Monday, November 10, 2008

Atheists suffer at the hands of the religious

This article suggests that prejudice against atheism is why many American atheists are less happy than their religious brethren.

Prejudice of any sort makes the victims of it suffer, so this stands to reason.

Interesting.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I’m a Swede. Yes Zuckerman is right that we are non-religious. But he’s not right about a lot of other things. I think he has not understood the institutional settings in Sweden. His statement that we marry in church, have baptisms, give income to church and so on is all wrong and misleading. It doesn’t go for the majority and when it takes place it’s because of peculiar rules and traditions that has survived from historical days. For example everyone is required by law to pay a certain amount each year to cover for their funeral. Because the church owns all graveyards in Sweden everyone including non-members, Muslims, Jews etc has to pay to the church. That’s not the same as giving money to church.

But no one can complain about the living standard and the respect of human life. Children are treated with great dignity; the society is well organized and fairly good. Swedes are shy, calm, careful, like to act in consensus, love nature and the seasons.

I don’t like the word atheist – what’s the purpose of categorizing people that are not something? There’s no special word to describe people that are not basketball players or not republicans or not globetrotters – why is there a special word to describe people that are not religious then? Swedes are simply not.

But I’m reading Timothy’s blog religiously :) so if anyone has questions on Sweden post a comment here and I will probably see it /T