how badly are atheists distrusted by christians?

[nemesiss]

apparently, as much as rapists accourding to this ottonawan research.
it''s also hilarous that christians claim to have to moral high ground, yet are unable to show/share it.

That prejudice had a significant effect on what kinds of jobs people said they would hire atheists to do.
"People are willing to hire an atheist for a job that is perceived as low trust, for instance as a waitress," said Gervais.
"But when hiring for a high-trust job like daycare worker, they were like, nope, not going to hire an atheist for that job."

The antipathy does not seem to run both ways, though. Atheists are indifferent to religious belief when it comes to deciding who is trustworthy.
"Atheists don't necessarily favour other atheists over Christians or anyone else," he said. "They seem to think that religion is not an important signal for who you can trust."

source: http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Atheists+rapists+list+people+religious+believers+distrust+most+study+finds/5794699/story.html


your thoughts on this article and it''s content...

 

[WarK]

Gervais started his line of inquiry about the exclusion of atheists after seeing a Gallup poll that suggested the majority of Americans would not vote for an atheist presidential candidate. Gervais and his colleagues conducted a series of six studies on a group of 350 American adults and a group 420 UBC students.

Those are too small groups to conclude anything from.

 

[theyounghistorian77]

Well from what i've read it seems Atheists are the most distrusted of all social groups, in the USA at least.

Study (pdf)[/url]"]Table 1. Public and Private Acceptance, Ranked Groups

This Group Does Not At All Agree with My Vision of American Society
,Atheist 39.6
,Muslim 26.3
,Homosexual 22.6
,Conservative Christian 13.5
,Recent Immigrant 12.5
,Hispanic 7.6
,Jew 7.4
,Asian American 7.0
,African American 4.6
,White American 2.2

I Would Disapprove if My Child Wanted to Marry a Member of This Group
,Atheist 47.6
,Muslim 33.5
,African American 27.2
,Asian American 18.5
,Hispanic 18.5
,Jew 11.8
,Conservative Christian 6.9
,White 2.3

Source: American Mosaic Project Survey, 2003.

 

[Inferno]

Those are too small groups to conclude anything from.

I'd say it's close enough to have a fairly good significance. Generally a sample size of 1000 is regarded as good enough, the 770 here aren't that far off. Plus, you can compare it to the other studies and you'll see that the correlation still holds.

Re article: Shocking, but expected.

EDIT: PZ's talking about it

 

[Leçi]

Lol USA, I can't imagine being distrusted by a religious person in Belgium. People are open about being an atheist, even reporters on tv have no problem admitting it when asked. Yea it's a much smaller country but I guess most west-european countries are like this.

 

[Laurens]

Don't you think they're right to distrust us? I mean I wouldn't want someone to eat my baby...

 

[Dean]

No good. I can't even begin to imagine the kind of fraction of the population 1000 people is to the US's 360+ million population, or less than 1000 compared to the UK's population of ... close to 100,000,000. Stronger data needed.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Actually, if the people are chosen correctly, very small samples can yield useful results.

Anyways, just for argument's sake let's pretend the survey is accurate. You know what it tells me? Christians are really good at projection.

 

[nemesiss]

Lol USA, I can't imagine being distrusted by a religious person in Belgium. People are open about being an atheist, even reporters on tv have no problem admitting it when asked. Yea it's a much smaller country but I guess most west-european countries are like this.

it's a nice contrast.
i remember a part of the discussion between dawkins and krauss when they were talking about politics and religion.
when in europe it's frowned upon to publicly practice your religion, where in america it's almost a must.

here in holland, when writing your resume, with regards to religion, is that people very strongly advise you NOT to write down your beliefs.

 

[Leçi]

here in holland, when writing your resume, with regards to religion, is that people very strongly advise you NOT to write down your beliefs.

I find that self-evident, work and religion don't mix, hell, politics and religion don't mix well either. The thing about religion is, you don't need to be smart to talk about it. Everyone has their own oppinion because it's a mainly emotion-guided feeling.