Trying to prevent RationalWiki judging Christianity too harshly

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"You're trivialising organised campaigns of harassment." For the most part, those campaigns are pretty fucking trivial in their own right--they don't really need Godot's help on that count.

Theory of Practice Years of being an atheist: 30. Instances of persecution on that account: 0.20:08, 15 July 2012

As I pointed out, WfG (and now you) is conflating persecution (I don't know who made any claims about that - Proxima?) with (non-institutionalized) discrimination, which everyone else is talking about. And which most certainly exists. In the same way that, in theory, there are laws protecting the rights of women in minorities, but there is still a lot of discrimination and prejudice that exist outside the scope of those laws.

*politeness: off*

And if you think that a state representative publicly saying that a schoolgirl is an "evil little thing" is trivial, you are a bloody knobhead.

ZooGuard (talk)20:22, 15 July 2012

It's a horrible thing for an elected official, or anyone for that matter, to say such a thing--but can it be fit into a broader instance of generalized hatred towards a group, like when, for example, a Michigan representative in the wake of the Vagina Affair called a protestor a "cunt," thus reflecting a generalized hatred of women in our society? I think not. Call me out for playing the "not as bad" card, but I think that can be a bullshit move, in that some things REALLY aren't as bad as others.

Theory of Practice Years of being an atheist: 30. Instances of persecution on that account: 0.21:44, 15 July 2012
 

Triviality is relative. I think if you were, say, Jessica Ahlquist receiving death threats from people who pay attention to these organisations and also do genuinely believe what these billboards say, you wouldn't call it trivial at all. In fact, it'd be far, far from trivial.

Scarlet A.pngpathetic22:04, 15 July 2012

I empathize with the woman in question as a fellow human being; as an atheist, though, I feel no special bond with her, nor do I see an attack on her as an attack on me because of our shared disbelief in God. If I were gay, I would in all likelihood see an incident of gay-bashing as something directed at me because of who I am; if I were a woman, I would see a sexist diatribe as being directed at me because of my gender. I see this as an attack on an individual--a viscous one, no doubt, but not as an attack on "my" group, if only because "not believing in deities" is not, for me, something so important to my self-understanding that I see it as a major part of who I am or a grounds from which to form community or alliance.

Theory of Practice Years of being an atheist: 30. Instances of persecution on that account: 0.22:11, 15 July 2012

I don't particularly have any identity politics associated with atheism (I don't really have an identity at all, in fact) but I don't see how a presence or lack of that changes anything.

Scarlet A.pngd hominem22:21, 15 July 2012

Well, because persecution and discrimination are typically based on a person'r membership in a targeted group. If the "group" as such doesn't really exist, then they can't be discriminated against as such, right?

Of course, the way around this is to argue that the group does exist in the mind of the persecutors, and, when the rubber meets the road, that's what matters. Case in point--there were no witches. But witches existed in the minds of certain people, and so "witches" were persecuted on the basis of their membership in a group that only existed in the minds of the bad guys.

But at the end of the day, I need a lot more than what people have demonstrated here to take seriously the existence of a real problem of persecution or discrimination against atheists. There needs to be something more in terms of structure, frequency, and history for me to go and get my panties in a knot.

Theory of Practice Years of being an atheist: 30. Instances of persecution on that account: 0.22:34, 15 July 2012

I don't think we're all on the same page here. Let me lay out my argument point-by-point.

  • Discrimination against atheists exists. (As well as against other non-believers and all religious minorities, if you want to cover religious discrimination in general.)
  • Discrimination against atheists is not as bad as discrimination against other minorities. However, it does not follow from this that it does not exist and/or is inconsequential.
  • Discrimination against atheists is driven by different motives than most other forms of discrimination. Disgust is more often the motivating factor behind discrimination, but when it comes to atheists, it's distrust. (See Edgell et al 2006, Gervais et al 2011, and Gervais and Norenzayan 2011)
  • Discrimination against atheists seems to manifest in a categorically different manner than other forms of discrimination. Why this is is hard to say because there's little research published on it. However, the basis in distrust, relatively small number of atheists in the population, inability to tell atheists apart by appearance alone (unless the person's wearing a Richard Dawkins t-shirt or something), and regional variation in religious belief are probably big contributing factors.
  • Yes, there are some people using this to hop on board a "me too!" bandwagon, but that doesn't magically make actual cases of discrimination go away. Now I don't go around yelling "Help, help! I'm bein' repressed!" as I live in the Mecca of Lib'rulism and work in that hive of secularism, academia. (In some places, I'd say overt religiosity is less welcome than atheism.) But the story is totally different, say, in the Bible Belt. (Mostly, the question interests me because there seems to be a very different set of psychological phenomena in play when it comes to discrimination against atheists.)
  • All I'm seeing from TOP and WfG are "not as bad as" or "I don't see it, so it doesn't exist" arguments. See all the documentation I've provided, and I'll ditto Knight's and Blue's comments again. I think you guys would be singing a different tune if you lived somewhere else. That's about as clear as I can make myself here.
Nebuchadnezzar (talk)00:19, 16 July 2012