Politiks As Usual: In The News 3/9/14

Most Corrupt Town in America in Danger of Being ‘Wiped Off the Map’

Is Ben Carson 2016's Sleeper Candidate?

I Was On Death Row, And I Was Innocent

Former 17 Year Marijuana Addict Urges Other States To Say No To Recreational Pot

No, Atheism and Conservatism Are Not Compatible 
 
Santorum: GOP Should Follow Pope's Example to Gain Followers
 
Obamacare Surcharge Appearing on Restaurant Bills Across the Country
 
George Will: Obama Donor Investigating IRS Scandal ‘Kind Of A Sham’ 
 
NBC Warns: Midterm Election 'Holds the Fate of the Rest of the Obama Presidency'
 
Ed Schultz Goes from Supporting Keystone to Comparing It to 'Vietnam' 

Chick-Fil-A Targeted By Black Mob

Iraqi Bill Would Allow 9-Year Old Girls to Marry, Husbands to Demand Sex

Can a Jew Get Down With Hot Jesus From 'Son of God?'

Koch Industries Responds To Harry Reid Attacks

Politiks As Usual: In The News 12/22/13

Cracker Barrel Reverses Decision, Will Resume Selling Duck Dynasty Products

As Utah Gay Couples Celebrate Marriages, All Eyes On US Appeals Court

Doubling the Minimum Wage Actually Hurts Employees

Katie Couric's Oprah Try Fails, Kathy Griffin Back on CNN for New Year's Bash

Homo-fascists Are Overplaying Their Hand With Duck Dynasty

Obama Warns South Sudan

Paul Ryan Doubles Down on Cutting Veteran Pensions

Who Are You To Judge Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson?

Atheist-Funded Group Behind Attack on Koch Foundation Donation to Catholic U.

Research Shows TV Shows Underrating Violence

Douglas County Sheriff Will No Longer Cooperate with A&E in Filming 'Duck Dynasty'

Poll: 75 Percent Say Celebrate Christmas in Public Schools

Townhall.com:

Despite the attempt by the Texas state legislature to ban the very word "Christmas" from an elementary school "winter party," it seems the vast majority of Americans are still in full support of celebrating the religious holiday in public schools. 

A Rasmussen report released Wednesday has the details:

"Despite school administrators’ concerns nationwide, Americans strongly believe that Christmas should be a part of public schools. They feel just as strongly that religious symbols should be allowed on public property. 

Seventy-five percent (75%) of American Adults think Christmas should be celebrated in public schools, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Just 15% disagree, while 10% are not sure."

Stories, such as the recent case where Jesus was removed from the nativity scene at the South Carolina Air Force base, should not be understood as the national perspective on the presence of Christ in the public holiday. Only ten percent of Americans polled did not support celebrating Christmas in the classroom. The so called, "War on Christmas" might not be as much of an uphill battle as many are being led to believe. 

RELATED:  O’Reilly Psychoanalyzes Atheists: So Much ‘Anger,’ ‘Are They That Bitter Against Religion?”

Sarah Palin: ‘Angry Atheists Armed with an Attorney’ Want to ‘Abort Christ from Christmas’

Mediaite.com:

Sarah Palin spoke at Liberty University on Thursday, and one of the issues she addressed was the War on Christmas™ and the “angry atheists” hell-bent on ruining the holiday for everyone else. Palin invoked the words of Founders like Thomas Jefferson, who she said despite his writings on the separation of church and state, would be up in arms against people attempting to “abort Christ from Christmas.”

Palin agreed that Jefferson’s message has been grossly distorted by atheists attempting to use him for their own agenda, and argued that the nation’s third president would, in fact, be on the side of Christians fighting to celebrate the holiday.

“Thomas Jefferson today, he would recognize those who would want to try to ignore that Jesus is the reason for the season, those who would want to try to abort Christ from Christmas. He would recognize, for the most part, these are angry atheists armed with an attorney. They are not the majority of Americans.”

