# Codified discrimination against atheists **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 28, 2022, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/codified-discrimination-against-atheists/967005 "2022-06-28T01:12:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2022, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/codified-discrimination-against-atheists/967005/41 "2022-06-29T21:10:52Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > I note that all of these (currently unenforceable) provisions refer to a _singular_ deity. > > In the absence of caselaw prohibiting any kind of a religious test, or in the event of new caselaw reversing that precedent, could these provisions be used to bar _polytheistic_ believers? How about believers in the Small Gods? ‘I do duly swear by the God of this hillside (who thinks, as near as I can tell, that this is very funny)’ – > [@Princhester](#): > > The soft/hard atheist distinction I’m making is not a distinction as to militancy. > > It’s more of a philosophical distinction about whether one has no belief in any god, or whether one positively believes there is no god. Define “god”. I positively don’t believe in the one who the people writing these provisions believe in. (Or maybe the “ones”, since even they don’t agree on what keeps you out of their supposed Hell.) I’m varying degrees of hard or soft on the possibility of a lot of other versions. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2022, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/codified-discrimination-against-atheists/967005/42 "2022-06-29T21:16:07Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > {…} I’m varying degrees of hard or soft on the possibility of a lot of other versions. It incessantly irks me that people think “God?” (note the capital ‘G’) is a coherent question. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2022, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/codified-discrimination-against-atheists/967005/43 "2022-06-29T22:48:02Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Define “god”. It’s not necessary for a soft atheist to do so. If they don’t have any belief in anything that theists have described to them as a god, they are a soft atheist. But it’s not incumbent upon them to come up with a definition. I’m a theological non-cognitivist myself which is arguably a sub-category of soft atheist. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2022, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/codified-discrimination-against-atheists/967005/44 "2022-06-29T22:59:14Z")
I wasn’t asking atheists in general to do so. I was asking you to do so because you were trying to make a distinction between types of atheists according to > [@Princhester](#): > > It’s more of a philosophical distinction about whether one has no belief in any god, or whether one positively believes there is no god. I was trying to point out that it’s entirely possible to be both a soft and a hard atheist at the same time, and therefore that I don’t find your classification particularly useful. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2022, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/codified-discrimination-against-atheists/967005/45 "2022-06-29T23:08:44Z")
I’m not a hard atheist so I can’t answer your question. All I know is that there are people who say they are hard atheists ie they say they have a positive belief there is no god. I don’t understand the logic behind your second point. Plenty of useful classifications involve things that are subsets of other things. A hard atheist is a type of soft atheist. Would you say that since it is possible for something to be both an egg and a hard boiled egg the classifications are not useful? I don’t see why. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2022, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/codified-discrimination-against-atheists/967005/46 "2022-06-29T23:19:58Z")
In the context of this post of yours: > [@Princhester](#): > > > [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](#): > > > > No person who denies the being of a God shall > > This arguable only denies “hard” atheists from office and they tend to be uncommon IME. Aside from the fact that the number of people affected isn’t really the issue – refusing rights to a minority doesn’t become OK if they’re a small enough minority – the definition matters because the people writing the law are unlikely to agree with you that only people who disbelieve in God according to any possible definition of the word are really atheists. They think they know what the word means, and what they think it means is the God they believe in, or one like enough to come into the same category. If they wrote the law to say “no egg shall be allowed within the State House”, and you decided that it didn’t much matter because you think it only applies to hardboiled eggs – does that analogy help? ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2022, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/codified-discrimination-against-atheists/967005/47 "2022-06-29T23:20:15Z")
I’m a ‘hard’ atheist on falsifiable gods and a ‘soft’ atheist on unfalsifiable gods. In the end a theological noncognitivist, because the various religions can’t agree, even within the religion, on the exact nature of the thing they’re pointing to and calling god. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2022, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/codified-discrimination-against-atheists/967005/48 "2022-06-29T23:40:12Z")
I did not mean to suggest the law was OK because it arguably only affected hard atheists - my opening comment was merely an observation about the somewhat peculiar way the quoted statute was worded. The people who wrote the law are irrelevant - the only relevant people would be judges deciding whether a soft atheist was excluded from office. I don’t know how that would play out. All I said was that it was “arguable” that the particular (and peculiar) wording upon which I was commenting didn’t exclude a soft atheist. I’m not a US lawyer and haven’t researched the wording but the usual rule where I’m from is that this sort of statute should be interpreted quite strictly _against_ the government. The statute’s reference to “denying the being” of a God leaves a loophole for a soft atheist who could say they aren’t denying _anything_ and that if the government had wanted to exclude soft atheists it could easily have worded their statute to exclude from office those who did not positively proclaim a belief in a god (as some of the other statutes quoted upthread do). No your analogy doesn’t help because it is not at all analogous. It is nothing at all like the wording upon which I was commenting. Firstly I didn’t say anything at all about anything “mattering”; I merely pointed out a peculiarity in the wording of the statute. Secondly the crux of my point is that the peculiarity of the wording upon which I was commenting was it’s reference to _denial_. The parallel would be a law that said “no person who denies there are eggs in the State House” shall be permitted to enter. This would clearly apply to people who said there were no eggs in the State House. But arguably it would not apply to those who merely say they don’t have any belief that there are eggs, but don’t deny it either. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2022, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/codified-discrimination-against-atheists/967005/49 "2022-06-30T00:24:27Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > So I guess it depends what you think “law respecting an establishment of religion” actually means. Or more accurately, what the Supreme Court thinks Originally, it meant what it said. The federal government couldn’t establish a national religion, and couldn’t touch state established churches, like the Connecticut Congregationalist establishment that kept Jews from voting there until 1818 ([four years after they took away the vote from the handful of Black Connecticut voters](https://www.courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-ganeshram-normen-black-suffrage-0223-20200223-dqovvu2lobggjcoq4jqtf2ufey-story.html).) The first amendment is not determinative here: [Most instances of state-supported religion were removed before 1850, and the remaining requirements became null and void after the passing of the 14th Amendment on July 28, 1868.](https://undergod.procon.org/religion-in-the-original-13-colonies/) ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2022, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/codified-discrimination-against-atheists/967005/50 "2022-06-30T00:55:40Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > It’s more of a philosophical distinction about whether one has no belief in any god, or whether one positively believes there is no god. Just so that we don’t end up too far off into the weeds, let’s keep things like the nature of atheism and the philosophical distinctions and differences in various versions of atheism out of this thread unless it is directly related to the laws in question. Let’s keep everything relevant to the factual topic of laws and regulations involving bans on atheists. You can discuss how different beliefs might be affected differently by certain laws, but let’s not expand this out into a general discussion on atheism. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2022, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/codified-discrimination-against-atheists/967005/51 "2022-06-30T10:22:30Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > Is your belief that there’s no evidence for gods, or is your belief that gods absolutetly don’t exist? Neither, really. I don’t get the need to even have the discussion. I’ve never seen a unicorn and I think it’s a wast of time to discuss the specific details of the unicorn I have never seen. With that stated, I’m leaving this thread now. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2022, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/codified-discrimination-against-atheists/967005/52 "2022-06-30T17:40:54Z")
The point is that, whatever his actual take on the existence of a god, Herb Silverman refused to sign off on his belief in one, was refused by the state and the state SC ruled that this refusal was not allowed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/codified-discrimination-against-atheists/967005.md?page=2)