Atheism vs. religion has been a popular topic around here for a long time and it seems to be a particularly hot issue at the moment. In the wider world too, thanks in no small part to people like Richard Dawkins, people seem to becoming more and more aware that there is this conflict of a sort going on.
I have strong feelings on the matter and I enjoy reading and occasionally participating in the threads that are posted here, but I just don’t feel as personally affected as many people seem to be. Here in the UK, religion seems to be more or less a non-issue. I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of people identified themselves as some sort of Christian, but that’s more of a cultural thing; I rarely meet anyone who is any thing other than “not religious”. Atheism is almost too strong a term - the whole issue is just not an important part of most people’s lives. I’ve heard stories from the US of people losing friends because of their atheism, or losing jobs. Atheist families being victimised and practically driven out of town. Ridiculous things like this (Dawkins on CNN) are shown on TV and taken seriously, and it’s fairly well accepted that an atheist could never run for public office. I’ve never heard of anything of the sort happening in this country.
I don’t want to get the whole debate going again here, but I’m interested in finding what other people’s experiences have been in other countries. I’m thinking Europe in particular as it seems fairly secular in general but I’d be happy to hear from other countries too. Americans, even, is it really as bad as it seems from the outside?