It's illegal to be atheist in these 13 countries

[JuliaL]

A state in the US used to put you in jail for not accepting god is the ultimate authority and needless to say that law has been overturned.
People just hate atheists because they are not delusional like them.

It's a pretty common strategy here to pass a law to satisfy one constituency then fail to enforce it to satisfy another.
Right now we're in a standoff on enforcement of immigration law. Lots of rules 'on the books' but little being done. One opinion I read recently said that each citizen was committing 2 to 5 felonies a day. I have no economical way to confirm this, but I find it plausible given the sheer volume of law, rules and inconsistent bureaucratic guidelines. Selective enforcement gives members of the enforcement community opportunity and power to apply their prejudices without likelihood of backlash. For the longest time, perhaps still, there was a large difference in the penalties for the use of powder cocaine vs the freebase/crack type putatively because it was the minority community which chiefly used the latter. Even if the nominal penalties have evened up, differential enforcement provides license to discriminate on the basis of race without fear of reprisal. The existence of the informal crime of 'driving while black' further confirms a similar practice.