It's Sunday

Religious people distrust the world’s estimated 500 million atheists as much as rapists, a study found Friday in the wake of a poll that said less than half of Americans would vote for an atheist president.

“Where there are religious majorities — that is, in most of the world — atheists are among the least trusted people,” said lead author Will Gervais, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

[...]

“While atheists may see their disbelief as a private matter on a metaphysical issue, believers may consider atheists’ absence of belief as a public threat to cooperation and honesty.”

  Raw Story

Because, apparently, you have to be afraid of being punished or you won’t be honest. What malarkey. Look at all those self-proclaimed Christian politicians who’ve been busted for sexual infidelity and campaign fraud. Very trustworthy. Oh yeah, they aren’t worried about being punished. Christians’ avowal to the contrary, God apparently doesn’t care about those things.

Participants in the study found a description of an untrustworthy person to be more representative of atheists than of Christians, Muslims, gay men, feminists or Jewish people. Only rapists were distrusted to a comparable degree as atheists.

Christians find atheists more untrustworthy than gay men, feminists and Muslims? Holy cow!

“This antipathy is striking, as atheists are not a coherent, visible or powerful social group,” said Gervais.

What? As though religion is rational?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.