This is what 2,000 years of propaganda does.
This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by gkhouston (a host of the General Discussion forum).
"Yew doesn't bu-leeve in are gawd, so yuse is BAD!" 
(You don't believe in our God, so you are bad)
Atheists are one of the most disliked groups in America. Only 45 percent of Americans say they would vote for a qualified atheist presidential candidate, and atheists are rated as the least desirable group for a potential son-in-law or daughter-in-law to belong to. Will Gervais at the University of British Columbia recently published a set of studies looking at why atheists are so disliked. His conclusion: It comes down to trust.
Gervais and his colleagues presented participants with a story about a person who accidentally hits a parked car and then fails to leave behind valid insurance information for the other driver. Participants were asked to choose the probability that the person in question was a Christian, a Muslim, a rapist, or an atheist. They thought it equally probable the culprit was an atheist or a rapist, and unlikely the person was a Muslim or Christian. In a different study, Gervais looked at how atheism influences people’s hiring decisions. People were asked to choose between an atheist or a religious candidate for a job requiring either a high or low degree of trust. For the high-trust job of daycare worker, people were more likely to prefer the religious candidate. For the job of waitress, which requires less trust, the atheists fared much better.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=in-atheists-we-distrust
Can anyone blame me for being bitter and cynical about religion as a whole?
= new reply since forum marked as read
I have met are just as pig headed and arrogant in their support as many religious fanatics. It may not be true of all Skankee fans but in my experience its (sic) at least a majority.
Is Jesus made up of matter?
Is Allah able to create a supernova?
Can god survive the intense pressures and temperatures it takes to fuse hydrogen?
When you start to think about it Adam & Eve and the Sura of the Elephant seem like something kids would make up on the playground right?
I can't explain it...
"They arent *TRUE* Christians!"
> I would probably prefer a person with some sort of belief structure to an atheist when voting for a person who has to engage in abstract thought.
I haven't seen "logic" that backwards in a long time!
"I'm a great abstract thinker. A magic fairy created the earth in 7 days!"
say I'm looking to hire their services, and the Christian has one of those fish in his or her ad. I've found - and I'm sure it's just as bad an assumption as anything else - that people who do that aren't as good at their craft so they play the Christian card.
There's just one time that I find Atheists really annoying, and it's the same for Christians is that when they've just made the switch and are really in your face about their beliefs. The only thing that ties with that is when a high school kid first discovers Led Zeppelin (or Jim Morrison) and want to talk about nothing else. 
TlalocW
... and then fails to leave behind valid insurance information for the other driver...
... is, in my experience, proportionately more likely to have a little chrome fish on their tailgate than a little chrome fish with legs.
http://meangene.com/darwin/darwin.html
Businesses with a fish in their advertisements often seem less worthy of a customer's trust than one without.
Some Christians act as if their shortcomings are between them and their God, not between them and the people they harm.
That's the problem with having an ethical system supervised by God. You can shut Him out when when you do something wrong, and beg forgiveness later.
When your ethical system is entirely internal it's much harder to hide. There's no triangulation -- when you harm another it's entirely up to you to make it right with them.
