everyone (else) seems to be hating on atheists

[Aiza]

Oh indeed, Aiza? Do not get me wrong, there were many that opposed him but yes, yes the Catholic Church DID support the nazis.

"Some members of Catholic clergy" != The Catholic Church itself. Sure, some individual Catholics went against the Vatican's politics and supported the Nazis. Sure. But the Vatican itself, Pope Pius XII, saved thousands to hundreds of thousands of Jewish people and denounced the Nazis and Nazi racialist politics openly long before Europe even went to war with them (before the US had itself abandoned our racial poitics). The worst you can say is taht they stopped being very "loud" by the time they were surrounded by fascist Italy. That is not "supporting" Nazism.

So yes, while there are not many listings of atheists being specifically targeted, the term heresy is often used to encompass "non-belief," and atheism WOULD fall into that category.

Nope. Heresy is specifically defined by Catholics as retaining faith in Christ, but altering some other known truth of the Church. Protestants are a group that were once known as "heretics", though now the term used is "separated brethren". Heresy is distinct from apostacy, in which a Christian leaves the faith for paganism or Islam or yes, atheism. (And of course if you are a life-long atheist you are not even an apostate)

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07256b.htm

St. Thomas discusses as much himself.

Maybe there were secret atheists who were driven underground during the Middle Ages, similarly to how many religious groups have had to react to persecution. Unlike religious though none of them were ever caught, so what we have is a centuries old theoretical persecution that could have happened of which the death toll is 0. Yep.

In the US, states with highest percentages of atheists have lower murder rates and religious states have higher ones.

This is meaningless, because in order to make a genuine comparison between religious and irreligious you need to control for location.

And no I did not pull it out of my ass please see

"In terms of clinical characteristics, religiously unaffiliated subjects had more lifetime impulsivity, aggression, and past substance use disorder. "
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/cont...61/12/2303

"Relative to their peers, religious youth are less likely to engage in behaviors that compromise their health (e.g., carrying weapons, getting into fights, drinking and driving) "
http://heb.sagepub.com/content/25/6/721.short

If you agree it's unfair to hold something we had nothing to do with and can't change and think was wrong over us; perhaps you could let it drop.

OK then? The only reason I even brought it up was because it is probably one of the largest factors in anti-atheist sentiment, just like 9-11 or the "War on Terror" are the largest factors in Islamophobia. Maybe my tone was more accusatory than I intended.

Leaving out atheist Jews and Soviet communists for obvious reasons, I only know of Max Sievers, the chairman of the German Freethinkers League after Hitler outlawed all atheistic and freethinking groups in Germany.

Max Sievers actually was a Soviet Communist (as in the type of government he advocated), as such he was executed for treason, not atheism.

We're not trying to say it. That's what researchers are telling us.

No, thats what sensationalist news headlines say.

I find it rich that you have the nerve to express concern about shocked and nasty comments when religous people in several countries are being murdered over their beliefs, right after chiding atheists for complaining about the equivalent of shocked or nasty comments (and death threats) and a degree of social alienation.

I only expressed any sort of concern at all when I was directly asked.

Unlike the Aztec priests, the Inquisitors were Christians. We're not communists. See the difference?

What? Yes, the Inquisitors shared a religion with me, just like various state atheist regimes (both communist and not) share a religion (or lack thereof) with you. Communism is an economic/political theory. The Inquisitors were probably monarchists, and I am not a monarchist. Why do you lump all Christians together regardless of economic/political views, but for atheists its OK to subdivide them based on their economic/political views? Do you not see the hyporisy?

Inquisition:Christians::State Atheism:Atheists

Considering how many Orthodox churches were left alone, it sounds like Stalin may have been at a loss as to how to deal with threats to the regime. To the casual observer it looks like Christianity was tolerated under the Soviets provided it supported the regime.

Less than 500 Orthodox Churches, out of 29,584, survived the period between 1927-1940, and I don't think many of them were "left alone".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution...viet_Union

But yes, the state atheism of say, Cambodia or Albania makes the USSR look tame in comparison.

@Aiza: Look into some stats about the prison population, sorted by religion. You might be surprised.

I have many times. The US government does not track prison population by religious affiliation, but in nations which do, such as Scotland, those without religion are quite overrepresented.

I already know you are probably thinking of a 1997 email forward which tries to say atheists are .2% of the prison population.
1) Its not anywhere on any official government website, so its origins are rather specious
2) It is from 1997, so its already 15 years out of date.
3) Its actually edited down so that way they counted the people who answered "none" separately from those who answered "atheist"...and as any atheist can tell you, atheism is not a religion at all. When "nones" are factored in, we are left with 20%.
http://www.adherents.com/misc/adh_prison.html

But like I said, since it is from such dubious origins I prefer looking at nations with official tallies, like Scotland, which has
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/...064616.pdf
34.1% of the prison population having no religion as of 2007, compared with:
news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/14_11_05_bbc_faith.pdf
19% of the general population.

And I'd be willing to say they are even more overrepresented in terms of new arrivals, since religious people do devote themselves a lot to ministering to those in prison (and as far as I know atheists not so much), so some atheists (famously Ted Bundy) convert while in prison.

Not that it matters though.

Atheism is a lack of belief. They did not believe in your interpretation so your kind butchered and tortured them along with anyone who decided they didn't believe any interpretation.

REALLY? You said 'they" so lets see you name two. Name two atheists "butchered and tortured". If you can't do it lets see you name one atheist who was "butchered and tortured" since they didn't believe in "my" interpretation. Name ONE.

Its fair enough to talk about unfair non-violent forms of prejudice, but just reading your post you have very little room to complain about the prejudice of others when you sound so hateful yourself.