Why Atheists Are Not Trusted.

This study confirms the analysis which has been made here on this blog: "Atheist As Other". It is shown in many polls that Atheists are trusted at levels commensurate with child molesters. This study, done in 2006, gives support for that lack of trust, and enumerates the reasons why that is the case.

"In these interviews, the atheist emerges as a
culturally powerful “other” in part because the
category is multivalent (Turner 1974), loaded
with multiple meanings. For all these respondents,
atheists represent a general lack of morality,
but for some, this lack was associated with
criminality and its dangers to safety and public
order, while for others the absence of morality
was that of people whose resources or positions
place them above the common standards
of mainstream American life. To put it somewhat
differently, atheists can be symbolically placed
at either end of the American status hierarchy.
What holds these seemingly contradictory views
together is that the problem of the atheist was
perceived to be a problem of self-interest, an
excessive individualism that undermines trust
and the public good. In this, our respondents
draw the same link between religion and the
taming of self-interest that Tocqueville wrote
about over a century ago (Tocqueville [1992]
2000, see especially volume 2, parts I and II).
It is important to note that our respondents did
not refer to particular atheists whom they had
encountered. Rather they used the atheist as a
symbolic figure to represent their fears about
those trends in American life—increasing criminality,
rampant self-interest, an unaccountable
elite—that they believe undermine trust and a
common sense of purpose.

In recent public discourse, atheists take on a
similar symbolic role. We found that the figure
of the atheist is invoked rhetorically to discuss
the links—or tensions—among religion, morality,
civic responsibility, and patriotism. In particular,
the association of the atheist with a kind
of unaccountable elitism has surfaced in recent
public debates. The civically engaged atheists’
awareness of the negative stereotypes of atheists
has led to the coining of a new term,
“Brights,” around which to identify and organize
and thus, according to one prominent Bright,
to challenge the association between atheism,
immorality, and lack of civic commitment. One
of those advocates has gone so far as to claim
the following:7

Many of the nation’s clergy members are closet
brights, I suspect. We are, in fact, the moral backbone
of the nation: brights take their civic duties
seriously precisely because they don’t trust God to
save humanity from its follies (Dennett 2003).

In a review of the book The Twilight of
Atheism, Charlotte Allen (2004) not only associates
atheism with totalitarianism but also sees
this notion of the “Brights” as particularly troubling
because of the intersection of science with
big money and the ability to influence public
policy. She worries if atheism,

“may yet be experiencing a new dawn: a terrifying new
alliance with money and power, of a kind even
Marx could not have foreseen”

[Emphasis added]

The danger to civilized society comes not from biker gangs and other bottom feeding ne'er-do-wells who are de facto Atheists; it comes from the elites for whom no objective moral code applies. These are now found throughout government and big money lobbying and financial institutions.

No amount of whining that they are "good without God" can serve to overcome their obvious lack of objective moral principles, or any kind of morals at all save making their own personal behaviors into "moral principles". Atheists seem to think that people who do have actual objective moral principles against which their behaviors are measured cannot see the difference (possibly because Atheists themselves cannot). So Atheists demand moral parity at a minimum, and ultimately promote themselves to moral supremacy since they cannot fail to be moral under their own tautological moral system.

This amounts to pure irrationality, and increases the distance between Atheists and the rest of the human race.

Further, Atheists tend very strongly to Leftist anti-American standards; it is the Atheists who engage in elitist totalitarian Othering of the bulk of Americans. That's how Marxism works, on its way toward totalitarian control: "othering" while claiming to be the saviors of those who are Othered.

Atheists are held in total disregard because their lack of principles (both moral and intellectual) renders them completely incompatible with a principled society. Atheists respond that principles are discriminatory, an irrational position which serves only to lock in the disregard with which they are held... and deserve.

It is arguable that Atheists start as damaged and broken people who go on to attempt to damage and break entire social structures in order to normalize themselves, even to be able to view themselves as "saviors" of society by reducing it to their own level of moral and intellectual chaos.

Remember that it was Silverman who declared in a federal lawsuit that the mere sight of the 9/11 "cross" damaged Atheists by giving them dyspepsia. That their rationalizations are so entirely irrational completely escapes them, proving their irrationality.