Religious fundamentalists act as if they would like to tattoo me and my type with a scarlet letter "A." For atheist. Right on the forehead. Or put me in stocks in the public square. Warning, this man is a danger to society.
How do people become so hateful?
Here's an relevant factoid: Atheists have a lower divorce rate than born-again Christians. This finding surprised the Christian researcher who conducted the survey, George Barna.* Upon reflection, it doesn't surprise me. No, I don't believe atheists are more moral than Christians. And certainly the opposite is not true.
The divorce-rates finding probably reflects the influence of education. Atheists, on average, tend to be better educated than Christians. Education level is highly correlated with income level. And with rise in income (at least that first rise out of poverty) comes a lessening of household stress and a consequent decrease in divorce rates.
Rather than being about religious affiliation and morality, or lack thereof, the divorce finding is probably about the inverse relationship between affluence and life-stressors.
It is also true that educated people marry later, and age at marriage is the best predictor of divorce.
So in this case, Christianity clearly doesn't cause people to live a cleaner life and to stick together in marriage. Nor does atheism manifest reptilian self-interest.
Nevertheless, declare yourself an atheist and, right off the bat, you acquire a bad rap. At least in Peoria and a few thousand other locations. You are collared with a bogus identity. You become a person who blindly (in denial) holds a dangerous belief (doctrine). Have a nice day.
Step into the batter's box at one corner of the public square with the word "atheist" emblazoned on your jersey and you're likely to see spit balls come flying over the plate. If not at your head. Sometimes it's easier to consign yourself to warming the bench.
However, because one option is easier, that doesn't mean it is the better thing to do. Until a truly significant number of atheists step forward, out of the ranks of the invisible, and insist, "Hey, don't say that about me and my kind!," the mis-appraisal of atheists, and hostility aimed toward them, will persist.
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[notes]
* "Christians are more likely to experience divorce than are non-Christians," Barna Research Group, 1999-DEC-21. http://www.barna.org/
The above paper has been removed from the Barna website, but can be found elsewhere online. More recent poll data by Barna has different numbers, with atheists/agnostics being more average. Yet when those statistics rely on a total of 269 atheists/agnostics surveyed . . . ah, where's my grain of salt?
Tags: atheism, culture, Sunday Un-Sermon
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