"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.mon dieu
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."
Saturday, March 25, 2006
atheists dont go to heaven
speaking of 'muslims can't go to heaven' - tristero brings us this:
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Lukery,
I'm a little confused because the survey says atheists are only 3% of the U.S. population. Does that include self-described "agnostics"? I mean, what is an "atheist" anyway? Does someone who formally calls himself a Catholic but never goes to Church, never reads the Bible, and if you cornered him at a party, readily admits he doesn't really take religion seriously qualify as an atheist? Or is he a Catholic?
With that being said, there is an unfortunate trend in America toward superstition...uh, I mean..religiosity. This trend is amazing, as it runs completely counter to the trend of America also being on the cutting edge of new technological change. I don't know how it can be explained...perhaps there is so much alienation in modern American society, that people are looking somewhere they think they can connect with somone beyond themselves.
What blows my mind is that if you have people calling in question the official story of 9-11, they are called "kooks" and "wingnuts". But average people believe something far more fantastic and unbelievable- that there's an Old Man In The Sky makin' miracles and movin' mountains and bringing back people from the dead.
the term atheist is very specific - ie someone who says: "i dont believe in god"
it's no wonder the number of them is so small in the US - you guys have reached critical mass - and there's literally no group that is more scary/despised than atheist - not even muslims or Teh Gay.
the rest of the world laughs at you
Post a Comment