What’s not to despise?

Americans don’t like atheists so much:

American’s increasing acceptance of religious diversity doesn’t extend to those who don’t believe in a god, according to a national survey by researchers in the University of Minnesota’s department of sociology.

From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

Well, let’s see, they want to ban Christmas, are constantly trying to tell everyone else what to do, always assume that they are more intelligent and educated than everyone else on the mere basis of their beliefs and have a historically murderous track record that is second only to Genghis Khan.

There are some delightful exceptions, of course but I’ve found that American atheists tend to have social skills that hover around the Chess Club level, just above the hairier man-hating feminists. Unlike European atheists, who couldn’t care less whether you believe in Jesus Christ, Allah or Mighty Cthulhu, American atheists will bring up either a) the Spanish Inquisition, b) the Crusades, c) the purported Christianity of Adolf Hitler, or d) the Thirty-Years War within five minutes of hearing that incindiary word, “hello”.

No one minds agnostics, partly because they’re perfectly willing to admit that they have no idea and partly because they tend to keep their suspicion that you don’t either to themselves. Atheists, on the other hand, seem to have nearly as strong a propensity for proselytizing as Jehovah’s Witnesses,

And, of course, they SAY their disbelief in a god doesn’t mean that they have no morals or character, (although they can never explain what their carefully thought-out morality is based upon), but then, it’s not as if they believe they’re ever going to be held to account for lying about it either.