"Persecuted" Atheists in America Need a New Perspective

[LeftishBrit]

28. OK; sorry about the Hitchens mistake, but he is British by origin...

and incidentally his brother is a Christian-Right ranting journalist on the Daily Mail.

Dawkins is certainly British. I don't mean that their opinions are totally irrelevant to America; that was clumsily expressed. What I meant was that judging all atheists by the comments of a few polemical ones, or saying 'I won't vote for an atheist because Dawkins was rude about Christianity' or even saying 'It's understandable if Americans won't vote for an atheist, because Dawkins was rude abou Christianity' would be wrong and unjust even if Dawkins was from the same country; it is even worse if he isn't.

To give a few parallels, some people say that it's OK to be nasty to Muslim immigrants, because 'Muslim countries are intolerant of non-Muslims, so why shouldn't we be intolerant of Muslims?' Some people say it's OK to be nasty to Diaspora Jews because 'The Israeli settlers mistreat the Palestinians, so Jews bring it on themselves!' I think it would be broadly accepted by liberal people that such attitudes are, respectively, Islamophobic and antisemitic. Yet some people seem to think that it's OK to be prejudiced against all atheists because a few atheist writers have been a bit rude about Christians. It is not.

Personally, I have never come in for serious direct prejudice because I'm an atheist - but I am in a country where this is less common. Nevertheless, religious right-wingers, and especially the political 'pro-life' movement, do have some ugly influence even where I live.


'People who are abusive and ridicule others, should not whine and pout if they are ostracized and ridiculed in response.'

But people who are ostracized and ridiculed - or worse, treated as politically dangerous - when they have NOT been abusive, have every right to complain! And it's no excuse if someone else of the same religious faith/ lack of faith has been rude.