Atheists: most distrusted minority

The University of Minnesota recently completed a study that identified atheists as America's most distrusted minority. 

From the press release:

"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."

Pretty interesting...  I am always interested in this kind of stuff, and the difference between groups that are visible (African Americans, for example) and groups that are "invisible" (do you know the religious preferences of everyone you interact with?)

Click here to read the full press release.