She also found it to be a ridiculous double standard that somehow it’s okay for atheists to take offense at public displays of religion on government grounds, but religious people can’t get offended when they believe their holiday is being undermined. Palin concluded that people should follow Jefferson’s example and refuse to “sit down and shut up.”

RELATED:  O’Reilly Psychoanalyzes Atheists: So Much ‘Anger,’ ‘Are They That Bitter Against Religion?”

Politiks As Usual: In The News 11/17/13

More World News from ABC

Teens' 'Knockout Game' A Growing Danger With Deadly Results

Atheism: Poor Odds, Bad Science and the 'Law of Non Contradictions'

Perfect. Seattle Elects A Socialist To City Council

Failed Left-Wing Policies Sinking Obama's Presidency

The Cult of Outrage

Andrew Sullivan Slams MSNBC: 'Bunch of Hypocrites and Phonies on That Propaganda Network'

Physician Criticizes FDA Crusade Against Trans Fats 

Transgender Bathroom Laws An Assault On Freedom, Expert Says

Pa. Pastor Facing Church Trial Over Gay Marriage

Marketplace Changes Have Made ENDA Superfluous

Don Lemon Takes On Black Writer For ‘Why I Hate Being a Black Man’ Column

Toronto Mayor Refuses to Step Down: 'I'm Not an Addict'

Politiks As Usual: In The News 10/13/13

Senate Rejects Plan For Debt Limit Deal

Gawker Writer Mocked and Excoriated For Trolling Mommy Blog

Left's New Crusade: Adult-Kid Sex

Francis Spufford Says Athiests Put Religion to All the Wrong Tests

Paul Ryan Is Not The Problem 

Obamacare: Mind-Boggling Incompetence

Judge Sued After Sending Teen Back to Home Where She Was Then Raped 

MSNBC President Wants 'Investigation' Into Fox News' 'Impossible' Ratings Gain

Documentary Tells Faith Story of NBA Star

Hail to the Redskins: Try as They Might… President, PC Media Will Never Get Team Name Changed

Ann Coulter Discusses New Book With NewsBusters: Evidence Suggests Liberals Can’t Learn

Fox News Shutdown! Jay Carney Won't Call on Ed Henry, So He Walks Out of Briefing

The Redskins, Liberalism and Public Opinion: The Way We Live Now

Atheist Scientists Given Nobel Prize To Deny God

RenewAmerica.com:

Another strange Nobel Prize has just been awarded, this time to two scientists whose goal it was and is, to deny God.

The atheists have become so desperate to disprove God that their urgency to do so suggests the panic that only the devil himself would express during these last days.

We are approaching the finish line of time – limited time for the enemy to take as many away from God as possible. And there seems to be no end to the means being exercised to accomplish Satan's goals in his final skirmish against God.

A "Nobel Prize" for physics was given to atheist scientists, Peter Higgs of Britain and Francois Englert of Belgium yesterday, Tuesday 10/8/13, for "explaining" how matter formed after the Big Bang.

The results, the scientists saith, provided the fundamental building blocks of the universe that were merged together, gaining mass and forming everything we see around us today. That would include soil, grass, trees, flowers, animals, fish and humans with their intricate DNA not to mention the sun, moon and planets orbiting each other continually with perfect timing in endless space.

The Associated Press stated that the physicists offered "PROOF" that their theory was valid. That appears to be a careless usage of words, to put it mildly.

And how did this :"proof" surface? First of all, the scientists involved managed to raise and spend $10 billion dollars to build a "Particle Collider." which would be the world's biggest atom smasher, built in a 17 mile tunnel under the Swiss-French border. That is 10 BILLION dollars, with a B.

The goal was to find a subatomic particle that would be called, The Higgs Boson, but became better known as, The God Particle, from whence everything sprung.

This, of course would mean that it was all spontaneous combustion, there was no higher intelligence involved....yep...God does not exist, and this settles it.
Ten Billion Dollars spent in an effort to disprove the existence of God. Think how far that amount of money would go to improve education, communities, cities, libraries, museums, and the lives of so many.

