Atheophobia

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Atheophobia is a term used to describe the fear, distrust, or hatred of atheists or atheism. Like homophobia and transphobia, it is largely driven by fear and anger at the loss of religious privilege, as well as dogma-based biases/prejudices.

Expressions of atheophobia

Atheophobia expresses itself in the form of generalised attacks on all atheists, as if they were of one mind and one will (in fact, some conservative atheophobes will often refer to atheists as “the atheist”, as if to punctuate the point). Claims about atheists made by atheophobes include such diverse elements as:

• moral inferiority of atheists/atheism
• evilness of atheists
• atheists have rejected God and embrace sin (or rejected God to embrace sin)
• atheists wish to destroy religion and abolish religious holidays
• atheists have meaningless or decadent lives
• atheists are Satanists
• atheists should not be allowed to express their lack of belief
• atheists are a corrupting influence
• atheists are unsuited to responsibility
• atheists lead lives that are empty and degenerate
• atheists are just college kids wishing to escape personal responsibility
• atheists are just going through a “teenage phase”
• atheists are men with 'defective' or deceased fathers

Historical examples

This list is not meant to be comprehensive, or it'd rival the Bible in length.

• Poland, 1689 — Kazimierz Łyszczyński is tortured and beheaded for atheism. His corpse was burned and his ashes weren't buried. A man who owed him money brought him before court for writing "and therefore, there is no God" in the margin of a book. Prosecutors later discovered that he wrote a 265-page treatise called De non existentia Dei, where he argued that God is a construct of the human mind, and it was the primary cause of sentencing him to death. He tried to claim this had only been first presenting atheist arguments to refute them later, but this wasn't believed. The manuscript was destroyed; only five quotations from the work survived in court documents.

• Scotland, 1698 — Thomas Aikenhead is executed for reading a book about atheism at Edinburgh University.

• England, 1880 — Charles Bradlaugh is elected to Parliament, but as an atheist is barred from taking his seat as he wishes to affirm rather than swear to God, as is required. Eventually he wins the argument, getting a law passed that allows MPs to affirm.

• Nazi Germany — Adolf Hitler banned left-wing atheist and freethought groups and regularly spoke against the "atheistic" or "godless movement." Indeed, Nazi Germany is a depressingly common example, with Reductio ad Hitlerum (wrongly, and thus ironically) used against atheists to associate them with Nazism. That being said, it was more because Hitler hated communism rather than anything else. Atheists that were members of the Nazi party (such as Martin Bormann) could still get great careers under the Nazi regime. According to propaganda officer Goebbels, Hitler hated Christianity as well and sought to eradicate it, though what he intended to replace it with isn't entirely clear. So Hitler has no place on either side of the spectrum. The SS oath denounced atheism as well, and the organization forbade atheists from joining.

• Cold War era USA — The association of atheism with "godless communism" became popular during the Red Scare.

Modern day

Atheists are oppressed in many parts of the world; this can range from losing work to, in seven countries, capital punishment (Afghanistan, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan).

United States

Although atheists are banned from holding office in six US states, those provisions are not enforceable. A Myspace atheist group with 35000 members was deleted for causing offense — just by existing.

No admitted or confirmed atheist has ever been President of the United States, although some wingnut racists have claimed that Obama is an atheist. Some other presidents have been rather secular throughout their lives or seem to have "lost their faith" at some point, and a handful even omitted the (optional) phrase "so help me God" from the oath of office. While all this is fine basis for speculation, it is virtually impossible to ever conclusively prove anything about the privately held religious beliefs of all Presidents, much less the dead ones. Considering atheophobia, however, a President who is indeed atheist would do well to "stay in the closet" about it. In Congress, there have only been two Representatives who have proclaimed themselves as atheists, Democrat Pete Stark and Democrat Barney Frank. Stark kept his seat for 40 consecutive years.

However, a 2011 op-ed in The New York Times claimed that atheists had been overtaken in unpopularity by the Tea Party, oddly enough, considering all their anti-atheist rhetoric.

According to a 2014 survey by the Pew Research Center, the public has about equivalent negative feelings towards atheists and Muslims.

Europe

In the United Kingdom, religion isn't as much of an issue. The Prime Minister immediately after World War Two, Clement Attlee, was an agnostic. Jim Callaghan, Prime Minister before Thatcher, was an atheist. Until they lost their jobs in the 2015 election, the Deputy Prime Minister (Nick Clegg) and Leader of the Opposition (Ed Miliband) were atheists, leaving two of the three main political parties led by atheists.

In the rest of Western and Central Europe, atheism is also far more acceptable. An outright majority of people living in Czechia are believed to be atheists based on a Eurobarometer poll. The same poll puts figures in the 20s-40s in other countries such as France, Netherlands, and Germany. There are vocal religious groups, however; although many stereotype France as almost militantly secular, protests against the passage of a gay marriage law demonstrate during 2012 that Catholicism and other conservative brands of Christianity still hold sway with many people.

Eastern Europe is much more religious, even in areas formerly part of the Soviet bloc. Atheism is high in some countries, including Estonia and Czechia, but low in others, such as Poland.

Middle East

Essentially everywhere. A recent example was that of Alber Saber, a 27-year old Egyptian atheist who ran the Egyptian Atheists Facebook page, with a link to the notorious film Innocence of Muslims. This was discovered by a Muslim friend, who then got in a physical and verbal confrontation with Saber that spilled outside. Upon learning what had occurred, a mob formed threatening his life. Saber's mother called police, who instead of protecting him, arrested Saber on the charge of "insulting religion". After learning why he was in jail, a fellow inmate attacked Saber with a knife, slashing his neck. He was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, but fled Egypt after being freed on bail for an appeal.

