Why are atheist so ostracised in the USA?

Why are Atheist so ostracized in the USA ?

The question actually has Three answers # 1 CONTROL # 2 POWER # 3 FEAR To start with one needs to review American History . It deals with Slavery and the term "United States" The Economic dependency on the use of forced labor for Personal PROFIT

. if one does not Need to pay for labor ones profit is almost 100 % because one expenses to produce a Product is small , say one is a rice farmer If My labor cost is $ 100 dollars and my seed cost is $ 10 dollars my cost is $110 to make the product if I sell the product for $ 300 dollars , my profit is $ 190 dollars if I eliminate the labor cost my profit is $ 290 dollars almost 100 % Even if i paid $60 for a human being I can get 60 years of labor from that human and if I sell the product they produce every rear for $300 the added cost is only $1.00 per year .

So they fight a war to maintain slavery but loose . They look around and say what do we have left I lost my wealth and my means of 100% profit and I own no human beings and Control Nothing . We used to CONTROL a large group of people who brought us Wealth , that brings you power . that gives you status that gives you control . So our goal is Control . what other instrument do we have as a tool of control ?

ANSWER Religion so what I have left is a bunch of non slave people whom I do not own . but I have religion to unite them to join my group to give me power . That then brings us to Politics because if I can no longer OWN people I can united people to support my Ideas to have power ,

that goes to a back door way to legally have power called VOTING to write laws that then will give me back POWER and CONTROL .If one looks at a political party Map of the United States one will see that many the "Republican party States " are southern and were once pro slavery and are primarily a specific type of Christianity called Evangelicals or Baptist I live in a town that has 610 Churches one needs to drive 25 miles to find a single Catholic church or a Jewish synagogue or a Hindu Temple and I have yet to find a Islamic Mosque

. It is the group that is maintained , and with years of civil rights issues another tool of Control discrimination and laws they had past to maintain discrimination . as well as organizations like the KKK to produce fear and intimidation that the south maintained religious control and political control through organized religion. Like an army not military but the legal process . They continue to try to institute voting laws to keep certain people from voting and keep a certain group their religious following to Vote FOR there Ideas . because each state writes their own laws .

its only when someone objects that it is taken to a Higher court that it is changed . they used fear and intimidation to keep people from objecting many times violence they add OSTRACISM is used as a Tool to hold people up , to Devalue them and used race the previous slaves to keep them from voting against the old masters . after a while some people submit especially if opening your mouth gets you killed , as in to say You are not part of the Group the Club and we Pronounce you as EVIL and teach our group to continue to devalue them as a means to Shut them up if I make them look evil ( racism) other religions or Atheist ) our flock or group will not listen to them because our god said not to and he is the authority and ruler .

God is then A RUBBER STAMP for Authority . Political power and control and if I instill fear that if you listen to those atheist or associate with them you also will be OSTRACIZED and most people want to be part of the group that is going to be the winner or the right one . man is a social animal and its like pascal's wager I better stay with the group that won't harm me . because I can stand to lose my own wealth and status or means of income or standing in the community

then you add in a little sprinkle of hate into the salad because they still instill the hate and anger into people that the south lost all its old money and wealth but as a politician I can affiliate with religion to have people willing give me money to run for office to be elected because I am told by religion that voting for Joe Smith will insure my religious beliefs will be made into laws so The south was once was a striving economic power and how dare them anti slave people take all that away from us , We are Victims of their cruelty to not allow us to profit off of human suffering and be a great wealthy power again

that is where you get the slogan "the south shall rise again" and they play on that also slowly Yankees are moving to the south who are Democrats Its funny the last local election I voted recently they have TWO sign in sheets registered republican or Democrat they had no sheet out for democrats I had to ask for one when my husband went to vote later that day there were 3 names on the democrat sheet and 360 on the republican sign in sheet Guess as an Atheist and a Democrat I am not part of the CLUB So Religion affiliates with politics for control and power and the religious give you money to make you wealthy so you can get elected its called the Religious right Protestant Fundamentalist

European countries are much older than the US. Historically, the religious have caused lots of problems there too, think of the Crusades, Inquisition, etc.
The US is still a young country, and it has its fair share of idiots. As the country gets older (assuming conservatives don't turn it into an oligarchy), religion will wane.

The short answer
Christians believe that people are inherently evil and that the only way to make them behave in a reasonably moral manner is to give them a choice between having a gun to their heads or a big teat in their mouth .
Along come we Atheists who as a group are morally superior to Christians even though we're not offered the choice between pleasure or pain
And the Christian mind cannot comprehend why anybody would be good for the sake of being good
So they think that we have to have ulterior motives

As a Southerner, religion is a really big deal down here. It's not just a personal thing; religion, over the years, has become a family/community thing. Church would (and still does) bring people together, and it's always been the focal point of towns, cities, etc. It's hard for people down here to be atheist because of how big a deal religion is down here. I'm not saying I agree with it, but tat's the way it is, and it'll take more than a couple decades to change hundreds of years of Southern culture.