But the AP says they found "proof." After so much time – pounding, boiling, smashing and cooking elements, one is bound to come up with a possible simile of the thing they are looking for, but it is only that..not "proof."

Yet, the Marxist press is all over that so-called discovery, to deceive people in an effort to persuade them to abandon their religious beliefs and faith. It is an old story.

Then again, billions of dollars more has been spent on space exploration. Some of that which is used for commercial projects including satellites for communications is understandable. However, questions arise over trips to Mars, for one, where they seem determined to find water, mud that might indicate that the planet once had water which, of course, would mean that human life had once existed and was sustained there. What they are trying to prove is a huge stretch.

RELATED: Atheists Threaten Lawsuit over Police-Church Collaboration

Atheist Students Use Federal Law To Pursue Same Rights as Christians for ‘Secular Safe Zones’

WashingtonTimes.com:

A 30-year-old federal law created to protect the right of Christian students to gather now is being used to protect the rights of students with opposite beliefs.

This school year, the Secular Student Alliance, a national organization advocating the rights of nonreligious students, has created “secular safe zones” on 26 college and high school campuses throughout the country.
“Christianity is so prevalent in society that it’s taken as the norm and to many atheists it’s off-putting,” said the alliance’s spokesman Jesse Galef.

Mr. Galef said the safe zones — rooms or areas set aside specifically for nonreligious students — can help build community, foster service projects and educate individuals about atheism. The safe zones are overseen primarily by student leaders and faculty member allies.

In recent years, members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement were the first to exploit the Equal Protection Act to extend protection to new categories of students who were not necessarily Christian.

“We’re taking a page right out of [the LGBT] playbook,” Mr. Galef said.

The safe-zone phenomenon comes amid what demographers say is a pronounced increase in the number of nonbelievers in the past four decades.

Since 1972, the number of atheists globally has nearly tripled, while religiosity in the United States has declined from 73 percent in 2005 to 60 percent in 2012, according to the poll Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism.

The website Secularsafezone.org, in defending the need for a student refuge, cites a 2006 University of Minnesota survey that found continuing prejudice and distrust of atheists, even as cultural celebrations of “diversity” explode.

The telephone survey of 2,000 U.S. households found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.”

Atheists also were named as the minorities most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

“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,” said Penny Edgell, an associate professor of sociology at Minnesota and the study’s lead researcher.

RELATED:  Atheism Added to Irish School Curriculums

The Washington Post Openly Discriminates Against Black Reverend E.W. Jackson In Virginia Campaign

Newsbusters.org:

If black Rev. E.W. Jackson was a liberal and his white opponent Ralph Northam was a conservative, The Washington Post would have to accuse itself of racism.  In the Virginia campaign for lieutenant governor, Northam, a white liberal, is the beneficiary of obvious and massive discrimination. He hasn’t drawn a single headline from the Post since he won the primary in June. No one needs to know anything he's said or anything he's done. He's apparently perfect.

But once again on Tuesday, the Post took out a journo-hammer and hit Jackson the black conservative over the head. On the front page of the Metro section, the headline was “E.W. Jackson’s combative style to be put to test.”  Post reporter Michael Laris relied on Democratic trackers (and they happily relied on him) to report that Jackson had said something allegedly outrageous from a minister -- that Christianity was true, and other religions were false:

While describing a list of the "controversial" things that he believes, and that he said he must say as a Christian, he proclaimed that non-Christians "are engaged in some sort of false religion." 

"Any time you say, 'There is no other means of salvation but through Jesus Christ, and if you don't know him and you don't follow him and you don't go through him, you are engaged in some sort of false religion,' that's controversial. But it's the truth," Jackson said, according to a recording made by a Democratic tracker. "Jesus said, 'I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes unto the Father but by me.' " 

The Web site of the Restoration Fellowship Church, where Jackson spoke Sunday, includes a recording of the sermon. But a short section that included the "false religion" comment was missing from the recording. 

