Atheism Shit That Blows

I don’t usually do things like this, but I feel like, due to the content of this blog, I need to say a few things.

Lately, I’ve been seeing things pop up on Tumblr about how atheists need to shut up about the discrimination they face. People bring up that atheists do not face the same level of bigotry and hatred as people of color, women, and the LGBT community face, and therefore, need to stop “comparing themselves” to them.

I personally don’t know, and have never seen/heard, any atheist make the point that they are oppressed like any other minority group. This probably is because it simply isn’t true. Atheists are lucky in the sense that we can, by and large, hide our atheism.

But don’t for one second think that atheists don’t understand discrimination and hatred. American studies show that atheists are the most hated and distrusted group in the U.S. Some of our states have/had measures written in their constitution that would bar atheists from holding a public office. A president has said that he would not consider atheists to be U.S. citizens.

While a lot of the submissions that come through on AStB are simply annoyances that atheists deal with; there are submissions that are truly gross. People have been thrown out of their homes, disowned from their families, fired from jobs, not hired for jobs, beaten up, and verbally abused to the point like they feel like they’re the worst person in the world, simply because it was found out that the person was an atheist.

Outside of the that, we have atheists in more religious countries who are imprisoned on blasphemy charges simply for saying, “God isn’t real.” We have atheists being killed for what they don’t believe. We have atheists living in fear and going along with the motions in their religion out of fear of what might happen to them if they, for one second, showed doubt in the religion they were forced into.

No, atheists are not systematically oppressed in the same way that other minority groups are. Yes, atheists are lucky in how well hidden they can keep their lack of belief. But don’t for one second think that our complaints of prejudice aren’t important. To say so is just another way to silence what you don’t agree with; to discriminate against a marginalized group.