Atheist movie coming out in New York and Los Angeles

[afleitch]

I really don't understand (or like, at all) this notion that all atheists should never try to be activists, should never complain about the lack of respect, should never try to convince others that they are wrong, and generally should just sit around being apathetic individuals that sit around to ourselves intellectually masturbating by occasionally philosophizing about all the bad that religion does but never actually try to do anything about it. That sounds like the worst thing in the world.

If some atheists are more motivated into their atheism by apathy, then that's their prerogative, but I don't need to be dragged down to that level as well.

^^^^

[afleitch]

On the issue at hand, I will say that I am atheist if asked, or if it is relevant to the conversation. If challenged then I will defend it and through defending it I may end up 'promoting' it. That's exactly what I do if people ask me anything to do with my Toryism. However despite what some think, I don't wear it on my sleeve. I do however challenge ignorance and inference, which may be perceived by others as 'anti-religious' atheist posturing. I can make the exact same argument for say evolutionary theory which I made a few years ago when I had a faith and have the same people say I'm doing this 'because of my atheism' rather than to support the scientific consensus. However a few years ago those same people argued I was arguing from the 'scientific consensus.' That sort of thing annoys me.

[afleitch]

Yes, I'm disagreeing that secular societies are better than religious ones.

By defnition that means you support (using modern definitions) societies based on religious (usually one religion) principles enshrined in law over secular societies that do not have religiously inspired law.

So Iran over Denmark. Are you quite sure?

[afleitch]

As to the discussion at hand, from what I recall of opinion polls made in Europe, religious people are more tolerant than non-religious people (except for when it comes to homosexuals, for obvious reasons).

You probably should back that up. I think some EU surveys can be found on Eurostat(?)/European Social Survey. In any event there is the government sponsored British Social Attitudes Survey running from 1980 and the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey (who seem to make their results more public) The SSAS reports every 4 years on Attitudes to Discrimination with surveys in 2002, 2006 and 2010. The 2010 data has still to be released.

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/205755/0054714.pdf

In order to define 'religious' and 'non religious' it split the data into those 'Who attended religious services at least once a week' (229 from the sample) and Those who attended 'practically never/no religion' (955 of the sample)

On a sample question; 'Would be “unhappy”/ “very unhappy” if lose relativemarried/long-termr’ship with…'

The response to each of the options was as follows - 'Religious' v 'Non Religious'

Someone who had a sex change operation 58-46
Asylum seeker 33-38
Gypsy Traveller 41-34
Same sex 52-27
Muslim 29-23
Hindu 26-17
Learning Disability 21-14
Black/Asian 13-19
Chinese 12-9
Jewish 11-10

With the exception of 'asylum seeker' and 'black/asian' those who are religious score lower on the SSAS 'attitudes to discrimination' than those who are 'non religious'. The differences on most (with exception of same sex) are not vast; but they are there. There's alot of other information in the sub sets.

EDIT

Just for comparison the 2002 survey report used the figures in a different way and gave a breakdown by religion (as people who vonsider themselves religious may not attend any services)

Male same-sex relationships 'always wrong'

Church of Scotland/Presbyterian 39%, Roman Catholic 29%, No Religion 20%

Would 'mind inter-racial marriage'

Church of Scotland/Presbyterian 23%, Roman Catholic 15%, No Religion 12%

Ethnic minorities 'take jobs'

Church of Scotland/Presbyterian 23%, Roman Catholic 14%, No Religion 10%

A mans job is to earn money, a woman's is to be at home

Church of Scotland/Presbyterian 15%, Roman Catholic 14%, No Religion 8%

Scotland should 'do all it can to eliminate predjudice'

Church of Scotland/Presbyterian 64%, Roman Catholic 71%, No Religion 72%

[afleitch]

As I said to Dibble, I never saw these electronically and it's been over 5 years, but I think it might have been a eurostat one.. I can't swear on what categories were included - it sort of make sense that religious people might be more negative to other religious people but that might not have been included in the poll I read. I remember it had ethnic minorities and the poll you cite seem to indicate that religious people might be more tolerant towards ethnic minorities.

I don't understand where you are coming from.

What I posted was two surveys where the metadata had been measured by 'religious attendance; and by 'self identified religion' for government monitoring purposes. In most of the examples those who attended religious services regularly and/or adhered to a religion held less socially progressive/tolerant positions than those who were not religious. And Scotland is a broadly secular society. So 23% of people who were of the Church of Scotland stated they had a problem with interracial marriage but only 12% of those who had no religious faith had a similar problem.