A far luckier case was that of Rahaf Mohammed, a Saudi atheist who managed to weasel herself away from her family's control at the age of eighteen, initially seeking asylum in Australia, but was later aided by Canadian authorities, who quickly took her in upon being referred to her case. As Saudi shariah law stipulates that women are legally considered minors for life in need of "protection", Rahaf must obtain permission from her legal guardians before travelling freely for even something as trivial as conducting official business, obtaining employment, concluding a marriage contract, or undergoing certain medical procedures. On top of that, she renounced Islam, which, if she were successfully deported back to her home country, would have landed her a death sentence, as apostasy is a capital offence in Saudi Arabia. Following international pressure and a successful Twitter campaign, she was granted asylum in Canada, where she now resides. Unsurprisingly, Mohammed received death threats from Muslims who did not take kindly to what they view as a treasonous act of blasphemy, and even a smear campaign in the good old KSA where she is portrayed as a degenerate drug addict through spurious conspiracy theories alleging a "Canadian attempt at stirring up civil strife". Mohammed's family also disowned her as a "mentally unstable daughter who has displayed insulting and disgraceful behavior"; not that Rahaf would mind, though she did express concern for her sisters' welfare in an interview, fearing further reprisals from her parents towards the other siblings. Her subsequent career as an adult model – boob job and all – and a link to her profile on the adult-oriented content subscription service OnlyFans might give her critics even more of an incentive to bash and threaten her, however.

Asia

31-year-old Indonesian atheist Alexander Aan, in a case very similar to Saber's, was beaten by a mob after posting to his Facebook wall "God does not exist". Rather than protecting him, he was arrested by police for blasphemy and lying on a job application, where he claimed to be a Muslim. Indonesia requires all citizens to identify as either Muslim, Protestant, Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu, or Confucian — atheist is not an option. Worse, they were victims of a Suhartist genocide in 1965 and 1966 — a genocide that, according to Geoffrey B. Robinson, "Western powers [...] facilitated widespread violence including mass killings, and helped to consolidate the political power of the army," satisfying the Chomsky rule. Similarly, Egypt requires citizens to identify as either Muslim, Christian, or Jewish, and other Muslim countries also have such restrictions. Convicted of blasphemy, Aan served 18 months of a 2.5 year jail sentence before being released on "licence" on 27 January 2014.

On August 2017, when several Malaysian government officials had discovered that there was a group of atheists in Kuala Lumpur, they had began calling for the execution of any of them who were former Muslims, and asserting that atheists are not (and don’t deserve to be) Malaysian citizens (sound familiar?)

In Bangladesh, several atheists have been murdered by Muslim fanatics, and others forced into exile due to threats (sometimes of vigilante violence, but also prosecution over "insulting religion"), like Taslima Nasrin. The Islamic militant group Jamaat-ul-Mujihadeen Bangladesh published a list of people they dislike, atheists included, with death threats. Other atheists have survived murder attempts as well.

Oceania

Atheism is considerably more accepted in Australia and New Zealand than in the United States, with the number of non-religious people in both countries increasing recently. The Australian Bureau of Statistics census from 2016 reported that 29.6% of Australians followed no religion, compared to 22.3% in 2011, while the New Zealand 2013 census reported 41.9% of people being in this category, more than double the figure of 20.2% reported in the 1991 census. The proportion more than doubled in two decades, reaching 41.9% in the 2013 census. Julia Gillard, the first female Prime Minister of Australia, is (and was) a self-declared atheist.

In atheists we distrust

Some psychological research suggests that atheophobia tends to be driven by distrust more than other factors. Whereas discrimination against gays, for example, tends to arise from disgust, atheists are distrusted in a fashion similar to criminals such as rapists. Further demonstrating this, people who are shown a stimulus involving secular authorities such as the police show reduced distrust in atheists when asked to make judgments about them.

Some noted 'atheophobes'

• Alex Jones, Christian conspiracy loon, claims that atheists are behind the New World Order and are working with Satanic forces to destroy traditional American family values and Christianity.
• Mark Dice: As above.
• Pat Robertson
• Steve Harvey
• John Kasich
• Sheik Feiz Muhammad, Lebanese-Australian Muslim preacher, regularly describes atheists as 'dirt' during sermons and advocates the death penalty for non-believers.
• David J. Stewart of the Jesus Is Savior ministry.
• Datuk Dr. Asyraf Wajdi Dusuki, Malaysia’s Deputy Minister of Islamic Affairs, who went after an atheist group in Malaysia in early August of 2017.

See also

• Homophobia
• Transphobia
• Islamophobia
• Antisemitism
• Anti-Catholicism
• Christophobia
• Xenophobia

External links

• Atheophobia at H2G2
• Steve Harvey disparages atheists.
• Atheophobia video at YouTube
• Hollywood Atheist, TV Tropes
• Penny Edgell, Joseph Gerteis, Douglas Hartmann. Atheists As “Other”: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society. American Sociological Review, 2006, vol. 771 (April:211–234).
• An Alien in a Christian World: Intolerance, Coping, and Negotiating Identity Among Atheists in the United States, Christine H. Foust, Wake Forest University