UMN News: Atheists identified as America’s most distrusted minority, according to new U of M study
American’s increasing acceptance of religious diversity doesn’t extend to those who don’t believe in a god, according to a national survey by researchers in the University of Minnesota’s department of sociology.
From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.
Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. “Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher.
My first thought bizarrely to this was I wonder how atheists would rank against other American bogeymen such as the French, communists or even terrorists. Why is it that atheists are seen as a threat to the American way of life?
Many of the study’s respondents associated atheism with an array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant materialism and cultural elitism.
This is probably the answer to my question and I believe that the study’s respondents have been misled or misinformed. Lack of belief in deities does not mean that one is lacking in morals. I believe that you don’t need religious doctrine to tell you how to lead a moral life.
