Ryan Anderson's comments(at about the 2:35 mark) are pretty fucking ignorant. The stupid asshole only serves to further demonstrate the persecution atheists face.

The title is a bit misleading. It sounds as though it's the atheists that are intolerant.

And wow, she looks like she's about to explode there in the end.

"Atheists are the least-trusted minority in the US."

lol, that's why they clog the internet, they have nowhere else to go

Welcome home Oreilly.

such discrimination that they won't even let the clip play the whole way through!

wtf only 1%-3% in America are atheist? Unimaginable from a Dutch perspective.

That guy thinks that refusing to say "under God" in the pledge of allegiance and suing for how money is minted is militant atheism? HAH! He'd probably wet his pants if he ever listened to a real militant atheist like Dawkins, who makes even some other atheists uncomfortable.

I think one of the biggest problems is a misunderstanding of what being an atheist means. A lot of religious people don't just take it as someone who doesn't believe, but as someone who is actively against God and out to destroy their religion. I'm sure this has been influence by them seeing clips of someone railing against their religion.

In an analogous way, I suppose its a bit like the Reverend Wright thing. Such speeches tend to be less about how religious folk/white folk should be destroyed, and more about the injustices perpetrated by those people against atheists/blacks. The angry tone, deserved or not, scares the people the talk is about which tends to make them not actually listen to the words and assume the worst.

For my part when conversation about religion rolls my way I just say I'm not religious, and try not to elaborate any further. Despite that being essentially the same as being an atheist, on a whole most people seem to have less problem with that than if I say I'm an atheist.

I am so not upvoting this, it's cut half way through her response to the 'militant' claim in regards to athiests being somewhat put off by the fact that your money in the US states that you are all god believers, and that within your schools you are forced to spend time pledging allegiance to a god or studying the bible.

Now arriving... the dark ages: 2.0.

Upvote for the irony of atheists claiming "religious persecution".

Here's links to the full part 1 and part 2.

Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiyJzWy3CDQ

and

Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPHnXrU5JzU

As for part 2, wow did they learn how to create a debate panel from FOX or something?

WTF is this, there is no group of athiesm...

WTF do you mean, exactly?

so do they know that the god stuff on their money and in the pledge wasn't there until the red scare?

"non-theist"

A very politically correct way of putting it...

A war has been fought since the dawn of human history between the men of faith and the men of reason. This is a war for possession of the planet, for the minds of our children and the future of the human race. The true humans, the rational minds, are losing. My advice to the whining atheists in the film is to get fighting. Our minds are infinitely greater than those of our sub-bestial enemies; we cannot possibly lose if we just wake up, stand together and begin the glorious slaughter that will free the earth.

How's that for militant atheism?

According to the moron at 2:30, suing to get "in god we trust" removed from the currency is "millitant"? What fucking planet is he from? That's just enforcing the establishment clause of the first amendment through the courts. That's about as millitant as Gandhi.

You can't expect people to always tell the truth when they get a random phone call under the pretense of a survey. Especially on such a topic that could expose them to more bigotry than any other minority. People lie to the opinion polls. There aren't enough churches in the country to hold all the people who say they go to church every sunday.

"The 2001 ARIS report found that while 29.5 million U.S. Americans (14.1%) describe themselves as "without religion", only 902,000 (0.4%) positively claim to be atheist, with another 991,000 (0.5%) professing agnosticism."

Everyone is somewhere along the spectrum "theism...agnosticism...atheism". Of course that depends on which version of god you're talking about. But "without religion" can't be theism, so these people simply aren't accurately describing themselves.

Dawkins is not militant. Don't be ridiculous. He has no inclination towards violence or coercion.

Stalin and Mao did not suppress religions for atheism's sake, they did it to eliminate competitors of the state -- organizations that might lead to an uprising against the tyrant. Their actions have nothing to do with atheism. They have much more to do with Machiavelli. Their beliefs were rooted in Marxism, and Marx wouldn't know the scientific method if it slapped him in the face. Marx simply made up shit and treated it as fact, like any religious prophet (it would be a bit redundant to say false prophet). None of this is connected to the atheistic beliefs of modern scientists.

