Religion Sux, Part II

Further to my post about religion's stupidifying influence on society, it should surprise no one that atheists are both discriminated against and more intelligent and ethical than superstitionists.

Long after blacks and Jews have made great strides, and even as homosexuals gain respect, acceptance and new rights, there is still a group that lots of Americans just don’t like much: atheists. Those who don’t believe in God are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry. They can’t join the Boy Scouts. Atheist soldiers are rated potentially deficient when they do not score as sufficiently “spiritual” in military psychological evaluations. Surveys find that most Americans refuse or are reluctant to marry or vote for nontheists; in other words, nonbelievers are one minority still commonly denied in practical terms the right to assume office despite the constitutional ban on religious tests.

Rarely denounced by the mainstream, this stunning anti-atheist discrimination is egged on by Christian conservatives who stridently — and uncivilly — declare that the lack of godly faith is detrimental to society, rendering nonbelievers intrinsically suspect and second-class citizens.

Is this knee-jerk dislike of atheists warranted? Not even close.

A growing body of social science research reveals that atheists, and non-religious people in general, are far from the unsavory beings many assume them to be. On basic questions of morality and human decency — issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights — the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious.

Consider that at the societal level, murder rates are far lower in secularized nations such as Japan or Sweden than they are in the much more religious United States, which also has a much greater portion of its population in prison. Even within this country, those states with the highest levels of church attendance, such as Louisiana and Mississippi, have significantly higher murder rates than far less religious states such as Vermont and Oregon.

As individuals, atheists tend to score high on measures of intelligence, especially verbal ability and scientific literacy. They tend to raise their children to solve problems rationally, to make up their own minds when it comes to existential questions and to obey the golden rule. They are more likely to practice safe sex than the strongly religious are, and are less likely to be nationalistic or ethnocentric. They value freedom of thought.

In an online Q&A following that article, one of the authors responded to a question on religiosity and society:

I have conducted an extensive comparison of socioeconomic conditions in 1st world countries(www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07398441_c.pdf) that shows that among other items Americans are overworked. The overall results show that the more irreligious and progressive prosperous democracies are, the better are the societal economics conditions. Folks in secular democracies live longer, don't kill each other nearly as often, have lower abortion, STD, teen preg[nancy] rates, mental illness and so on. In part this is because good societal conditions suppress religiosity, which means it is not possible for a highly religious country to be socioeconomically successful.

'Good societal conditions suppress religiosity.'

Well, with Harper, Ford, and soon Tim 'Chain Gang' Hudak in charge of fucking up our societal conditions, I guess we can look forward to a boom in SkyDaddyism.

ADDED: Remember this poll from 2007? Merkins would (marginally) prefer a gay president over an atheist one. Yes, atheists are viewed that dimly.



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