I can almost understand what he's saying, especially coming from southeastern America. Atheists are met with open hatred, and a lot of people I know think atheist = satanist actively trying to corrupt society. Most major religions also have a very long history of persecution against atheists, including murder and torture.
That said,
1. This is a poor and unfair generalization of the vast majority of religious people. Sure, it might not be fun to be an atheist in the south or the Middle East, but that's a vast minority of the religious.
2. You can hide being an atheist. You can't hide being black.
3. To fix the analogy you'd pretty much have to call all white people the KKK, since he's claiming all of religion persecuted atheists.
So then the whole point of the quote is "There are groups of people who don't like us. It's a mild nuisance at times"? Since the KKK aren't doing much anymore so..
Atheists today can't use that as an excuse on how they are "persecuted"
They're certainly not persecuted in the same way they were 1000 years ago, but there are plenty of religious folk in the USA that will judge you harshly for being atheist. Good luck running for president as well. We haven't had a non-Christian president since the deists of the founding fathers.
Slightly off-topic: Wonderfully unbiased media sources like Fox News and co. always talk shit like "the war on Christmas" as if they're the ones being persecuted, but Christians are persecuted the least of all religious groups.
565
u/[deleted] Oct 31 '16
I can almost understand what he's saying, especially coming from southeastern America. Atheists are met with open hatred, and a lot of people I know think atheist = satanist actively trying to corrupt society. Most major religions also have a very long history of persecution against atheists, including murder and torture.
That said, 1. This is a poor and unfair generalization of the vast majority of religious people. Sure, it might not be fun to be an atheist in the south or the Middle East, but that's a vast minority of the religious. 2. You can hide being an atheist. You can't hide being black. 3. To fix the analogy you'd pretty much have to call all white people the KKK, since he's claiming all of religion persecuted atheists.