America’s Bias Against Atheists Persists

[GSOgymrat]

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2014/05/americas-bias-against-atheists-persists.html?mid=twitter_nymag

Americans continue to be extremely distrustful of atheists, two recent reports suggest. The first, released today by Pew Research, examined which traits would help or hinder a hypothetical presidential candidate. As it turns out, not believing in God was the single most negative trait a politician could have; the report found that about 53 percent of those surveyed said they’d be less likely to vote for an atheist.

Americans are apparently so sketched out by atheists that people would sooner vote for a politician who’d used marijuana, been caught out in an extramarital affair, or never actually held an office before. Let’s look the numbers:

•22 percent were less likely to vote for a candidate if he or she had used marijuana
•35 percent were less likely to vote for a candidate if he or she had had an affair
•52 percent were less likely to vote for a candidate if he or she had never held office before

That might be because Americans remain “intuitively” distrustful of atheists, according to a recent paper published in the journal PLOS ONE, which found that people tend to link vile, immoral behaviors to a disbelief in God. Surprisingly, even atheists themselves answered this way, the study suggests. ...


I'm not surprise that religious people are not likely to vote for an atheist but the atheists also being biased was unexpected.

[Solitary]

Give me a break, why would any atheist think other atheists are immoral? By who's standards? Whomever did this study was biased against atheists, which is obvious.  Solitary

[The Skeletal Atheist]

Going by this forum I wouldn't vote for an atheist either, you guys are morons.

/runs

[Solitary]

     It takes one to know one. Solitary

[Mr.Obvious]

Going by this forum I wouldn't vote for an atheist either, you guys are morons.

/runs

/sits and cries

[DunkleSeele]

Going by this forum I wouldn't vote for an atheist either, you guys are morons.

/runs

/shoots Skeletal in the back MWHAAAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

[Shiranu]

/sits and cries

Don't worry, you cant run for 'Murica anyways!

[AllPurposeAtheist]

But isn't praying problems away a real solution?

Oh yeah....NO!

[GSOgymrat]

Give me a break, why would any atheist think other atheists are immoral? By who's standards? Whomever did this study was biased against atheists, which is obvious.  Solitary

Here’s how one of those experiments went down: Researchers gathered data from 237 American adults and presented them with a made-up little story about a dude named Dax. As a child, Dax would torture animals; as an adult, Dax moved on to killing homeless people, whose bodies he subsequently buried in his basement. After reading that chilling scenario, the participants were asked a question: Is Dax more likely to be (a) a teacher or (b) a teacher who X â€" that “X” was either “does not believe in God,” “is a Buddhist,” “is a Christian,” is a Hindu,” “is Jewish,” or “is a Muslim.”

This is a classic way of testing for bias, and the researchers found that nearly half of the people given the atheist option answered that Dax was a teacher who didn’t believe in God, instead of just a teacher. (In comparison, only 20 percent of those given the Christian option chose Christian, and just 10 percent of those given the Muslim option chose Muslim â€" that Christians took the bigger percentage there is somewhat notable in itself.) To Americans, belief in something â€" be it Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or perhaps even the Seven â€" is still less suspicious than belief in nothing at all.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

So, we have one solitary person who thinks atheists are immoral? I'm going to send some of my whores around to get him hooked on heroin. Oh wait, I sold all of that to the school kids. Gonna have to be crack.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Man, now I want to change my name to Dax the Homeless Animal Killer Atheist!

[SGOS]

Here’s how one of those experiments went down: Researchers gathered data from 237 American adults and presented them with a made-up little story about a dude named Dax. As a child, Dax would torture animals; as an adult, Dax moved on to killing homeless people, whose bodies he subsequently buried in his basement. After reading that chilling scenario, the participants were asked a question: Is Dax more likely to be (a) a teacher or (b) a teacher who X â€" that “X” was either “does not believe in God,” “is a Buddhist,” “is a Christian,” is a Hindu,” “is Jewish,” or “is a Muslim.”

This is a classic way of testing for bias,

I can see how this could test for bias in a general population, but I'm not seeing how this implies that atheists believe atheists are immoral.  Even if a person identified himself as an atheist somewhere in the poll and still was likely to choose "Teacher who was an atheist," I'd suspect some other bias was afoot in the construction of the poll.  Perhaps not bias, but an error in construction or interpretation.

The idea that atheists think atheists are immoral is so far from making sense to me, that I simply have to question the poll.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Not believing in g...g...GOD? Well, certainly we're not to be trusted with people's lives or property and especially political office because the Soviets were godless commies and that's the bullshit lie foisted on people the world over.
Pretty obvious once communism fell and Vlad and his mafia took over they're MUCH more trustworthy and the atheists were the bad guys.

[GrinningYMIR]

I actually had a discussion with a devout Christian the other day, not letting him know that I was an atheist. He said that most of the arguments that wars are started over religion, resources, or occasionally women and glory, were just atheist bravado. And he maintained that atheism is the root of most of the bad things in the world as a whole

He also wanted the US to turn into a constitutional monarchy, and while I don't like bureaucracy that much, he should have opted for a glorious Empire instead.

GLORY TO THE EMPEROR

[stromboli]

I actually had a discussion with a devout Christian the other day, not letting him know that I was an atheist. He said that most of the arguments that wars are started over religion, resources, or occasionally women and glory, were just atheist bravado. And he maintained that atheism is the root of most of the bad things in the world as a whole

He also wanted the US to turn into a constitutional monarchy, and while I don't like bureaucracy that much, he should have opted for a glorious Empire instead.

GLORY TO THE EMPEROR

Read an article on that some time ago by Jerry Pournelle, a Sci fi writer/psychologist. He pointed out in the 70's the possibility of what is happening now, the corporate oligarchy that we are now being ruled by. His point was that the best government was a benevolent dictatorship, assuming that the leader had the welfare of the people foremost in mind.

Your friend's argument is ludicrous. It isn't difficult to point out that the conflict of ideologies has more to do with war and genocide than anything atheists have supposedly done. That makes as much sense as gays causing tornadoes.