David H. Burns wrote:
> Probably, but how real are their fears. There are certainly a lot of 
> "practicing atheists"
> (i.e people who live as if they believed nothing) who don't see to be 
> especially "discriminated
> against". I have a friend who is definitely an atheist and makes no 
> secret of it. He claims to
> be discriminated against, but I've seen no sign of it. The best concrete 
> evidence he has been
> able to give me is that people invite him to church or try to "convert" 
> him. He believes in, or claims
> to believe in, all sorts of "Christian" conspiracies from the White 
> House under Bush to the
> management where he works, though he seems to have been above average in 
> receiving the
> credit, honor, and promotion due him for his excellent work.
> 
Your friend may be somewhat correct about some of it too, but no, sounds 
like he is just worried about the cases he knows about in other parts of 
the US. There is a reason why the ranks have doubled in the past 5-6 
years, and its not because twice as many people just "happened" to 
deconvert. Its because there is a perception, often fairly correct, that 
you *will* run into problems if people know. In point of fact, I would 
say that maybe 2-3 people at my job may suspect, my family knows, maybe 
1-2 friends, but this is a city that, the years I moved here, actually 
had a book burning planned. I have no idea what effect it would have, 
but given that I have seen all of two cars, out of hundreds, showing 
anything not overtly Christian, and one of those was a Californian on 
vacation, I don't think the result would be positive. And, this is in 
Arizona. There are states in the US that, in contradiction to the US 
constitution, deny atheists the run for public office. There are some 
schools that have tried, and succeeded, at running the local *known* 
atheist family out of town, when it was merely "suspected" that they 
where not Christian, due to a refusal to pray before a ball game. There 
are top level people in the government, who in candid moments, have all 
but declared that they would prefer a Satanist over and atheist, because 
it least the former admitted god was real, and Bush, who ordered some 
things removed from things like public health sites, and replaced with 
abstinence links, who created new, and imho, illegal means to support 
"faith based", which means almost entirely Christian, programs, and in a 
speech actually went as far as suggesting that *maybe* atheists should 
lose citizenship rights. This isn't Europe. Some people here are not 
merely annoyed by, or uncomfortable with, atheism, they **hate** it, 
would like to see it banned, if they could, and people *have* lost jobs, 
friends, etc. over the discovery that they where one.

We are the new "gay movement". Everything wrong with society is our 
fault, supposedly, even when its the religious people that came up with 
the ideas that screwed things up, and we are all plotting, according to 
entire counties, in some cases, to erase religion, somehow. They want 
us, out of sight, out of mind, unwilling to speak, and accommodating to 
everyone, and there are entire books being written by various clowns in 
the US about how it "hurts our cause", to actually point out that we 
don't believe religion, why, and by being *willing* to express anger at 
certain ideas, and actions, instead of playing nice with the liberal 
Christians, in the hope they all grow back bones, and actually stop 
voting for dishonest, ignorant, superstitious, or just plain stupid, 
people all the time, because they claim high levels of piety.

Hell yes there are "closet" atheists in the US. Its 90% of the people in 
that category, including the "accomidationists", who think, despite 200 
years of evidence otherwise, that you can make progress, by quietly 
sitting at the side lines, mouthing prayers you don't believe in, (like 
I do every time I have to attend some family gathering with the god 
botherers in my own near relatives), and not saying anything about how 
silly the whole mess is, or pointing out when some idea, generated from 
it, is dumb, counter productive, or actually likely to have the 
*opposite* results, and you have clear facts to prove it. Most of us 
will either a) not attend things that we *have to* pretend at, b) 
pretend, to play nice to people we don't want to hurt, or c) pretend all 
the time, because we know that there *are* people in our lives that 
would ruin us, if they knew about it. Which one you are, and often even, 
to what degree, and when, depends on if you recognize there *are* others 
that can support you, whether those people are any where near you at all 
(i.e., don't move to most of the south eastern states), and how big a 
risk you think it is to admit it. Some places, its almost no risk at 
all, others... there are still places you might not make it out alive, 
if you also make the mistake of pissing off the local wackos while 
admitting it.

Nah.. The one guy a while back that was found beat to death by rednecks 
in one of those states was obviously a total coincidence, never mind the 
fact that he had *recently* annoyed the local city council by admitting 
being an atheist, and the last recorded case of such a beating in the 
area was 50 years or more ago, to a black man... Total coincidence...

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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