Would you be equally worried about someone who said the non-existence of Santa Claus was a “proven fact”?
Many people have a visceral distrust of Athiests (to say nothing of a lack of math skills).
nope
So, maybe an atheist could beat a snake handling pedophile, on the grounds that the snakes would be dangerous to the children the pedophile was raping.
Hmmm… how about a snake handling atheist? “Oh, I’m not doing it for religious reasons. I just like the feel of snakeskin.”
Which demonstrates that the problem isn’t atheists, the problem is religion being given a special privileged status.
Thing is, being a rapist or, worse, pedophile, tends to make you lose more than that. There are some people who think atheists are worse than rapists, but I don’t think they make up a majority of the U.S.
Snake handlers do better than 1 in 10, though. But I don’t see their numbers growing, while I do see that for atheists. Both in population and in acceptance. We will almost certainly have an atheist president before a Pentecostal snake-handling one.
I’m not sure though that people who were friends with a snake handler would vote for them, though. Said people are made fun of even in pentecostal circles.
I think outlierrn is am outlier there, too. Assuming by screaming it out he means someone who brings it up unbidden or someone who gets mean about it, I would just as much dislike a fundaSantist.
That said, atheism is a rationalist position–when you tie emotion to it, I get suspicious that you are just anti-religionist and malicious.
Last I heard studies indicated that the majority of Christians felt that way, and the majority of the US is composed of Christians.
Or are angry from years or decades of harassment and contempt. Or are angry at the harm religion has done.
If the Atheist self-described as an Unitarian Universalist, would that make him more palatable then the snake-handler?
I’m an atheist, but if I would move to the US I would become an UU, I think.
Well, as far as the strychnine drinking, at least the president wouldn’t need a poison tester. So there’s that advantage.
Why bother, since you can’t be President anyway? I’ve found that being atheist hasn’t really cost me friends, though it has convinced many of them that I’m somehow “confused” and don’t really understand what it means. And I’ll admit, an unfortunately large number of them have gone on to try explaining those implications to me.
absolutely, religious people hate people that don’t have a similar flavor of faithfulness.
It’s not just the snake handling… it’s the whacky music and dancing that goes along with it.Check it out here.
I would suspicious of any poll taken on this subject since few people know any snake handlers or anything about them. And a person answering a poll about a generic atheist isn’t going to have the same response to that person as they would have if they knew something about him.
Perhaps I’ve been wrong all these years about why so many Christian sects don’t allow dancing. If dancing doesn’t lead to sex, then it must lead to snake handling.
I’d become an UU to be " something" and for the social aspect, which is more done though church in the US then through other venues like in Holland (We mostly socialize through all sorts of semi-volunteer work).
Sarah Palin was raised Pentecostal, that was a small issue but not a show stopper.
Was her church of the “snake handling” type? Pentecostalism covers a lot of territory, and there it’s not like the RCC with a hierarchical structure enforcing monolithic beliefs or practices.
Agnostics are what we need. Atheists are just as wrong as believers, they’re simply oriented 180 degrees from them.
I’m not so sure.
I see what you did there. Or maybe I don’t. Hmmm…