable community from the lower end of the social hierarchy." Others saw atheists as "rampant materialists and cultural elitists" who "threaten common values from above -- the ostentatiously wealthy who make a lifestyle out of consumption or the cultural elites who think they know better than everyone else."


Given the relatively low number of atheists in America, and the even lower number who are public about their atheism, Americans can't have come to their beliefs about atheists through personal experience and hard evidence about what atheists are really like. Furthermore, dislike of atheists doesn’t correlate very highly with dislike of gays, immigrants, or Muslims. This means that dislike of atheists isn't simply part of a larger dislike of people who are "different."


Why are atheists being singled out for special hatred and distrust? "What matters for public acceptance of atheists - and figures strongly into private acceptance as well - are beliefs about the appropriate relationship between church and state and about religion's role in underpinning society's moral order, as measured by our item on whether society's standards of right and wrong should be based on God's laws." It's curious that atheists would be singled out for special hatred on the basis of church/state separation which religious theists, including Christians, are usually on the forefront of fighting to preserve separation. It's rare to find a case filed by or supported by atheists which is not also supported by theists and Christians. In fact, I can't think of any off hand.


Although people may say that they consider atheists inferior because atheists don't believe that civil law should be defined according to some group's conception of what their god wants, I don't think that's the whole story. There are too many religious theists who also want civil law to be secular rather than religious. Instead, I think that a much better case can be made for the idea that atheists are being scapegoated the same way that Catholics and Jews once were: they are treated as social outsiders who create "moral and social disorder."


Atheists can't both be lower-class drug users or prostitutes and upper-class elitists and materialists. Instead, atheists are being saddled with the "sins" of American society generally. They are "a symbolic figure" that represent religious theists' "fears about ... trends in American life." Some of those fears involve "lower class" crimes like drug use; other fears involve "upper class" crimes like greed and elitism. Atheists are thus a "symbolic representation of one who rejects the basis for moral solidarity and cultural membership in American society altogether."

That's obviously not going to change, because as long as atheists remain atheists, then won't be theists and they won't be Christians. This means that they won't agree that any gods, much less the Christian god, can serve as the basis for moral solidarity or cultural membership in American society. Of course, neither can adherents of many other religions who either don't believe in gods or who don't believe in the Christian god. As America becomes more religiously pluralist, America is going to have to change and find something else to serve as the basis for moral solidarity and cultural membership. Atheists should work to ensure that this is as secular as possible.
University of Minnesota Study on American Attitudes Towards Atheists & Atheism - Research Finds that Atheists Most Despised, Most Distrusted Minority
http://www.soc.umn.edu/~hartmann/files/atheist%20as%20the%20other.pdf
 

MSizer

MSizer
I don't find this very shocking at all. I find it a terrible shame, becuase it says very much about the general ignorance spread accross modern society in general (well, at least in america anyway), but it is what it is.
 

rafi

Rafi
I think part of this study that disturbs me the most is the fact that the majority of Americans would never consider voting for an atheist presidential candidate. What I take from that is: most Americans are afraid of a scientific thinker in the Oval Office? What's so bad about that? Maybe then we would stop funneling so much of society's funding towards religious aims and spend more time creating and developing life-saving practices like stem-cell research.
 

MSizer

MSizer
I think part of this study that disturbs me the most is the fact that the majority of Americans would never consider voting for an atheist presidential candidate. What I take from that is: most Americans are afraid of a scientific thinker in the Oval Office? What's so bad about that? Maybe then we would stop funneling so much of society's funding towards religious aims and spend more time creating and developing life-saving practices like stem-cell research.

Spoken like a true Bush hating morality denying atheist indeed. I'll remember to thank you the next time god throws a natural disaster my way.
 

Storm

ThrUU the Looking Glass
I dunno, I have trouble believing it. The idea that atheists are more hated than queers just doesn't jibe with the world I live in.
 

Kilgore Trout

Misanthropic Humanist
I dunno, I have trouble believing it. The idea that atheists are more hated than queers just doesn't jibe with the world I live in.

Indeed - our local environment often produces views which are counter to society-at-large. This is why broad surveys and polls are more accurately reflective of opinions and behaviors than anecdotal evidence. Even knowing this, it is still often difficult to accept counter-intuitive knowledge.
 

MSizer

MSizer
I dunno, I have trouble believing it. The idea that atheists are more hated than queers just doesn't jibe with the world I live in.

George Bush Sr. was asked whether he considered atheists american citizens and he replied that he didn't think so. That's pretty blatant, and coming from the president at the time no less.
 

Storm

ThrUU the Looking Glass
Indeed - our local environment often produces views which are counter to society-at-large. This is why broad surveys and polls are more accurately reflective of opinions and behaviors than anecdotal evidence. Even knowing this, it is still often difficult to accept counter-intuitive knowledge.
A fair point. ETA: Still, when's the last time you heard of someone being attacked or killed because they were an atheist?

