Research shows that atheists tend to score high on measures of intelligence, especially verbal ability and scientific literacy. They tend to raise their children to solve problems rationally, to make up their own minds when it comes to existential questions and to obey the golden rule. They are more likely to practice safe sex than the strongly religious are, and are less likely to be nationalistic or ethnocentric. They value freedom of thought.
On questions of morality and human decency, such as torture, the death penalty, smacking children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation and human rights, atheists tend to be more ethical than religious people, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious.
At a macro level, murder rates are far lower in secular nations such as Japan or Sweden than they are in more religious countries like the United States, which also has a much greater portion of its population in prison. Denmark, among the least religious countries in the history of the world, consistently rates as the happiest of nations. Even within the US, those states with the highest levels of church attendance, such as Louisiana and Mississippi, have significantly higher murder rates than far less religious states such as Vermont and Oregon.
But I take your basic point. Thinking is hard.
Whatever prejudicial trash you have in your head about atheists, you might as well flush it out now, because, despite all sorts of impediments, the number of American atheists has tripled since the 1960s, and recently the Irish census revealed that atheists are the largest minority in Ireland, increasing by 44% since 2009.
We’re here, we’re queer*, get used to it.
*I lied. Only some of us are queer, but we’re all atheists.
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