While I’m shirking my blogging responsibilities by linking to series of posts elsewhere, there’s an interesting discussion about hostility to atheists at the Volokh Conspiracy: see here, here, here, and here. You’d be unsurprised (I suspect) to learn that Americans find atheists to be one of the most untrustworthy brands of people around. Just to get an idea, here are the answers from a 2005 poll that asked whether “your overall opinion of [the group] is very favorable, mostly favorable, mostly unfavorable, or very unfavorable?”
|
Group |
Very favorable (%) |
Mostly favorable |
Mostly unfavorable |
Very unfavorable |
|
“Catholics” |
24 |
49 |
10 |
4 |
|
“Jews” |
23 |
54 |
5 |
2 |
|
“Evangelical Christians” |
17 |
40 |
14 |
5 |
|
“Muslim Americans” |
9 |
46 |
16 |
9 |
|
“Atheists, that is, people who don’t believe in God” |
7 |
28 |
22 |
28 |
Well, I suppose it’s understandable, since atheists are constantly killing innocent members of other sects in the name of their belief system. Oh wait, no they’re not. Must be the War On Xmas that is hurting our ratings.
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/local/13379915.htm
fun satire. and from kansas! gasp!
Wow, who knew jews were more popular than christians!
Sean,
I think the average US citizen uses the equation atheist = communist,
which may explain the results.
I think the same as Wolfgang.
What does communism have to do with this? Its got more to do that these people feel that you’re not a good person if you don’t have faith in God. But then I like your ending line, its that faith that has let to so much malice.
Well, Chinese and Soviet atheists are indeed responsible for an enormous number of deaths in the 20th century – of the order of 100 million. I think Pol Pot of Cambodia too was an atheist.
I think any organized “-ism” is potentially dangerous – atheists are no more immune to human frailities than anyone else, it is their unorganized state in the United States that renders them not capable of any significant harm compared to the religionists.
I think the problem here is that many (not all) people associate atheists with evil. There is a notion that if you’re an athiest then you don’t have good morals and you’re a bad person. I know many people who are athiest and have very good morals. They’re good, kind-hearted people, but I don’t think the general person on the street sees that.
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Maybe the problem is with atheists themselves. Sometimes I find listening to Richard Dawkins as taxing & tiresome as listening to Pat Robertson.
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Bad Marketing..
and I mean this in a constructive sense. The image many people have of atheists is people who file lawsuits to get the words “under god” out of the pledge of allegience.
It is not viewed as a belief structure but as and anti-religious advocacy group.
Its like framining pro-choice as being in favor of abortion.
Probably given that atheists are generally not a highly monolithic group, there is no PR budget or image building going on.
Elliot
It seems reasonable to assume that most theists have a strong emotional attachment to their god because that god usually represents and supports all that they find meaningful in life. To suggest such a being is imaginary probably seems to them like saying all that they find meaningful is meaningless. And how could any good person suggest such a mean thing?
I am not sure about those numbers – World War II took a huge toll on eastern Europe, in particular Soviets (~20 million) and Jews (~4 million),
but those were at the hands of nazis. There were also about 10 million chinese and ~8 million germans who died in the war.
The atrocities of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot etc. to their own people are order of magnitude smaller than WWII.
I doubt one could argue that the casualties would be less had those countries been full of religious fanatics. So I am not sure this has to do with atheism.
Deaths under Communist regimes were hardly driven by a commitment to atheism. In fact they were driven by a commitment to a teleology, in the sense of these deaths are worth it because we’re building the radiant future. In this, its structure, logic and justification shares a lot with religous madness, as in the “yes, a sad loss but compared to winning the kingdom of heaven on earth, it’s a small one” logic.
I also suspect that most people who’re unfavorbaly disposed toward atheists think that atheists are smug, arrogant people.
Oddly, atheists I know don’t find religous people (who believe that unbelievers will be damned to pain and desolation for infinite time because they’re far less morally virtuous than the religous person) arrogant and self-satisfied.
Hunh. So, what if you’re a Jewish atheist?
Robin — Not all religious people believe that all (or even any) unbelievers are damned. (There’s no hell in Judaism, for example; there’s no doctrine in Catholicism that says non-Catholics are damned.) But when I see a bumper sticker that says something like “In case of rapture this car will be driverless” or hear statements of confidence about “going to heaven,” I do think “how arrogant” — though I realized at some point that the speaker may consider this a statement of faith in God, not a statement of pride about oneself. I do find certain strands within American evangelicalism to be incredibly arrogant and self-satisfied.
One thing I’ve found over years of observation is that a person’s religion or lack thereof has almost nothing to do with that person’s morality and character.
On that topic, a famous Steve Weinberg quote
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Atheists are held in low regard not because of their lack of belief in God but because of their lack of belief in religion. Buddhist, despite being atheists, are not despised to the degree that nonreligious atheists are.
Moreover, most atheists tend to have sophomoric views on religion. They fail to understand that it’s a pillar of civilization. There is no known superior means of suppressing inherent human savagery in large populations. Sure, it inspires war and killing. But its benefits (civilization) exceed its detriments (wars, jihads). The trick is to tweak religions to minimize the latter.
Lastly, who is less likely to commit crimes against you: a) Someone who believes that he will burn forever Hell as a consequence, or b) Someone who believes there will be no consequences, unless he’s caught? [Yes, there are crazies who want to kill you for an eternal reward, but they are far outnumbered in the U.S. those whose murderous impulses are restrained by their religion.]
Belizean — I would like to see some evidence for these assertions. There was a recent study published in the Journal of Religion and Society that claimed to demonstrate the opposite — that higher levels of religious faith in a given society correlate with higher levels of violence and other social ills. Frankly, I’m skeptical that such a thing could be proved either way.
So far nobody objected to the notion that atheism is an organized ism? Let me object. Atheism is not an organized ism. So there.
Belizean,
First, why is it reasonable to hold someone in contempt for lack of “religion” (which here seemingly means doctrinal religion, as opposed to say folk or animistic religions)? Second, what share of atheists have that view of religion? Remember even Marx’s full quote was sympathetic.
It may be wrong, but it isn’t ignorant of the positive role of religion. Third, you’re right that most people believe that atheists are more likely to commit crime, but I doubt that’s actually true. I’d be surprised if the rate of atheism among convicted murderers was more substantial than in the general population . . . and actually less surprised if it were the other way around.
Belizean, please don’t make sweeping statements like that without some numbers to back you up. Here’s a page that talks about religious belief for prisoners: Prison Incarceration and Religious Preference. The conclusion there is that there is no way to directly link religious belief and crime and that economic and social factors are far more important than any belief in a punishment in the afterlife. Based on this Fox News Poll from last year, while 92% of Americans believe in God, only 74% believe in Hell so 18% of religious people compared to 8% of non-believers should have no compuction about commiting a crime.
Belizian,
while those assumptions about most athiests and the role of religion may play a role in peoples oppinions of athiests, the assumption are not really grounded in anything. As many situations will testify to it is lack of order in society(usually suplied by government) that seems to be the best explanation for “suppressing inherent human savagery in large populations”
perhaps you should analyze your own views more closely before characterizing other views as sophmoric.
nice quote moshe!
now, wouldn’t it be interesting to repeat the same survey but this time only questioning athiests, to see which group gets the biggest beating? if anyone suspects as i do as to who would get off the lightest in such a survey, i thought i’d just leave you with a bumper sticker quote i saw in new york a while ago…
‘buddhism sucks too.’
… made me laugh anyway.
I wonder what the results would have been if instead of “atheist” they had put “scientist”……