George Bush Sr. was asked whether he considered atheists american citizens and he replied that he didn't think so. That's pretty blatant, and coming from the president at the time no less.
I don't deny that there are anti-atheist bigots out there. I just have trouble swallowing the idea that they're more numerous, violent, and/ or influential than homophobes.
 

Baydwin

Well-Known Member
There are quite a lot of startling figures there, 1 in 4 people wouldn't want their kids to marry a black person, and 1 in 10 would disapprove of them marrying a Jew.
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
I found it funny that homosexuals were not a group that people would protest there child marrying. That is probably just another indicator of the general ignorance that sweeps through America.

What I take from that is: most Americans are afraid of a scientific thinker in the Oval Office? What's so bad about that? Maybe then we would stop funneling so much of society's funding towards religious aims and spend more time creating and developing life-saving practices like stem-cell research.
I would have to argue that an Atheist president would not be good solely based on the fact they are Atheist. An Atheist could be potentially as bad as Bush Jr., all they have to do have their own power trip, rather than a god-given power trip. Although I do agree that policy should come way before religious beliefs. But in the end, it will always be another human in office, prone to the same human faults as the last.
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
A fair point. ETA: Still, when's the last time you heard of someone being attacked or killed because they were an atheist?
Awhile ago a man who was atheist in Texas was killed by a christian nut. When the christian guy called 911, the operator asked how many times he shot the man, and the christian replied "hopefully enough" or something like that. I tried to google it, but all I get is a porn for bible swap.
 

Kilgore Trout

Misanthropic Humanist
A fair point. ETA: Still, when's the last time you heard of someone being attacked or killed because they were an atheist?

I don't know. However, the poll doesn't address violence towards people of different groups, but rather, particular attitudes.

It's also a rather inaccurate comparison, as, unless you tell someone you're an atheist, there's no way for them to know. Compared to homosexuals, you can be engaging in any number of behaviors which someone could perceive as homosexual - whether you actually are or not.
 

MSizer

MSizer
..An Atheist could be potentially as bad as Bush Jr., all they have to do have their own power trip, rather than a god-given power trip...

Just like a Jew, Confucianist or Buddhist. The difference between atheists and Believers is that atheists (very general, but by definition though) don't clutter their worldview with mythology and superstition.
 

Storm

ThrUU the Looking Glass
I don't know. However, the poll doesn't address violence towards people of different groups, but rather, particular attitudes.
Violence is merely a manifestation of the attiude.

It's also a rather inaccurate comparison, as, unless you tell someone you're an atheist, there's no way for them to know. Compared to homosexuals, you can be engaging in any number of behaviors which someone could perceive as homosexual - whether you actually are or not.
OK, that's fair.
 

logician

Well-Known Member
After Palin's latest remarks that church and state should NOT be separate, I think we know which side to be scared of.
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
Just like a Jew, Confucianist or Buddhist. The difference between atheists and Believers is that atheists (very general, but by definition though) don't clutter their worldview with mythology and superstition.
That is true. However it stands foolish to believe that anyone of any belief would make a good or bad leader just by their religious views. And one does not need religion or a set of mythos to be delusional. Not to say I wouldn't vote for an atheist, I just believe that the individual's standings on policies should be considered first. If they want to pray to Jehovah, Allah, Buddha, Anubis, or no one, it doesn't matter to me.
 

rafi

Rafi
I would have to argue that an Atheist president would not be good solely based on the fact they are Atheist. An Atheist could be potentially as bad as Bush Jr., all they have to do have their own power trip, rather than a god-given power trip. Although I do agree that policy should come way before religious beliefs. But in the end, it will always be another human in office, prone to the same human faults as the last.
I most certainly agree with that, although I wasn't making a blanket statement about atheists, I was just trying to make the same point that you said in the second to last sentence of your post haha
 

Amill

Apikoros
The people who know my thoughts about the Universe are those that know the kind of person I am. It doesn't really bother me too much if people I don't know judge my beliefs to be untrustworthy. Its kind of stupid, but I don't express my atheistic beliefs in public anyways.
 

dust1n

Zindīq
Just like a Jew, Confucianist or Buddhist. The difference between atheists and Believers is that atheists (very general, but by definition though) don't clutter their worldview with mythology and superstition.

How inconvenient it is to the men with power not to proliferate the absurdities of blind faith - we question where the money goes.
 

logician

Well-Known Member
"Still, when's the last time you heard of someone being attacked or killed because they were an atheist?"

Happens very seldom because few people publicly acknowledge the fact.

Remember Madalyn Murray O'Hair, a very public atheist. In a Playboy interview, O'Hair gave a lengthy list of alleged incidents of harassment, intimidation and even death threats against her and her family for her views. It's not a safe thing to publicly announce your atheism.

It's a political death warrant for a politician to announce they are an atheist.

Religious tolerance still has a long way to go in this country.
 
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