The church's pastor, Jay Ahlemann, said he agrees with Jackson's interpretation. As for non-Christians, "I would expect they would be offended," Ahlemann acknowledged. "It's not our purpose. And [Jackson] said he did not set out to offend people. It's his purpose to proclaim what the Bible said as a preacher. That was not a political speech. That was a Bible sermon."

The Post put this at the end of the Metro story, but the Christianity-is-true remarks were the entire E.W. Jackson story as summarized in the Post’s free Express tabloid. By the end of the day, D.C. radio station WMAL was running a soundbite of Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell suggesting Rev. Jackson shouldn't run for office with a Christian message like that. 

In nearly every Jackson story the Post writes, they recount their list of his outrages, and suggest he has a “divisive mean streak.” If only they would add to every Jackson story that the Post endorsed his white opponent, the discrimination might be even more obvious. When you’re a liberal, it’s not a sign of a “divisive mean streak” that you favor leaving babies to die on a table after birth because the mommy had wanted an abortion.

RELATED: Virginia’s GOP Lt. Gov. Candidate: Non-Christians ‘Engaged in Some Sort of False Religion’

Atheism Starts Its Megachurch

Salon.com:

Organized Atheism is now a franchise.

Yesterday, The Sunday Assembly—the London-based “Atheist Church” that has, since its January launch, been stealing headlines the world over—announced a new “global missionary tour.” In October and November, affiliated Sunday Assemblies will open in 22 cities: in England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, the United States and Australia. “I think this is the moment,” Assembly founder Sanderson Jones told me in an email last week, “when the Sunday Assembly goes from being an interesting phenomenon to becoming a truly global movement.” Structured godlessness is ready for export.

The Assembly has come a long way in eight months: from scrappy East London community venture (motto: “Live Better, Help Often and Wonder More;” method: “part atheist church, part foot-stomping good time”) to the kind of organization that sends out embargoed press releases about global expansion projects. “The 3,000 percent growth rate might make this non-religious Assembly the fastest growing church in the world,” organizers boast.

There’s more to come: In October, the Sunday Assembly (SA) will launch a crowdfunded indiegogo campaign, with the ambitious goal of raising £500,000 (or, about $793,000). This will be followed by a second wave of openings. “ The effort reads as part quixotic hipster start-up, part Southern megachurch.

Like any attempt at organized non-belief, the Sunday Assemblies will attract their fair share of derision from critics. But the franchise model might dismay some followers too. For a corporate empire needs an executive board; a brand needs brand managers; a federation needs a strict set of guiding tenets—and consequences for those who stray from the fold. And isn’t that all wholly opposed to Freethought?

RELATED:  Why “Atheist Churches” Are a Disaster For Atheism

Politiks As Usual: In The News 5/27/13

Tea Party Surges After IRS Flagging

New Terror Stance Worries Republicans

Boy Scouts' Folly: Putting Sexual Morality Up To A Vote

Closing Guantanamo  

Last Dance With Sallie Mae

Petitioners Outraged Lesbian Sex Offender Is Treated Equal Under the Law

Sen. Coburn: Holder Investigating DOJ a ‘Total Conflict of Interest’

Media Claims Pope Gave Atheists Pass into Heaven

Scientist Corrects Gullible Reporter: ‘Climate Change’ Not Causing More Tornadoes

French Gay Marriage Opponents Stage Big Paris March

Mayor's Office No Certainly For Weiner 

Obama Officials Are 'Criminalising Journalism', Says Republican Senator 

Alex Jones Responds To Maddow’s Take Down: ‘I’m Attracted To Mr. Maddow, And That Really Conflicts My…’

Mayor's office no certainty for Weiner

Mayor's office no certainty for Weiner

Politiks As Usual: In The News 5/20/13

Connect Dots To Obama

Michelle Obama Challenges Black Youth Priorities

White House Word Of The Day – Irrelevant

NAACP Chair Julian Bond Is A Liar

Obama, IRS and Eric Holder: The Axis of Hear No Evil, See No Evil

Black Conservative Comes Out, Declares: 'I Am Not Gay'

