God: No magic required

[Mr Greene]

The one thing that I'd continue to debate is the magnitude of the "stress" inflicted on atheists (and to only a lesser extent, secular agnostics) by the viewpoints of the Fox News viewership (less than 2,000,000 people out of more than 300,000,000) and even the entire religious wing of the Republican Party. We are a polarized society; there is a group of people who hate atheists, but this is the same group (including Rush Limbaugh) which is now criticizing Pope Francis as being a "Marxist."

The most objective information you offered to support your point of view (2nd of your links) of more general "persecution" was an 11 year old study from the University of Minnesota. This study reported that atheists were the least trusted of the various groups of people about which the respondents were polled. But, looking at the actual numbers, 54% of the respondents agreed that atheists "shared [the respondents'] view of society." I'm sure that a similar poll taken today (11 years later) would show that number to be up considerably. So a majority of Americans feel that atheists share their view of society. In the history of persecuted minorities, that's not so bad. The Catholic bishops claim that they are a persecuted minority. Atheists, Catholics, and Evangelicals all watch NFL football on big flat screens and drink craft beer while so doing. If they don't like football, they can choose between Hannity, Maher, Maddow, Limbaugh, Stuart, and so on. Life sure is tough for these persecuted minorities. I'm not an expert on the UK, but do I listen to the BBC most nights. Don't see a lot of evidence for anti-atheist bias there.

Yes the situation in the UK is a lot different from the position in the US, I've heard numerous stories of people being bullied and even dismissed from work once it was discovered that they were atheists, particularly in the bible belt. Here religion is in it's death throes, the pews are occupied by the decrepit remnants of the pre WWII generation and according to the Archbishop of Canterbury will "die out in a generation". That seems to be true for the Anglican church, the Catholics are more tied to immigration from eastern Europe, whilst the unestablished protestants find themselves forced to amalgamate to survive (and then schism because they can't stand to be in the same building as each other).