{"id":1101,"date":"2009-06-21T13:18:32","date_gmt":"2009-06-21T17:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/?p=1101"},"modified":"2009-06-21T13:18:32","modified_gmt":"2009-06-21T17:18:32","slug":"are-atheists-alright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/2009\/06\/are-atheists-alright\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Atheists Alright?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today on <em>The Guardian<\/em>&#8216;s Comment Is Free &gt; Belief section, I&#8217;ve got a little essay reprising the story I did in April for <em>The Boston Globe<\/em> on the new science of the non-religious. There&#8217;s already a pretty lively comment thread. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/belief\/2009\/jun\/21\/atheists-discriminate\" target=\"_blank\">Take a look<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Atheists have an image problem. According to a study led by University of Minnesota sociologist <a title=\"Penny Edgell\" href=\"http:\/\/www.soc.umn.edu\/faculty\/edgell.html\">Penny Edgell<\/a>, published in 2006, Americans have a lower opinion of them than homosexuals, Jews, Muslims and African-Americans. They can&#8217;t get elected to political office, and most people view them as outsiders. Yet the disdain is comparatively quiet and abstract, rarely erupting into palpable conflict. Part of the reason may be that nobody seems to know who atheists are, including atheists themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ve really been enjoying the Belief section lately\u2014highly recommended. Be sure to catch Simon Critchley&#8217;s<a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/belief\/2009\/jun\/05\/heidegger-philosophy\" target=\"_blank\"> ongoing series<\/a> on Heidegger&#8217;s <em>Being and Time<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today on <em>The Guardian<\/em>&#8216;s Comment Is Free &gt; Belief section, I&#8217;ve got a little essay reprising the story I did in April for <em>The Boston Globe<\/em> on the new science of the non-religious. There&#8217;s already a pretty lively comment thread. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/belief\/2009\/jun\/21\/atheists-discriminate\" target=\"_blank\">Take a look<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Atheists have an image problem. According to a study led by University of Minnesota sociologist <a title=\"Penny Edgell\" href=\"http:\/\/www.soc.umn.edu\/faculty\/edgell.html\">Penny Edgell<\/a>, published in 2006, Americans have a lower opinion of them than homosexuals, Jews, Muslims and African-Americans. They can&#8217;t get elected to political office, and most people view them as outsiders. Yet the disdain is comparatively quiet and abstract, rarely erupting into palpable conflict. Part of the reason may be that nobody seems to know who atheists are, including atheists themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ve really been enjoying the Belief section lately\u2014highly recommended. Be sure to catch Simon Critchley&#8217;s<a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/belief\/2009\/jun\/05\/heidegger-philosophy\" target=\"_blank\"> ongoing series<\/a> on Heidegger&#8217;s <em>Being and Time<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37,44,16,88],"class_list":["post-1101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-atheism","tag-psychology","tag-religion-science","tag-secularism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1102,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101\/revisions\/1102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}