In Worst Week of Obama's Presidency CNN Publishes Poll Saying His Job Approval Rose 

Extreme Global Warming Seen Further Away Than Previously Thought

Restoring Hope For Homosexuals

Georgia Gov. Deal Orders Bibles Returned to State-owned Park

How Barack Obama’s ‘Tone’ Left Americans Defenseless and Abandoned in Benghazi

Mediaite Exclusive: Internal Memo Proves That CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson Did Not Get Benghazi Emails Story Wrong

Politiks As Usual: In The News 4/29/13

New York Officials Seek Human Remains Amid Debris from Boeing Jet

Obama Becomes First Sitting President to Address Planned Parenthood

Why Is Atheism So Appealing? 

Is The US Ready For A Third President Called Bush?

Liberals Suck at Math and Eyeballs

Obama's Borrowed More Per Household ($53,616) Than Median Household Earns ($50,502)

Huffington Post Journalist Admits ‘Gay Marriage Opens the Door’ for Polygamy ‘and Other Things’

Liberals: ‘We Do Want to Change Marriage’

ABC's Lobbying Failed: NFL Teams Failed to Draft the Openly Gay Kicker They Promoted

Holder Defends Mirandizing Boston Bombing Suspect

Judge: Firing Teacher Who Called Homosexuality A Sin Reflects ‘Modern British Values Of Tolerance’

McCain, GOP Lawmakers: Syrian Chemical Weapons Threaten U.S.

Biden Says McCain Would’ve Won 2008 If Not For Economic Collapse, Senator Responds On Meet The Press

Politiks As Usual: In The News 3/18/13

 Pope Wades Into Crowds, Shocks Bystanders In Rome

Atheism Is A Religion Too

Sacred Mystery: Blockbuster Ratings for ‘The Bible’ Confound Hollywood

Dr. Ben Carson: Obama Trying to 'Destroy This Country'

Government Steering Americans Toward a Tele-Work, Tele-Shop, Mass-Transit Future

GOP Plans Fewer Debates, More Community Outreach

Ed Schultz: ‘I Don’t Think MSNBC Has Slighted Me’

Bill Maher Defends Iraq War, Bush: ‘It’s A Country That’s Standing, I Thought It Wouldn’t Be’

Karl Rove Slams Sarah Palin for CPAC Remarks

Do Women Belong In Racing?

Ann Coulter Blasts Chris Christie, Says He’s ‘Off My List’ For 2016 In Fiery CPAC Speech

Politiks As Usual: In The News 2/4/13

Washington State Considers Final Gender-Neutral Language Bill

Obama Encourages Boy Scouts Of America to End Ban On Gays, Gov. Perry Says Keep It

Why I'm Canceling My Sports Illustrated Subscription

ObamaCare Will Cost Your Family at Least $20,000

Gallup: Conservatives Outnumber Liberals in 47 Out of 50 States

Only Truth in ‘True Life’ is MTV’s Contempt for Conservatives

Wanda Sykes on Super Bowl: 'I'm Gay...Not Rooting for San Francisco Is Like Booing Africa'

White House Brandishes Obama Skeet-Shooting Pic for Reporters

Mother’s Blog Demonstrates Aggressive Atheist Arguments

The Top Ten Reasons Hillary Must Be the Next President

Politiks As Usual: In The News 12/3/12

Report: Romney's Skewed Internal Polls Had Him Winning Big

Chicago’s $55M Anti-Violence Boondoggle

Obama Slaps States That Don't Comply With Obamacare

Focus on the Family 'Hiding Behind Compromise'

Obama’s Now Borrowed More Than All Presidents from Washington to W

West Point Chapel Hosts First Same-Sex Marriage

Geithner Insists on Tax Rate Hikes for Rich

The Real Root of Atheists' Anti-Christmas Rage

Calif., Ariz. Border Towns Have Nation’s Highest Unemployment: Over 28%

Nader: War Criminal Obama Worse Than Bush

Pope To Open A Personal Twitter Account

Godless: One in Five American Adults Now Have No Religious Affiliation

No surprise here. As idiot theologies like atheism and agnosticism become more and more popular and more Americans across the country embrace the totally anti-Christian tenets of social liberalism, belief in religion will see a serious decline:

The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.

