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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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