Warp wrote:
>   Thus I have hard time relating to the USA where, as far as I understand,
> atheism is considered by many to be some kind of mental disease.

Yep.

> It just feels hugely contradictory for what's supposed to be
> the Land of Freedom, where everybody is equal.

Well, yeah. Remember, tho, that the whole "land of freedom" stuff was how it 
started out.  Because the USA tolerated the nut cases, maybe the nut cases 
tended to come here from elsewhere.   AFAIK, the USA was the first country 
to be *officially* secular. Certainly the first modern westernized country - 
at least that's the general sense children get taught in history class here. 
I imagine there were some roman-era city-states perhaps that were secular, 
or some east asian countries that don't count because, you know, they're 
east asian. ;-)

It's still a whole lot more tolerant than countries where there *is* an 
official religion - where declaring yourself an atheist gets you beheaded or 
something.

>   Apparently in the USA it's a great shock when they announce on the news
> that eg. in Sweden something like 80% of the population is atheist. I am
> more like: "Really? So few? That's a surprise."

Now maybe you understand better the outspoken-ness of atheists in the USA. 
:-) Most atheists are just trying to get to equality, and keep the majority 
of religious people from doing stupid stuff to them.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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