everyone (else) seems to be hating on atheists

[Aiza]

Very important factor to mention, you are referring to state-sponsored atheism. You are basically saying that people who trade a god of theology for a god of government are the same who deny all gods.

You seem to have made up a new definition of god so you can segue into a giatn "no true scotsman" argument. A political agenda is not a god, and you can still be an atheist with a very clear political agenda, even one which is totalitarian. There are Christian totalitarians, Muslim totalitarians and atheist totalitarians. These were atheist totalitarians, and they killed a lot of religious people simply for being religious. You would never let me say that a Christian totalitarian was no longer a "real Christian" since they had replaced Jesus with the state, right? Also, interestingly enough, while there has been very many democratic and tolerant nations with state Christianity, there's never been a government with state atheism that didn't get rather totalitarian and ugly.

I am not trying to say "at least we aren't as bad as those despots" but given the high amount of people who were killed and persecuted in living memory by atheists contributes to anti-atheist prejudice. Which is what this thread is about.

Yeah, above muslims, blacks, and gay people. You know, those people who are consistently considered the least-loved people in the US? Yeah, we atheists are loathed even more than them.

No, you are less trusted in positions of political power. That's not loathing. Again, I can easily point to hate crime stats in which atheists/irreligious are very much underrepresented. I am not saying its RIGHT but lets be honest here.

And when you think of the "least loved people" you think of blacks? Muslims I can see at times, but blacks and gays not so much. Honestly, I would vote for an atheist if they shared my politics (sadly they would be unelectable if they shared my politics!) but if I had children I would be uncomfortable with them marrying outside Catholicism (assuming they were Catholic). I don't loathe atheists though either way, but its been proven that mixed marriages aren't as strong and it can hurt the catechesis of grandkids and the transmission of tradition as well. If your child wanted to marry a super devout fundamentalist person you may feel uncomfortable as well.

YES WE WERE prosecuted, and HEAVILY. To avow atheism within earshot of the church or its toadies was an instantaneous death sentence in the middle ages. Well, not instantaneous, you usually got the rack or the wedge or the horse or something else equally as horrific.

HEAVILY? I mean...can you name any atheists (as we understand the term today--a lack of belief in any gods) who were killed by "the Church or its toadies" for being atheist? Ever? I looked around a long time and found maybe one. I guess you can say that theoretically, if there were atheists around back then, and they had spoken out, then they would have been persecuted--but thats a big if. And NONE of that is in living memory, as you say yourself its based half on hearsay because we have such little information from that time.

Now compare/contrast all the religious who were killed for being religious by atheists in LIVING memory. Don't brush it off with some no true scotsman fallacy. See how angry and capslock you just got about the idea of some atheists maybe being persecuted. You don't know of any real deaths that happened, but the idea that a death could have happened even hundreds of years ago got you very upset. Now look again at that state atheism page, and switch it around and pretend like those were all religious governments doing that to atheists. You mentioned the Inquisition with a lot of emotion. Lets look at the bloodiest Inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition. It wasn't technically run by the Catholic Church but it was run by Catholics. Over the course of ~400 years it killed ~1300-3000 people (none of which were atheist as we know the term today, at least that I have managed to find). The USSR killed more religious in the first 5 years of their power. When I said "atheists haven't experienced half the persecution" I was being rather generous, I think.

I'm not trying to say atheists are "worse", I'm not trying to say discrimination against atheists is OK, but I am trying to say that the bulk of persecution does not fall anywhere near atheists. None of the atheists ITT had anything to do with any persecutions of religious anymore than I have to do with the Crusades, and most would never want such a thing. But there is no doubt that religious people have faced far higher persecutions at the hands of atheists than vice-versa, especially in living memory which naturally is going to be the strongest in people's emotions.

I think if anything, if you want to play around with slavery metaphors, you are being like the white guy who says "white people also were enslaved!". Sure, I'll admit the possibility that we simply lost the record of atheists who were killed by the Inquisition. Maybe there was a few. But again, when you compare it to the amount of people killed in anti-religious persecutions, all of which happen to be much much more recent....welp. It's still no contest, is it?