From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below 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.
Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. “Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher.
Edgell also argues that today’s atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past—they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society. “It seems most Americans believe that diversity is fine, as long as every one shares a common ‘core’ of values that make them trustworthy—and in America, that ‘core’ has historically been religious,” says Edgell. Many of the study’s respondents associated atheism with an array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant materialism and cultural elitism.
Edgell believes a fear of moral decline and resulting social disorder is behind the findings. “Americans believe they share more than rules and procedures with their fellow citizens—they share an understanding of right and wrong,” she said. “Our findings seem to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the common good.”
The researchers also found acceptance or rejection of atheists is related not only to personal religiosity, but also to one’s exposure to diversity, education and political orientation—with more educated, East and West Coast Americans more accepting of atheists than their Midwestern counterparts.
Wow, according to much of "Middle America", my lack of theism makes me less trustworthy than gays, Muslims and immigrants. I'm not sure which is worse, the simplistic attitude towards lack of theistic belief, or the fact that these people quantify their distrust on a scale which so convincingly reveals their petty prejudices.
It's also quite amazing how mainstream this view is that morality stops at the waters edge of religiosity, despite there not being any convincing arguments, or facts, to sustain such a position. Since Reagan, it seems religious Americans have been whipped in to a frenzied, reactionary state over godless liberalism, and its supposed threat to them and their values. Despite having a solid hold on the GOP, with its virtually unchallenged domain over all three branches of government, the Christian right persists in this absurd persecution complex, fearing the whopping 3% of American atheists that are banging at the gates of "their" country.
Well, if they want to look at moral decline, they better start looking in their own backyard first. If you look at the rates of divorce and teenage pregnancy in the religious heartlands of the US, compared to the more cosmopolitan blue states, and you'll see how this narrative has little empirical backing.
You don't need pesky facts or debate though, if you've got the American Taliban.
2 comments:
Please provide recipe for Atheist soup.
Dear BillyBlogger,
Care to share your views on the protests outside AU embassy in Jakarta? Looks like a setup..
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