::wades cautiously into Great Debates…I have a feeling this thread would end up here anyways::
I’ve just come across this news article, and while I haven’t read the study itself, the results being claimed just absolutely astound me.
I can perhaps see why believers are more comfortable with other theists, but to have a similar level of trust in an atheist as they do in a rapist is just so irrational and crazy.
I guess the question up for debate is is this true? Assuming relatively mainstream beliefs and not crazy tin-foil fundamentalism…I’m interested in your average believer in average towns and cities.
Do the religious people in the SDMB have a fundamental lack of trust of atheists? Are there some tasks that you simply wouldn’t trust an atheist to do (other than leading a sermon or things of that nature, obviously!)
I guess I can also ask about the inverse: do atheists generally distrust religious people (to the point of not hiring a believer as a babysitter because you don’t trust them on the same level as you wouldn’t trust a rapist?)
Speaking for myself, I don’t think I’ve ever felt mistrust for someone simply because of their religious beliefs, assuming those beliefs were relatively mainstream.
It might help to know where people are from - around here, religion isn’t one of the Top 10 Things to Talk About when you first meet someone, and I don’t even know what some of my own immediate family or close friends believe, because it’s a personal thing and none of my business. I base who I trust on how they act, not on whether they believe something irrelevant to the task or not.
This may be a USA thing as in the UK no-one really cares.
However, for those who do think that way I reckon at best it is just good old fashioned ignorance. They don’t know what being an atheist actually means (not a lot as it happens) and so feel free to assign all sorts of malign purpose to us. (even though they will come into contact with professional, trustworthy yet secretive atheists all the time)
At worst it reveals rather too much about them, along the lines of “Shit! it is only god that is keeping me from skinning puppies alive and burning down an orphanage…those atheists don’t even have that!”
Did the survey list other “high-trust” jobs beyond child care? Because I can think of at least one reason why a believer might not trust an atheist for that job but might for nuclear-bomb launch code guarder (the fear that the atheist might instill atheistic thoughts in their child).
It’s been my experience that most believers have compartmentalized their belief successfully enough that its inherent irrationality doesn’t interfere with their ability to function as trustworthy moral actors in day to day life. So … to answer your question … no, I don’t distrust religious people IN GENERAL.
However, if the believer gives indications that their belief plays a major role in their day-to-day decision-making process, then I WILL tend to distrust them more. Who knows what random whim they’ll use their religion to rationalize?
According to the article it’s a study by a doctoral student from a BC university based on two groups: US adults, and BC students. I would be interested in knowing how they chose participants and exactly what questions they were asked before I got too excited by the results.
I was surprised that homosexuals were above rapists/pedophiles because many religious people see them as being one and the same. So maybe gays gaining moral ground in the zeitgeist has finally trickled there too. So that’s good I guess.
There are many “would you vote for [X group]” polls that have atheists coming out in the area of 40% of people being willing to vote for an atheist even if they agreed with all their platforms. Which scores lower than a lot of hated groups (gays, Muslims, etc.).
I don’t know how well this poll was conducted but the results do not conflict with my personal observations.
The irony with this - and with all religious people who don’t trust atheists, is that their fundamental argument is “If you don’t believe in God, what’s keeping you from raping my kid and murdering my wife?”
To which the natural response is “Woah, wait a minute. You’re saying you’d just love to start raping and murdering, but your fear of God is stopping you? And you think I’m the immoral one?”
I would love to have a few questions asked regarding how many atheists they know, or do they just know atheists from news articles, etc. One challenge that atheists have in the US is that for many people the only atheists they “know” are the ones filing a lawsuit against a Cross on public land somewhere, or against a prayer at a school event. This is the similar problem that gays and lesbians had when their most public image was certain parades in San Francisco.
You forgot that people who try to rationalize things like this are masters of No True Scotsman, “well, that priest wasn’t REALLY religious, he was just deceiving everyone, a person who truly had God in their heart could never do that.”
Anyway, I distrust people more on their lifestyles and choices over their beliefs. I would distrust a very, very religious person if it’s clear they couldn’t compartmentalize it and tried to spread their religion everywhere, but I’d also probably distrust an atheist who can’t keep his mouth shut and finds it his civic duty to undermine religion at every turn. They’re both annoying, and they both go out of their way to do things that aren’t strictly the best choice in order to further their agenda.
This is my take on it, too. I trust atheists just fine-- Who I don’t trust is the people who can’t trust atheists. You need to be very, very adept at ignoring your own conscience to think that conscience doesn’t even exist, and people who are that skilled at ignoring their conscience are dangerous.
From my discussions with believers who feel this way about atheists, I don’t think it’s that they would love to start murdering and raping.
It’s that it feels to them as though the same part of them (their conscience) that makes them not do bad things, also makes them believe in God. So they think atheists don’t have that.
The believer who doesn’t trust atheists thinking… /It’s God’s voice in me telling me not to do those bad things, not to steal something when I don’t have the money, not to get my gun and shoot the person who I’m so angry at, not to sneak off and have an affair with my brother’s really good looking wife/ And then /So, if the atheist doesn’t hear God, he thinks it’s fine to do those things, no way will I trust him./
But an atheist still has a conscience, their conscience just isn’t, to them, anything to do with a deity.
Ya it’s not surprising. Atheists are absolutely hated by the religious. They have no evidence to back up this distrust but then their most intimate values are based on evidence not being important so go figure.
I would have agreed, however they studied both American adults and Canadian university students.
I’m quite shocked at the results for the UBC students. I did not think of UBC as a hotbed of religion. Rather, I think of most campus’ in Canada containing a fair number of atheists, and thought that religion played a fairly minor role in day to day student affairs.
Most of those responding at UBC would have known dozens or hundreds of atheists on their own campus. I wonder if it’s possible that they have some folks have no idea that they are surrounded by atheists every day?
I think that, or something very like it, truly is the way they think: either atheists don’t have a conscience, or they don’t have a belief in Good and Evil: that they believe we live in an amoral universe in which nothing is inherently wrong or right.
Uggh…that reminds me of the time I went to an atheist church. It was kind of cool at first, but the sermons were so incredibly boring, and they just invited everyone to bicker every single week. Yeah, atheists make terrible preachers.