In the last five years alone, the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. Their ranks now include more than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as well as nearly 33 million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation (14%).³

This large and growing group of Americans is less religious than the public at large on many conventional measures, including frequency of attendance at religious services and the degree of importance they attach to religion in their lives.

However, a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, conducted jointly with the PBS television program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, finds that many of the country’s 46 million unaffiliated adults are religious or spiritual in some way. Two-thirds of them say they believe in God (68%). More than half say they often feel a deep connection with nature and the earth (58%), while more than a third classify themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious” (37%), and one-in-five (21%) say they pray every day. In addition, most religiously unaffiliated Americans think that churches and other religious institutions benefit society by strengthening community bonds and aiding the poor.

With few exceptions, though, the unaffiliated say they are not looking for a religion that would be right for them. Overwhelmingly, they think that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics.

RELATED:  Pew study: One in five American adults now have no religious affiliation

Politiks As Usual: In The News 9/24/12

Eastern Germany: The Most Godless Place On Earth

Obama's Childlike Belief In The Money Tree

Chick-fil-A Sticks With Pro-Marriage Donations

Berkeley, CA Now Acknowledging Bisexuals

Romney Vows Major New Campaign Push Into Battleground States

Pelosi Fuming Over Romney 'Mute Button' Ad

Despite Having Ambassador's Journal That Suggests Otherwise, CNN Continues to Blame Anti-Islam Film For Attack in Libya

2012 Emmys Honor the Profane

Gallup: Only 8% of Americans Have 'Great Deal' of Trust in News Media--a New Low

Allen West: “Bin Laden Being Dead is Not Foreign Policy”

A Time for Truth, Not Word Games

Reince Priebus: Republicans Have ‘Specifics Coming Out Of Our Eyeballs’

Unbelieving Preachers Get Help To "Come Out" As Open Atheists

CNN.com:

Jerry DeWitt entered the ministry when he was 17, launching a 25-year career as a Pentecostal preacher. He traveled all around his home state of Louisiana, preaching and ministering wherever he could.

All these years later, DeWitt, 42, is still on the road, and now takes his message all over the United States. But the nature of that message, along with his audience, has changed dramatically.

DeWitt is now an avowed atheist, and his audiences are made up of religious “nones,” the growing number of Americans who are atheist, agnostic, humanist or just plain disinterested in identifying with a religion. Today, DeWitt preaches a gospel of disbelief.

During his speeches, he talks about the process of leaving his preacher job. “If you don’t believe, then you will be like me – you’ll suddenly find yourself where you only have two choices,” DeWitt told a group in Johnson County, Kansas, earlier this year.

“You can either be honest that you don’t believe ... or you can pretend that you do,” he said. “Which is what so many people are doing and that is called faith.”

The transition from preacher to outspoken atheist has not been easy, and DeWitt is trying to smooth the way for other former believers. He is executive director of Recovering from Religion, an organization founded in 2009. Its slogan: “Thousands of organizations will help you get INTO religion, but we’re the only one helping you OUT.”

But a relatively new effort goes a step further than his own group by focusing on helping clergy in particular. In March 2011, a coalition that includes national groups such as American Atheists, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Richard Dawkins Foundation helped launch the Clergy Project, which is aimed at giving doubting and atheist preachers a community in which they can talk about their disbelief.

The program's ultimate goal: to help unbelieving preachers to “come out” in real life.

The Clergy Project’s key component is a private online community of active and former pastors discussing their conversions to lives of active disbelief. It lets congregational leaders come out anonymously, using an alias.

“It is important to focus on any group of people who are in a lot of pain,” said Linda LaScola, a co-founder of the Clergy Project. “That is why the Clergy Project exists, and it wouldn’t be growing if there wasn’t a need for it.”

