What Is Worse? An Atheist Or A Rapist?

[lachrymolotov]

Study Shows Distrust Equal for Atheists and Rapists

I always knew there was extreme prejudice against atheists, but I never realized it was this bad. How do the LDS feel about atheists? My own anecdotal experience reflects what this study has demonstrated. Statistically, atheists are a great deal more law abiding than religious people in the US. Why is it that religious people have such a unrealistic perspective in regards to those who do not share their faith?

Would you rather live next to a devout Muslim who believed in jihad and felt that the government should be based on the Qur'an, or an atheist? Would you rather live next to a Catholic sex offender, or an atheist? Who are you most likely to insult on a forum on the Internet?

More telling than the automatic prejudice against atheists is the automatic trust afforded to the overtly religious. Priests, pastors, and men of god are all granted mindless trust because they are followers of god. It doesn’t matter how many times religious people commit crimes, this misconception also survives. Atheists are not moral or immoral based on their views about god, but the same goes for Christians. The religious can easily justify their behaviors and self-project their views on the “will of god,” but that doesn’t make their actions moral.

Maybe the money in the wallet is a gift from god . . . an answer to prayer. So while people are likely to think atheists are the ones swiping money from a wallet, the reality is it could just as easily be a Christian. How many pastors have been caught embezzling church funds? Not a sign of morality to be sure!

Normally, I don't watch much television, but last night, I caught the finale of Survivor. Religion seemed to play a very important role in this last season of survivor, since several people claimed to know and apply God's will. The religious people were trusted more, though it appeared that Coach had just been using it all along to serve his own ends. The one who appeared to have the most sincerity of faith was betrayed.

I think it is an interesting by-product of propaganda and the typical subtle brainwashing that occurs while we are all growing up. This label of "atheist" has so many unrealistic connotations that people hold onto. It is easy to make labels for a group of people without knowing anything of any individual that makes up that group. I believe it is a prejudice that is in the more animal parts of the brain that can only be overcome with conscious thought.

I can't help but recall studies about how people are racist even on a sub-conscious level.

The Bigot in your Brain

"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life,” Jesse Jackson once told an audience, “than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

Should atheists automatically be considered untrustworthy in some regards?

Do you think atheists are discriminated against for their lack of belief?

[Pahoran]

I think atheist propagandists might find it advantageous to portray themselves as Victims[TM]. However, I'm a bit suspicious about this "study." I don't know if atheists are automatically considered untrustworthy, but for some reason, calling something a "study" seems to make it automatically seem trustworthy.

And I don't know how well-educated (and therefore how well qualified to conduct such a "study") someone can be if they don't even know really elementary stuff, such as the fact that "God" is a proper noun in English.

Regards,

Pahoran

[Kenngo1969]

OK, I'll state the obvious. Rape, by definition, is immoral, and not just on a single level. Atheism, by contrast, is not per se immoral. It is possible (even likely) for an atheist to be moral: s/he simply derives morality from a source other than religion. By contrast, whatever morality a rapist claims to espouse is nothing but a sham.

[lachrymolotov]

Pahoran,

Do you think this study was an attempt at disinformation?

[Pahoran]

Pahoran,

Do you think this study was an attempt at disinformation?

I'd have to learn a bit more about the study to comment. However, the small sample size would seem to limit its usefulness, and the really odd way the one question mentioned in the article was framed, smells a bit like push-polling to me.

And as one of the comment letters pointed out: since there are a whole lot more atheists than rapists around, it follows that, if some random act of dishonesty is committed, an atheist really is a more likely culprit than a rapist.

Regards,

Pahoran

[lachrymolotov]

The study is measuring perception. Do you understand that? The actual number of rapists and atheists is unimportant.

[Pahoran]

The study is measuring perception. Do you understand that? The actual number of rapists and atheists is unimportant.

If I came back to my car and found that it had been vandalised and my wallet pinched, and I knew that the local population was 40% Mormon and 0.5% Irish Guinness drinkers, I would tend to perceive that the guilty parties were more likely to have been Mormons than Irish Guinness drinkers. Do you understand that? The relative numbers are important.

When I hear about crimes in my neighbourhood, neither I nor anyone I know tends to suspect Black Americans. You know why? It's not because we are wonderfully enlightened, but because there aren't any Black Americans around. We tend to suspect the people that we are aware of living here.

In any random event, if we are confined to choosing between a group well-represented in society and a group very sparsely represented, the well-represented group will simply appear to be more likely.

Which is why the question in this "study" looks like push-polling. The respondents were given three choices which are not mutually exclusive, and one of which represents a microscopically, if not vanishingly, small population segment. The likelihood that any random act (apart from a sexual assault in or near a school) was committed by a "rapist teacher" is so small as to be inconsequential.

Put it another way, Lachyrymolotov: if you decided in advance to produce the results this "study" produced, is there any way you can think of to "prime the pumps" more thoroughly?

Regards,

Pahoran

[Stargazer]

Well, just taking the subject of the OP at face value, no, as a Latter-day Saint I do not have the same level of distrust for atheists and rapists.

In fact, this is apples and oranges. Rapists can only be compared with thieves, bank robbers, terrorists, and such like. Atheists can only be compared with various theists, such as Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Jews.

Just because some atheists have been mass-murderers (Stalin, Lenin and Mao, for example), it isn't their atheism, per se, that motivated them; it was an unprincipled lust for power, or misplaced sense of duty, something which has also motivated theist mass-murders as well (Jim Jones and the like).

Edited December 19, 2011 by Stargazer

[Deborah]

What a horrible title. Isn't the title itself bigoted. Everyone would agree that a rapist is abhorrent, whether religious or not but the title implies that people would choose atheist over rapist which is ridiculous. The fact that someone may place more trust in someone who is overtly religious doesn't mean they would give an answer of atheist to this question. When religious people get betrayed by someone who professes piety they are as outraged as anyone, perhaps more so because they did place their trust in such a person.

Furthermore trust in a religious person over atheist may well depend on what we are placing trust in. If I know a religious person who says one and one is three I'm certainly not going to trust him to teach math to my kids. I'd rather have the atheist with a strong background do that as long as they're teaching math.

[ERMD]

"Priests, pastors, and men of god are all granted mindless trust because they are followers of god."

No spin at all in this "study."

[Ares]

This "study" is not about Mormons or Mormonism despite your "anecdotal experience".

Do not use the Mormon Dialogue and Discussion board as a platform to discuss Atheism.