"There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed."~ Bertrand Russell "Human Society in Ethics and Politics"

“The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other in opposite directions.” ― George Carlin

American Christers cannot deal with the fact that other people are allowed to disagree with them. Fundamentally, they are no different from ISIS or the Taliban. Call then the TEAliban.

Well, we're getting there. It wasn't so long ago that most European countries had did things like burning non-believers at the stake, which has never been the norm here. Years ago it was considered shocking if you were an atheist, but these days it really doesn't matter much. I've been openly atheist for many years and have never actually encountered anyone who cared.

Because the close-minded fundamentalist Christians hate Atheists for not believing in god and so the christian fundies think its ok to spread hatred and propaganda against Atheists just because they disagree with them. I'm an agnostic deist who lives in the US and I feel bad for the Atheists that get treated badly in the US just for being Atheists. If people don't believe in god then that's their opinion. But yeah, the reason Atheists get hated on in the US is probably because most of the US is christian and a lot of the close-minded Christians (not all US Christians are close-minded) hate it when people disagree with them.

It stems from the disproportionately large percentage of Christians in America, you don't have to worry so much about being tolerant of the beliefs (or lack thereof) of other people when you account for 70.6% of the population and the next highest religious beliefs are Judaism at 1.9%, Islam at 0.9%, and Hindu and Buddhism at 0.7% each.

And the biggest groups also happen to be those that are most commonly associated with not being tolerant of other beliefs, including other sects of Christianity. Evangelical Christians (such as Baptists) account for 25.4% of the Christian population and Roman Catholics are at 20.8%. The Protestants (Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Anglicans) that tend to be more accepting are just 14.7% of the Christian population. And in the South, 49% of the massive Christian majority identify as Evangelicals, so one can imagine they could be far less tolerant of atheism down there.

A friend of mine, now retired, started life as a bank clerk. On completion of a commerce & economics degree the bank offered him training as a computer programmer in their head office in Sydney, NSW. That was in the 1970s when punched cards were still in use. He was also a pretty keen tennis player.

In the 1980s the bank took on Ross Perot's "Computer Associates" as consultants (he said they were hopeless and arrogant with it) and my friend was headhunted by that company. They sent him to Atlanta, Georgia (or somewhere near) which you will recognise as being in the Bible Belt. He took his tennis gear and he was there about 3 months.

The only tennis courts he could find were in country clubs and insanely expensive per game but a few churches had tennis courts. He said that there were no such things as public tennis courts as far as he could see. It might be different in other parts of the country. Thus the church has partial control over most aspects of the local's lives.

I have read a similar observation originally published in a British newspaper, it might have been the Manchester "Guardian" and reprinted here in a local paper.

This country was founded on the Judeo/Christian ethic. It is adhered to more strongly now in the southern states. California and Washington D.C. are another story. Many churches countrywide are "falling away" into apostacy now.

Atheists are not the issue. It is more groups like ISIS that are causing the problems.

http://www.joel2army.simplesite.com

Atheists are not ostracised in the US. This is liberal BS demonizing American Christianity or American religious freedoms as hate speech and on the same level as ISIS.

Every year, some atheist group files a lawsuit against the city because someone put a manger scene up in the town square. "I felt like I wasn't invited to walk into City Hall if I weren't a Christian," says the lawsuit. Really? You went in yesterday. You went in all year last year. It's not like you didn't grow up in this town and see that manger scene there EVERY YEAR of your life. It never stopped you before, but now you can sue because now you're offended by a dolly in a basket. Why? Because SOMEONE ELSE believes that that dolly in a basket represents something greater. That's dumb.

Christmas trees have suddenly become holiday bushes. Don't want to offend any "non-believers," so offend all the believers instead. When I worked in retail I was specifically told if I said "Merry Christmas," I would be fired -- because Christmas is exclusionary -- to all those who are out buying Christmas presents. More than 90% of those who purchased and wanted wrapped, wanted the Christmas wrap.

The ones who are ostracised is the majority of the population who is told that their beliefs are filled with hate and intolerance and evilness, even though 99.9% of those believers have never done anything remotely close to what they are accused. (Do some believers commit crimes? Yes, but so do atheists.)

Personally, I find it the much bigger hate-filled crime for a lesbian couple to shut down a Christian bakery over a wedding cake, sue them, and they're civilly fined $135,000 in complete subjugation of their Constitutional rights, to purposefully take everything they had ever worked for simply because they could rather than just say, Okay, I understand, and go to any of the other 600 bakeries in the county.

If I went in to a kosher deli asking for bacon, do you think I would be able to sue?