When it launched last year, 52 clergy signed up for the online community, according to LaScola. A little more than a year later, 270 members are contributing to the message boards and connecting anonymously with one another.

RELATED: Pew survey: Doubt of God growing quickly among millennials

Why People Dislike Atheists

ScientificAmerican.com:

Atheists are one of the most disliked groups in America. Only 45 percent of Americans say they would vote for a qualified atheist presidential candidate, and atheists are rated as the least desirable group for a potential son-in-law or daughter-in-law to belong to. Will Gervais at the University of British Columbia recently published a set of studies looking at why atheists are so disliked. His conclusion: It comes down to trust.


Gervais and his colleagues presented participants with a story about a person who accidentally hits a parked car and then fails to leave behind valid insurance information for the other driver. Participants were asked to choose the probability that the person in question was a Christian, a Muslim, a rapist, or an atheist. They thought it equally probable the culprit was an atheist or a rapist, and unlikely the person was a Muslim or Christian. In a different study, Gervais looked at how atheism influences people’s hiring decisions. People were asked to choose between an atheist or a religious candidate for a job requiring either a high or low degree of trust. For the high-trust job of daycare worker, people were more likely to prefer the religious candidate. For the job of waitress, which requires less trust, the atheists fared much better.


It wasn’t just the highly religious participants who expressed a distrust of atheists. People identifying themselves as having no religious affiliation held similar opinions. Gervais and his colleagues discovered that people distrust atheists because of the belief that people behave better when they think that God is watching over them. This belief may have some truth to it. Gervais and his colleague Ara Norenzayan have found that reminding people about God’s presence has the same effect as telling people they are being watched by others: it increases their feelings of self-consciousness and leads them to behave in more socially acceptable ways.


When we know that somebody believes in the possibility of divine punishment, we seem to assume they are less likely to do something unethical. Based on this logic, Gervais and Norenzayan hypothesized that reminding people about the existence of secular authority figures, such as policemen and judges, might alleviate people’s prejudice towards atheists. In one study, they had people watch either a travel video or a video of a police chief giving an end-of-the-year report. They then asked participants how much they agreed with certain statements about atheists (e.g., “I would be uncomfortable with an atheist teaching my child.”) In addition, they measured participants’ prejudice towards other groups, including Muslims and Jewish people. Their results showed that viewing the video of the police chief resulted in less distrust towards atheists. However, it had no effect on people’s prejudice towards other groups. From a psychological standpoint, God and secular authority figures may be somewhat interchangeable. The existence of either helps us feel more trusting of others.


Gervais and Norenzayan’s findings may shed light on an interesting puzzle: why acceptance towards atheism has grown rapidly in some countries but not others. In many Scandinavian countries, including Norway and Sweden, the number of people who report believing in God has reached an all-time low. This may have something to do with the way these countries have established governments that guarantee a high level of social security for all of their citizens. Aaron Kay and his colleagues ran a study in Canada which found that political insecurity may push us towards believing in God. They gave participants two versions of a fictitious news story: one describing Canada’s current political situation as stable, the other describing it as potentially unstable. After reading one of the two articles, people’s beliefs in God were measured. People who read the article describing the government as potentially unstable were more likely to agree that God, or some other type of nonhuman entity, is in control of the universe. A common belief in the divine may help people feel more secure. Yet when security is achieved by more secular means, it may remove some of the draw of faith.


The findings on why we distrust atheists also point towards another potential way of reducing such prejudice: by reminding people of charitable and altruistic acts committed in the name of atheism. In recent years, there has been a growing number of virtual communities dedicated to those interested in atheism. Some of these communities have begun to organize charitable efforts. For example, the Haiti earthquake led members of Richard Dawkins’ foundation to launch a campaign entitled Non-Believers Giving Aid. In December the Reddit.com online atheism community managed to raise over $200,000 worth of donations for Doctors Without Borders. It is possible that greater public awareness of altruistic atheists may help alleviate some of the distrust that many Americans feel towards nonbelievers.