On Wed, 4 Apr 2012, Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> wrote:
Quoting Russell Coker (russell@coker.com.au):
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d2239780-4d4e-11e1-8741-00144feabdc0.html
Interesting article published by the Financial Times about the persecution of Atheists in the US.
Alleged persecution.
As usual, the story is nearly worthless in its lack of perspective and necessary qualifiers on data presented.
1. Self-proclaimed atheism creates social pariah-hood only in the South and a couple of particularly backward middle rural states, notably Oklahoma, -- i.e., the 'Bible Belt'. Notice the locations mentioned: Texas, Missouri, Kentucky, Alabama, Florida. Those are all the Bible Belt. Everywhere you would actually _want_ to live, locations where people's family trees actually fork and people can count to twenty without taking their shoes off, there's no such problem. (There is also no problem even in the better cities of Texas and Florida, such as Austin and Miami.)
_Every_ example the author presents is from the aforementioned religious whack-a-doodle country. No exceptions.
You list 5 states out of 50 (5 out of the 48 contiguous states), that's a good portion of the US. How many first-world countries have such a large area being "whack a doodle"? We don't have even a single state or territory in Australia that's like that. You would probably have to go through the historical records of Queensland under Joh Bjekle-Peterson to find something that even compares.
2. Outside those areas, e.g., California, organised atheists characteristically piss and moan about alleged persecution and lack of acceptance that upon examination turn out to be imaginary or strictly elsewhere (i.e., the Bible Belt) or a mischaracterisation of the broader public not enjoying the company of one-note ideologues (including but not limited to crusading atheists), _but_ they nurse a persecution complex in lieu of more interesting hobbies.
http://www.care2.com/causes/whos-praying-for-their-enemies-to-get-breast- cancer.html Of course there's also some pretty extreme stuff going on.
As a personal observation, in the USA the people who identify themselves as atheists tend statistically towards severe dickishness, which is the main reason why I refer to myself -- if the subject comes up, which it should not (a point I'll return to) as 'non-religious', so as to not be associated with them.
I think that part of the problem in the US is voluntary voting. This means that political parties need to go extreme to get everyone who agrees with them to go to the effort of voting. In Australia as almost everyone votes (about 90% of the population cast valid votes) the politicians need to convince moderate people who are going to vote anyway that their position is slightly more reasonable than the other party. It seems to me that this top down method of enforcing some degree of reasonable action spreads to other parts of the political process. This is why Fred Nile was never any remote contender for PM, unlike Sarah Palin and Michelle Backman.
The author's closest approach to a reasonable perspective was in this paragraph:
The issue is somewhat neglected because it's not usually perceptible on the coasts and in the larger cities, but the almost complete absence of overt atheism is striking at all levels of US public life, even in cosmopolitan areas.
For 'not usually perceptible', substitute 'absent'. For 'the almost complete absence of overt atheism is striking' subtitute 'In the sane majority of the republic, religion if any is regarded as a primarily private matter that only an unhinged person of some sort would obsess over.
Except of course when the abortion wars start up. We have a few nut-jobs who protest outside abortion clinics in Australia. But it's been ages since a right-to-life terrorist has killed anyone here and they have little political support. The US Republican party seems to be persuing their anti-women agenda all over the US.
That is, the subject does not arise in normal conversation. I do not sit down at a dinner table and say 'Hi, I'm Rick Moen, a 180 cm tall Norwegian-American, and consider it important that you know I'm not religious.' That would make me sound like quite the whack-a-doodle myself.
The paragraph after the "overt atheism" paragraph mentioned Barack Obama speaking at a prayer meeting. Our PM is an atheist and because religion isn't such an issue here most people didn't even realise it until she'd been PM for a while - could you imagine a US president getting elected without people being bothered about whether they were religious? The same paragraph also says that there's only been one "avowed atheist" in the history of congress, and he was in the closet about it for 34 years! I don't think that keeping something secret for 34 years equates to some sort of strident advocacy for a position.
Speaking of nut-jobbery, Russell, why are you capitalising the word 'atheist'? What do you feel makes it a proper noun?
It seemed like a good idea at the time. I'll use lower case if it makes you happy. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/