everyone (else) seems to be hating on atheists

[Mister Agenda]

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

So any study that attempts to compare two different locations, for instance, to say which has the denser population or highest standard of living is meaningless? A correlation is not a smoking gun but it's far from meaningless.

"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

You sure can switch off your critical thinking about studies when it suits you. The people in these studies weren't identified as atheists. Just not very religious. This has been pointed out to you before. Don't you think you should answer this point before the next time you link these studies? They don't say what you claim they do.

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.

Perhaps it was the combination with the studies you thought indicated we were mentally unstable.Perhaps it's the way you seem to be justifying hatred of atheists rather than just explaining it. People in general don't form their opinions about minorities based on history and facts. They form their impression from their culture, then try to find history and facts to justify the opinion they already hold.

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

You asked for executed atheists and I generously left off the obvious atheist prisoners of war and Jewish humanists, and that's still too much, you have to change the goalposts to 'atheists executed for atheism'. Whatevers.

No, thats what sensationalist news headlines say.

Sensationalistic news headlines based on studies. There's a difference between 'sensationalized' and 'not true'.

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

We only expressed concern at the news that we are the most distrusted minority in America. It's also what we experience in daily life. Why don't you go to a Catholic site and chide them for complaining about persecution when other Christians are dying in other countries. Why are you bothering us?

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.

You share theism with Aztecs and Baal-worshipers, and lack of theism is all I share with communitsts. It's ludicrous to lump theists or atheists together when it doesn't give you more information than their opinion on a single topic.

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?

LOL, YOU bring up the crimes of communist regimes and say we're hypocritical to point out that people with whom you share MANY beliefs (as opposed with our one lack of belief) also committed their share of atrocities? It's not hypocritical to respond to the sewage that you bring up. Bad people did bad things for bad reasons, whether religion or ideology. Dueling body counts means nothing and accomplishes nothing and is irrelevan; except to the extent that the first person to bring it up needs to be reminded that particular issue cuts both ways. Maybe you should consider that the next time you're thinking of bringing it up.

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

And back up to 25,000 open churches by 1959. The justification for the persecution was that the clergy was organizing resistance against the state. Remember, you are the one who keeps harping on WHY atheists were killed, otherwise I wouldn't dirty myself pointing out how a totalitarian regime rationalized its murders.

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

State atheism is horrible. I've never encountered someone who supports it, and I would have words for someone who did. But it's no more relevant to my position than sacrificing babies to Baal is to yours, and LESS relevant than the Crusades/Inquisition (not to mention recent issues) are to being a Catholic.

I have many times. The US government does not track prison population by religious affiliation,

Actually, the Federal Bureau of Prisons does keep track, and the US government does allow studies of the prison population.

http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Percent...statistics

, which but in nations which do, such as Scotland, those without religion are quite overrepresented.

Again, not claiming a particular religion is not the same thing as claiming to be an atheist. What you want to know is if they believe in God. You don't have to have a religion to believe in God and a LOT of people fit the description 'believes in God, not religious'. Since the Scots did not bother to try to distinguish the atheists from the merely non-religous the statistic says nothing about atheists. That said, I believe the reason atheists are under-represented in US and Canadian prisons is that presently atheism is a position that most atheists think their way into, and thoughtfulness is not a typical criminal trait. If atheism becomes a norm, I would expect our prison representation to also become 'normalized'. Which is irrelevant to me, when Unitarians and humanists start to commit crimes at the same percentages as Christians and Muslims, THEN I'll worry.

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

I actually agree with you on this one. The provenance is too uncertain to trust, although I once verified that the puported source was a statistical researcher for the Federal Bureau of Prisons at the time. I prefer the criminological studies I previously linked (yes, through a freethought site, but it's easy to follow the sources). As far as I know, the Federal Bureau of Prisons does not distinguish between non-religious and atheist.

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.

Which also doesn't distinguish between 'not religious' and 'atheist' and is therefore useless for making claims about atheist criminality.

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.

Many, many people who aren't religious are theists. The reason you think atheists are overrepresented despite not having relevant statistics is because you are bigoted against atheists.

Not that it matters though.

Not unless you'd be willing to make the same argument for why many white people dislike blacks.

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.

Bigots often have trouble distinguishing the anger and frustration of the minorities they despise from hate.