everyone (else) seems to be hating on atheists

[Mister Agenda]

Except I've repeatedly denounced atheist stereotypes, and just said as much in the last post.

It's nice that you denounce them. It'd be nicer if you didn't perpetuate them.

Its atheists who seem to want to say that what Christians, Muslims, Buddhists had to go through under state atheism was not as bad as what atheists had to go through during the...um.

Care to quote someone saying that?

Maybe atheists really did need to go invisible to avoid persecution. All persecuted groups need to do this: Christians were driven underground (sometimes literally) during state atheism. And a lot of them were still caught and killed in spite of this. Maybe atheists are just way better at hiding.

It's not a matter of better, it's a matter of easier. We have no observances we're supposed to keep, meetings we're supposed to go to, and so on. All we have to do is keep our mouths shut. I was 40 before I knowingly met my third atheist.

I get threatened by violence too. I think the internet age makes threats of violence pretty easy.

Good point, it's easy to shoot your mouth off.

Who actually gets victimized by real religiously motivated violence? Primarily Jews, Muslims and the occasional Christian (though Christians are still underrepresented). Not atheists.

Invisibility is a good defense. Note that in places where the danger of religous violence is highest, atheists are most invisible. We look like you and unless we're in an environment where our rights are protected and secure, we sound like you. Although Hitler did brag about stamping out the atheist movement in Germany, he didn't find too many to execute.

Also, well...yes black people did experience a holocaust of sorts, well over a million-2 million people were killed during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Again, what is the death toll for these terrible and scarring atheist persecutions? Give me a rough estimate. My total for atheist persecutions is so laughably low its a crime to even begin to compare to genuine persecutions where thousands of men, women and children were killed off, driven from their homes, had their culture destroyed, etc. I have a grand whopping total of maybe 1, 1-3 if you count general hate crimes on top of state-sponsored persecutions--and thats for the entirety of human history, I'm not even limiting things to our recent history, but literally all of human recorded history and I found 1-3. Please tell me if I am missing any more.

Since your argument in large part also applies to gays, I assume I can predict your attitude toward prejudice and discrimination against them. And it's an interesting argument, similar to the one that you have no business posting on the internet while there are children starving in Africa unless you're a compassion-free monster. You're not being murdered, so suck it up! Really?

And as for "media putting out propaganda" against you I haven't seen too much honestly. Doing a Google News search for say Muslim, gets me "Muslim soldier convicted in failed plot to bomb Fort Hood troops..." as the 4th result. Searching for "Catholic" gets me "The Catholic Church's inquisition of American nuns" (lol oh geez) as the second result. Atheist? I get "Atheists get religion all wrong" as the 6th result. Most of the results seem neutral. The media is sensationalist in general, sure, but in terms of media victimization I don't think they have it worst than anyone else, probably even better.

Argument from weak Google-fu? You might find more if you googled 'murdered atheist', but we haven't claimed atheists have been subjected to genocide, you're the one who made it about that. It's the simple observation that all many people need to know about a person to know they don't like them is that they're an atheist. You know, the topic, which wasn't 'why do people kill atheists?'.

Also I was an atheist kid throughout jr high and highschool, I was never victimized. Many of my peers were atheist or irreligious, and maybe 1 was a devout Catholic (he is now a priest). Personally, as I mentioned earlier, I am afraid to tell my athiest friends that I converted to Catholicism and am planning to become a sister.

What do you think they will do to you if you tell them?

No. I am pointing out that atheists haven't been persecuted half as much as any other religion--but also that the bulk of anti-religious persecutions of the last 100-200 years were committed by atheists, not "each other" as you say. (Though Muslims possibly come in second, at least in terms of anti-Christian persecutions).

One of the ways in which anti-atheist prejudice is demonstrated is lumping us all together and holding us accountable for the actions of atheists we have nothing in common with. It's properly ludicrous to try to hold Christians accountable for the offerings of human hearts by the Aztecs, but holding humanists responsible for communist pogroms is somehow fair game.

No, Creed certainly said that the government itself was a "religion" and therefore it did not count.

Fair cop, I think many of us are defensive on the topic since Christians bring it up so often. They're atheists, it counts as killing by atheists, although the characteristics of the victims seem to mostly have been 'perceived threat to the regime' rather than 'Christian identified, put them in a camp!'.

And they certainly wouldn't have committed said atrocities if they were theist.

If only Stalin had been a Catholic communist, he would have been much nicer? Can you hear yourself?

You think a theist would have set up the Militant Atheist League?

Um, no. Some things are too obvious to say out loud if you want people to respect your thinking.

Come on now. I won't say they did it "because of atheism" (nor should you say people commit atrocities "because of theism"),

We certainly shouldn't, if you would cite the post of anyone here saying people commit atrocities 'because of theism' I'll be happy to give them what-for for saying stupid things.

because there is a large mixture of issues going on, the biggest culprit being anti-theism.

The biggest culprit was totalitarianism.

Wow. So many lines of wrong right after the other, I cannot keep up!

Starting off with the obvious:
1) The Catholic Church did not support the Nazis.
2) Let ALONE "during their campaign of genocide".
3) The Nazi killing of Jewish folk was ethnicity-based, not religion-based, as it was a product and outcropping of 21st century racialism and eugenics. The Catholic Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was killed for being a "Jew" even though by that time she was a full-fledged Carmelite Nun.
4) The Nazis weren't really democratically-elected, they didn't receive enough votes to have Hitler become chancellor, Hitler got the position through back-room dealing. You are stretching the definition of "democratic" here.

Agree that it's not a good example of a democratically-elected governent. Jews were hated and oppressed in Germany centuries before eugenics ideas (and I strongly suspect you meant '20th century racialism and eugenics). Catholics (and Lutherans) were Nazis and Nazi fighters. It would be more accurate to say that the Catholic leadership did not consistently oppose Nazi policies.

Yes I did. And again, I hardly see how it makes it up to "loathing", because I would also be uncomfortable with such a thing. It has a pretty solid logical basis: mixed marriages being less stable.

I won't argue that. How about the study that shows atheists and rapists are equally trusted?

Don't hear about MANY? Lets be 100% clear here: you don't hear about ANY, not in the modern sense of the term "atheism" anyway.

"WOULD HAVE persecuted us, IF" hundreds and hundreds of years ago is a hell of a lot different than the actual genuine persecution that Christians faced at the hands of atheists quite recently.nd you seem to have more emotion for the former than for the latter, which is sort of discomforting.

Your 'if we're not torturing you, stfu' attitutde is pretty discomforting, too.

And the Catholic Church didn't burn historical records of the trials they conducted. Some were lost, but even if we take what death sentences we do get we don't get any atheists. Are you seriously trying to say that the Catholic Church went on a burning spree and got rid of all evidence that they persecuted atheists (and yet neglected to do so for any other group legitimately persecuted by the Inquisition, ie Jews and Protestants?) Can we say that Hindus were persecuted by the Inquisition too?

I doubt anyone admitted to the Inquisition that they were an atheist. I'll take your comment about the 'legitimate pesecution of Jews and Protestants by the Inquisition' in the way I think you meant it. I think you can make a convincing case that the Inquisition would have persecuted Hindus if it could identify them and had power over them.