As a Pagan I know how Atheists feel. Thank the gods I grew up in upstate NY and not the Bible Belt, but all over the US we get the same kind of discrimination, though the 'limelight' is on Atheists these days much more so then on us. But the lack of understanding and complete lack of knowledge of what a Pagan is, or even an Atheist is, is mind numbing in a country that holds freedom of religion as one of it's most important laws.

As to the removing of 'In God We Trust' from money. Few 'Christians' seem to realize it's only been on our money for the last 50 odd years. It was wrong to put it on there in the first place.

According to the last Canadian census, about 25% of Albertans call themselves "non-religious". That's pretty high considering that we're the Texas of the north.

"Under god" wasn't introduced to the pledge until the early 1950s, and it took years of political haggling to get it to stick: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance#Addition_of_the_words_.22under_God.22

The video title is a great sentence, and I agree. They are intolerant.

And Wiki to the rescue for In God We Trust: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust

Apparently the phrase's first appearance was in 1864 on the 2 cent coin.

>> ^Xaielao:
As a Pagan I know how Atheists feel. Thank the gods I grew up in upstate NY and not the Bible Belt, but all over the US we get the same kind of discrimination, though the 'limelight' is on Atheists these days much more so then on us. But the lack of understanding and complete lack of knowledge of what a Pagan is, or even an Atheist is, is mind numbing in a country that holds freedom of religion as one of it's most important laws.
As to the removing of 'In God We Trust' from money. Few 'Christians' seem to realize it's only been on our money for the last 50 odd years. It was wrong to put it on there in the first place.


you're not helping your cause, son

Freedom of Religion is under attack as a response to the increasing acceptance of atheists. And I believe the persecution will be increasing wherever a community thinks they can get away with it, because they (rightly) see atheists as dangerous to their beliefs.

The percentage of people identifying as atheists is increasing, but it is still low compared to the non-religious because of fear of persecution and misunderstanding about that atheist label.

Don't mistake the loud voices of evangelicals as representative of a majority opinion. They're getting louder because they sense their dominant position slipping away.

Through centuries of history "paganism" has been used to refer to any kind of non-abrahamic religion, especially polytheistic folk religions. There are thousands of polytheistic folk religions. So calling yourself Pagan doesn't really specify much. There are dozens of varieties of neopaganism, and many of them look like live-action D&D, lol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paganism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopaganism

Many religions are intolerant of non-believers, followers convert others through ultimatum: believe and worship their deity or go to "hell". Historically, the purpose of many religions such as Christianity and Islam is to instill fear into the population; people who are afraid are easy to manipulate and govern. If you think about it, the fundamental function of said religions is no different from another form of manipulative action we know as terrorism...

In my opinion, most atheists just accept the fact that life is short, and we should cherish what little time we have, instead of investing time and money on a belief system promising an afterlife that may or may not exist at all. Atheists shouldn't be spending all their time complaining about stuff like 'in god we trust' logos on our money, although the inclusion such text does seem to be slightly archaic for our time.

did you say you're a theist or did you say you're atheist?

I don't get it: why do atheists get more flack than agnostics?

Maybe because a lot of religious people have secret doubts. Like Mother Teresa, who wrote in her diary things contrary to her public facade.

It is a complete fallacy that only 1-3% of Americans are atheists. I'd like to see a real study that examines how many nonreligious people there are. I would guess that the true number is really around 10-15% or maybe more.

>> ^zizzbang:
It is a complete fallacy that only 1-3% of Americans are atheists. I'd like to see a real study that examines how many nonreligious people there are. I would guess that the true number is really around 10-15% or maybe more.


If you read my wall of text up there you'd see the 14.1% report.

So what does this hick town do about people of other religions? I'm sure those parents don't want their kids studying the bible, either.

Guess they don't believe in good eating and exercise either.

When I get american bills I like to deface the parts that say shit about god.