Via Crooks and Liars, I just saw a bunch of clips of Fox News' treatment of a new Air America radio show called FreeThought Radio, geared towards atheists (hey, we got a radio show! We got a Congressman! Next stop, the world!). FoxNews was comically biased, with the anchors having a very snarky tone of voice, saying that it's a "stab in the dark" by Air America because they just filed Chapter 11 and are looking for anything to get listeners, deeming it a "War on God," and showing images of Al Franken (who has nothing to do with the show and is no longer on the network since he's running for Senate in Minnesota). However the Fox News religion correspondent Lauren Green was surprisingly balanced, offering unsolicited corrections of the 10 second blurbs Fox had been showing throughout the day.
Also, some atheists are attempting to rebrand themselves as brights - basically someone who doesn't believe in supernatural stuff. Originally I thought this was kind of a dumb name, but Pat convinced me otherwise. And in terms of rebranding I think it's a good idea. The word "atheist" means literally "NOT someone who believes in god". The identity of brights rather than atheists creates a positive identity - a naturalistic, as opposed to supernatural, worldview, someone whose ethics are based on a naturalistic world view.
Showing posts with label atheism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label atheism. Show all posts
Interesting poll
Gallup just did a poll asking people whether they would vote for a Catholic, a Mormon, a Jew, a Black person, a Hispanic, a woman, etc. Here's the data:
Apparently there are 159,630,450 Americans who would never vote for me for President based purely on my lack of religious faith. To me it's strange that the most people would never consider voting for an atheist, yet atheists aren't historically as persecuted as gays, Jews, or a lot of the groups in that list; gays, Jews, blacks, etc. have been murdered for being gay, Jewish or black, but I'm unaware of any of that happening to atheists.
I am reminded that, in terms of national politics, we have Catholic, Jewish, black, Hispanic, female, Mormon, divorced, gay and old Congressional Representatives, but no atheists yet. I'm disappointed they didn't ask about Muslims. That would be a fascinating data point to track over time.
If Your Party Nominated A Generally Would You Be Comfortable
In Voting Well-Qualified Candidate For WH '08 For A WH
'08er Who Was ___, Would You Vote For That Person?
Yes No
Catholic 95% 4%
Black 94 5
Jewish 92 7
A woman 88 11
Hispanic 87 12
Mormon 72 24
Married for third time 67 30
72 years old 57 42
A homosexual 55 43
An atheist 45 53
Apparently there are 159,630,450 Americans who would never vote for me for President based purely on my lack of religious faith. To me it's strange that the most people would never consider voting for an atheist, yet atheists aren't historically as persecuted as gays, Jews, or a lot of the groups in that list; gays, Jews, blacks, etc. have been murdered for being gay, Jewish or black, but I'm unaware of any of that happening to atheists.
I am reminded that, in terms of national politics, we have Catholic, Jewish, black, Hispanic, female, Mormon, divorced, gay and old Congressional Representatives, but no atheists yet. I'm disappointed they didn't ask about Muslims. That would be a fascinating data point to track over time.
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