People Still Hate Atheists

I've been encouraged by the new writing about atheism, even though it is not always hopeful. One new article discusses those who were conscientious objectors during the Second World War and Korean war.

During the military draft, young men were asked, "Do you believe in a Supreme Being?" This question was baffling to those who had studied the great philosophers and Greek Gods. Instead of answering yes or not they sometimes checked neither and wrote long essays recounting the arguments about whether "supreme beings" were in the mind or existing in some separate place.

If the person said, for example, he believed there is a supreme being but that being exists only in his mind what was a draft board made up of local citizens to make of it? Eventually, the quality of those essays had to be judged as if they were assignments in a literature class.

But what remained was the view that anyone taking conscientious objector status was not a patriotic American. According to polls, even today most parents would prefer their child marry someone of another race rather than marry an atheist. Christians claim they are the most persecuted religious group in the world. They do not come close to the dangerous lives lived by atheists.

To a believer, being an atheist borders on the incomprehensible. The gods of various faiths are so obvious to those believers others must also see them as obvious. Of course, the fact that many gods exist in many different religions makes belief in any of them equally incomprehensible to atheists.

The first step gay people had to achieve was making the public aware they existed. Then things started getting better.

Acknowledgement that atheists exist is increasing. That gives hope they may someday be accepted.