I read a post on another forum from a person whose parent or grandparent only admitted to being an atheist just before death. Apparently that atheist kept his/her beliefs secret for some reason.

I wonder what it was like to be an atheist back in the 1700s or 1800s or even the early 1900s?

No God or the 'wrong' God could get you burned alive, disemboweled, impaled, decapitated or pressed under stones.

If you're not in the 'right' faith tough shit.

Christers were inventive. Suspending a person upside down and cutting them in half vertically with a big tree saw was pretty gross. Upside down you stay aware much longer than other horrific ways to kill you.

To answer your question just think how it's like being an atheist in a Muslim theocratic nation, or alternatively in a Christian theocracy (Uganda comes to mind, but to the fair "Christian" nations are not comparable to Muslim ones)

They have managed to drag christians closer to enlightenment, but muslim countries are still pretty bad. You don't need to go back in time to witness such things. Just a different geographical location.

Witch hunts, where if she floats, she's a witch. If she sinks (and presumably drowns), she's innocent. Either way she's dead.

More recently you had to worry about the KKK burning crosses in your yard, if not outright killing you.

Isn't the KKK Christian? I may be mistaken, I'm not from the US

Yes, they're christian white supremacist extremists, and if you don't tow the line they come after you. They had more power at one time, though they're kind of a joke now. Some guy in a hood erects a cross in my yard, and sets it on fire, I'm more likely to go to the police than to Yahweh. If I'm in a good mood, I might just break out the marshmallows.

I have no doubts that certain fundamentalists would love to see Christianity dragged backwards in time to the point where their prejudices could be enacted with violence as well as social pressure. I don't envy anyone who had to go through it, I agree that I imagine it to be like being atheist in a modern day heavily Muslim country. I would be interested to know how the more liberal Muslim countries treat their atheists, and how crackers they go if you draw pictures of their favourite pedophile.

I'm old enough to remember 'Kill a Queer for Christ' t-shirts. Anita Bryant was pretty open about wanting 10 year prison terms for all the gays in that era too.

The Christers aren't that far, ever, of being ready, willing, and able to launch a pogrom.

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President Reagan did not consider HIV to be a problem either, Pat Buchanan didn't care how many collateral deaths might accrue if HIV could scour the country of gay people.