X-Message-Number: 27780 From: Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 11:19:01 EST Subject: Wow...compelling information re: "godless heathens." In a message dated 3/31/2006 5:00:44 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, writes: Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 10:14:10 -0600 From: IGGY & Svetlana <> Subject: Atheists identified as America's most distrusted minority, Source: http://www.ur.umn.edu/FMPro?-db=releases&-lay=web&-format=umnnewsreleases/re leasesdetail.html&ID=2816&-Find Atheists identified as America's most distrusted minority, according to new U of M study What: U of M study reveals America's distrust of atheism Who: Penny Edgell, associate professor of sociology Contact: Nina Shepherd, sociology media relations, (612) 599-1148 Mark Cassutt University News Service, (612) 624-8038 MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (3/28/2006) -- 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. Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. "Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years," says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study's lead researcher. Edgell also argues that today's atheists play the role that Catholics, Jews and communists have played in the past-they offer a symbolic moral boundary to membership in American society. "It seems most Americans believe that diversity is fine, as long as every one shares a common 'core' of values that make them trustworthy-and in America, that 'core' has historically been religious," says Edgell. Many of the study's respondents associated atheism with an array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behavior to rampant materialism and cultural elitism. Edgell believes a fear of moral decline and resulting social disorder is behind the findings. "Americans believe they share more than rules and procedures with their fellow citizens-they share an understanding of right and wrong," she said. "Our findings seem to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the common good." The researchers also found acceptance or rejection of atheists is related not only to personal religiosity, but also to one's exposure to diversity, education and political orientation-with more educated, East and West Coast Americans more accepting of atheists than their Midwestern counterparts. The study is co-authored by assistant professor Joseph Gerteis and associate professor Doug Hartmann. It's the first in a series of national studies conducted the American Mosaic Project, a three-year project funded by the Minneapolis-based David Edelstein Family Foundation that looks at race, religion and cultural diversity in the contemporary United States. The study will appear in the April issue of the American Sociological Review. Rate This Message: _http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=27777_ (http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=27777) Reprint ends, Rudi Hoffman writing below: The above reprint from today's "Cryonet" certainly has a bearing on cryonics marketing. If cryonics is ever to be remotely "mainstream" in the near future, we need to reframe this so it is not viewed as the exclusive bailiwick of "godless heathen." Many of us who no longer believe in many cultural superstitions including traditional religions are in the vanguard, and are disproportionately represented among cryonicists. But in our personal marketing and discussions of cryonics, it makes sense to frame this as MEDICAL option. Implying that atheism is a given for people to want to sign up for cryonics is obviously NOT going to work for most people. We may have known this intuitively, but the above article makes it GLARINGLY CLEAR. We aren't going to win the "hearts and minds" of the masses with a frontal attack on how baseless, illogical, unlikely, irrational, devisive, and just plain stupid their particular brand of superstition may be! I confess that I still have tendencies to argumentative, smug, superior, and annoying in this arena. I have worked hard to become less so, because my experience (and my wife) continually remind me how unlikely it is that I will change people's basic worldviews in a chance dinner encounter. And how LIKELY it is I will simply be viewed as a kook, probably not an individual to be liked and trusted. Fellow cryoneters, we may intuitively know, and even have research that athiests are among the most ETHICAL, broad minded, decent, responsible, and honest people on the planet. We also may have personal experience of how ethical humanist, enlightenment values can and do generate greater overall benefit to humanity than sectarian silliness. But it is shocking...dismaying...and instructive to find the mainstream beliefs are still VERY much of the mind that people can NOT POSSIBLY be ethical without god or gods. Would anyone agree that it may be a good idea to keep this in mind in our communication of forward thinking memes like cryonics? And resolve with me to not unnecessarily antagonize the superstitious masses? Oops...I can start by not calling them that...I mean those who may have other gods or cultural artifacts in their worldview? (This posting is especially relevant to me. In a few hours I am heading to South Georgia to go to a wedding of Dawn's nephew. Right in the middle of the most conservative Babtist bible belt. These are good Christian people...but their religion is as bloody and insane as can be. Ahh...wwdd (What would Dale (Carnegie) do?). Warm Regards, For Centuries, Rudi Rudi Richard Hoffman CFP CLU Board Member Financial Planning Association fpafla.org Board Member Salvation Army salvationarmy.org Member Alcor Life Extension Foundation alcor.org Certified Financial Planner(TM) CFP Board of Standards Member Libertarian Party libertarianparty.org Member National Rifle Association nra.org Member World Transhumanist Association http://transhumanism.org/ World's Leading Cryonics Insurance Provider rudihoffman.com Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=27780