Atheists As “Other”: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society

Abstract

Despite the declining salience of divisions among religious groups, the boundary between believers and nonbelievers in America remains strong. This article examines the limits of Americans' acceptance of atheists. Using new national survey data, it shows atheists are less likely to be accepted, publicly and privately, than any others from a long list of ethnic, religious, and other minority groups. This distrust of atheists is driven by religious predictors, social location, and broader value orientations. It is rooted in moral and symbolic, rather than ethnic or material, grounds. We demonstrate that increasing acceptance of religious diversity does not extend to the nonreligious, and present a theoretical framework for understanding the role of religious belief in providing a moral basis for cultural membership and solidarity in an otherwise highly diverse society.

The Robustness of Anti-Atheist Prejudice as Measured by Way of Cognitive Errors

“…This is in line with Gervais et al's (2011) argument that a model based on symbolic group membership and threat (e.g., Edgell, Gerteis, & Hartmann, 2006) cannot wholly explain antiatheist prejudice. This then begs the question of why do non-religious individuals, and societies which are deemed to be relatively non-religious (e.g., the UK), still hold anti-atheist views.…”

“…Furthermore, when compared to other underrepresented groups such as Jewish, Mormon, female, black, elderly, twice-divorced or homosexual candidates, it was only atheists who would fail to gain a majority vote . Atheists were also ranked as the group that agreed least with the participant's vision of American society, and the group which Americans would most disapprove of their child marrying (Edgell, Gerteis, & Hartmann, 2006). In one particular study by Cragun, Kosmin, Keysar, Hammer and Nielsen (2012), 43% of atheists and agnostics reported experiencing discrimination in a family, workplace, school, military, social or volunteer organisation context.…”

Atheist horns and religious halos: Mental representations of atheists and theists.

“…This extreme distrust is also associated with explicit discriminatory desires. Atheists in America are more likely to be excluded than other minority groups (e.g., Muslims, homosexuals, and recent immigrants; Edgell, Gerteis, & Hartmann, 2006), even though atheists are not part of a recognizably coordinated and cohesive group (e.g., Norenzayan & Gervais, 2013). And, acts such as serial murder, necrobeastiality, and even cannibalism are viewed as being more representative of atheists than other groups (e.g., Muslims, Christians, Native Americans; Gervais, 2014).…”

The Common-Core/Diversity Dilemma: Revisions of Humean thought, New Empirical Research, and the Limits of Rational Religious Belief

“…And it is common for the religious to distrust atheists, fearing that society and its moral values would fall apart without supernatural belief. 99 There may, indeed, be some degree of truth to this perception: reason-based social contracts that constrain individual interests to promote cooperation are more likely to fail than those with a religious dimension, because in some circumstances defection can become selfishly rational, with relatively limited and calculable egoistic consequences (at least if supernatural retribution is discounted). 100 Now it seems that we may not only have good naturalistic explanations for central features that religious traditions hold in common, but also common-core explanations for the processes that distinguish them and impede their dialogue with other worldviews.…”