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. 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. 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. 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. 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. So, maybe the 'overt atheism' that Julian Baggini finds strikingly absent in US public life indicates, in the saner portions of the republic, good manners and absences of nut-jobbery. Speaking of nut-jobbery, Russell, why are you capitalising the word 'atheist'? What do you feel makes it a proper noun?