No Tolerance for Bigots!

No Tolerance for Bigots! Atheists Shouldn't Tolerate anti-Atheist Bigotry
Atheists Must Denounce Bigotry, Prejudice, Discrimination Against Non-Believers

By Austin Cline, About.com Guide

If you are an atheist, an agnostic, a humanist, or secularist of any sort, then you have a problem in America because there is a significant number of people in this nation who don't believe that you can be as moral, as good, or as trustworthy as religious believers. They don't have to know you in order to arrive at such a conclusion; they believe this based solely on the fact that you don't believe in any god and/or don't have a religion like they do. Most people regard you as inferior.

Don't you think you should do something about this? Why allow religious believers to continue expecting you to submit to laws written to benefit them at your expense? Why allow religious believers to continue insisting that you hide your opinions lest public condemnation lead to you losing your job, your friends, or more? Why allow religious believers to continue imposing a religious test for public office that ensures few if any atheists serve in government despite the fact that such tests would be illegal if imposed officially?


No Tolerance for Intolerance, No Compromise with Bigotry

Atheists, agnostics, humanists, and secularists of all sorts must draw a bright, sharp line against any bigotry, intolerance, and discrimination they face from religious believers in America. There can be no tolerance for explicit or implicit claims that you have to be a believer to have morals, values, happiness, or meaning in life. There can be no tolerance for the assumption that one has to be a believer in order to be good, kind, or trustworthy. There can be no tolerance for efforts to carve out special, unjust privileges for people based solely on their having a religion or being Christian.

There can be no compromising with or accommodations for bigotry of any sort, even when bigots actively mask their prejudice in the guise of merely securing the "rights" of those who would be privileged over others. Bigotry isn't just a matter of treating one group as inferior, but also of treating another group as superior. Anti-atheist bigotry can be expressed by telling atheists that they aren't moral enough for politics and by telling Christians or religious believers that they are needed in politics because the government is in need of their moral values. They are two sides of the same coin and each must be opposed as strongly as the other


If You Don't Stand Up For Yourself, Who Will?

It's not always easy to stand out in a crowd and many atheists find it easier to just keep their heads down and not make waves, but no one ever accomplished anything good or important by hiding from negative public opinion. One of the reasons why it's difficult for atheists to come out of the closet is the influence which anti-atheist bigots and defenders of Christian privilege1 have, so it's imperative for someone to speak out publicly against such heinous beliefs and on behalf of the equal rights, dignity, and importance of secular atheists in America.

When you hear anti-atheist bigotry expressed in your presence, it's directed at you even if the speaker doesn't know that you personally are an atheist. Such bigotry exists to keep atheists quiet, subordinate, afraid, and submissive. When you fail to speak out, you are behaving exactly as the bigots want and so they succeed in oppressing you a bit further. Someone needs to speak out against such behavior and it's far too rare to find religious believers doing it. So, if you aren't going to stand up for yourself and defend your own equality, then who will?


High Standards & High Expectations for Religious Believers

Most religious theists probably won't express anti-atheist bigotry very openly, directly, or publicly. The more common situation is to have a small number of vocal bigots plus a much larger number group of people who passively nod their heads and go along with it, giving the impression that the bigotry expressed is natural, expected, and proper. In addition to standing up against the vocal bigots, then, atheists also need to set higher standards of behavior from the passive observers.

It's far too common for most people to stand by passively and allow all sorts of bigotry to foul the air: racist jokes, off-color comments about women's sexual behavior, generalizations about Muslims as terrorists, etc. Perhaps it's because they secretly agree or perhaps it's because they just don't want to make waves, but no such excuses should be accepted. People must be judged by the company they keep and if someone passively allows bigotry to pass by without objection, they must be deemed as guilty as the original speaker.

Religious believers must therefore be held to the standard that if they don't want to be treated or thought of as anti-atheist bigots, then they must be willing to publicly object to anti-atheist bigotry, religious privilege, and Christian privilege whenever they see it. This doesn't mean that they have to launch into a long argument about it, but they do at the very least have to willing to point out the bigotry of what was said, that it is wrong, and that they don't want to continue hearing it. Nothing less will do because nothing less can represent genuine or sincere opposition to such bigotry.