U.S. Congress
Hisham Ibrahim / Photodisc / Getty
Everyone knows that atheists can't get elected to almost any public office at almost any level of government anywhere in America. At least, they can't if they actually admit to being atheists. But what if they hide their atheism? Well, perhaps they can be elected -- according to the Secular Coalition of America, there are 28 people in Congress today who don't believe in any gods and only one has admitted to this -- Pete Stark.
So there are 27 people in Congress who pretend to believe in god in order to get elected because they represent Americans too bigoted to vote for them if they told the truth?
"Privately, we know that there are 27 other members of Congress that have no belief in God," Silverman claimed. "But we don't 'out' people." That number is up from 2006, when SCA determined that there were there were 22 atheists in Congress.
"At the time, twenty-two of them told me they didn't believe in a god," SCA Advisory Board Chairman Woody Kaplan told the Humanist in 2008. "Twenty-one of them said, 'You can't tell anybody.' One of them said you could: Congressman Pete Stark." ...
American Humanist Association's Fred Edwords believes that in the U.S., there is still a high risk for atheists in politics.
"Nontheistic Americans, including humanists, are the group most likely to be discriminated against for their convictions," Edwords said in a press release congratulating Stark. "Recent polls show that fewer than 50 percent of Americans would vote for an atheist presidential candidate, even if that candidate is well qualified... Americans still feel it's acceptable to discriminate against atheists in ways considered beyond the pale for other groups."
Source: Raw Story
As bad as it is that Americans won't vote for atheists, I'd say that it's worse when it's demonstrated that they will vote for an atheist if they don't know that person is an atheist. That's because it's clear that they support this person's positions and policies, that they like this person on some level, and want to be represented by them. The question of atheism or theism should, at that point, be completely irrelevant -- but it's not, is it?
Of course, we're assuming that the Secular Coalition of America is correct about this. I don't have any reason to think that they aren't, but I also obviously can't personally verify or vouch for that number either. I only have questions because I wonder how many places there are in America where a person can be a politician without having to appear overtly religious at least occasionally -- i.e., be seen going to church, expressing religious faith, etc.
This would mean, though, that a person who is an atheist has to lie overtly instead of simply keeping their atheism quiet. That's possible, but it's harder to do -- to do successfully for very long. Maybe someday American society will advance to the point where atheists, humanists, skeptics, and other nonbelievers aren't treated automatically as evil outsiders.
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