I know some are personally harassed or discriminated against because of weighty false assumptions about the character and morality of non-theists. This is wrong, and it should definitely stop. We do have the right to speak up about inequality and gaining respect.

So take your disagreement and suck it. haha thanks for the comment!

It seems to me that the only reason you haven’t been a victim of this treatment is because you’ve kept your lack of religious beliefs a secret at work. If you fear religious discrimination potentially resulting in layoffs and religious persecution resulting in general stress, then I’d say you’re not as fortunate as you think you are.

Atheists aren’t being stoned to death, but we still have to deal with discrimination.

Bring on the anti-religious ethnic cleansers, I say!

I’m not whining – I mean, I’m tough and I can take it – but it seems stupid to have to defend NOT believing in magical, mythical stories and beings. I’m just saying it’s a shame it’s not the majority viewpoint in this world.

Oh I’m with you on this. Imagine having to defend your lack of belief in leprechauns! Preposterous.

Great thoughts all around! I’m so glad you asked this question in the first place. So thought-inspiring!

the reason agnostics don’t get a bad rap is because that is not a position on whether a diety is real or not

agnostic is a position that we can’t really know either way – it’s a statement about knowledge.

so it doesn’t challenge believers and they interpret that position as being positive.

whereas the atheist position is no evidence, no reason to accept the claims for a deity.

what’s funny to me is that the only difference between a believer and an atheist is ONE.

all believers are atheists to all other faiths but their own.

just like they think that saying the same about gays and lesbians is helping

Okay, so “persecuted” was too harsh a word. I agree with what you’ve written, but the main point about my question is that we, atheists (aka “heathens”) take a lot of crap from people who really should know better. Some of these folks are friends and otherwise intelligent individuals, but as soon as the A word comes up, they get so freaked out that they have to put us down, right to our faces.

I’m not whining – I mean, I’m tough and I can take it – but it seems stupid to have to defend NOT believing in magical, mythical stories and beings. I’m just saying it’s a shame it’s not the majority viewpoint in this world.

I’m careful not to stoop to that same, low level right back at them. I would like to think that I’m above it, but I’m human. I ebb. I flow. I cope. I share. Sometimes people like it and sometimes they don’t. I will not let them silence me in shame. I have rights. And not being in the majority may even be helping me better understand my (lack of) beliefs even better. Adversity is an effective teacher.

For the record, I am not about persecuting people in the true sense of the word, as you defined above. It’s wrong to fuck with other people’s lives over disagreements. I’m a humanist, after all. I believe that if we all can’t live a good life on Earth, that’s it. There’s no second chance. Atheists, at least for that one reason, seem to be more humane as a group than the religious groups have been. I would like people to open their minds to all those differences and celebrate them, rather than homogenize the world into a bunch of clones.
Benia Zouras’s last blog ..I Will Have Better Days