Honestly interesting sources! I feel like you shouldn't be downvoted. I don't agree with how you phrased what you wrote but I understand you're just expressing your view. I'm sort of on the side of well atheists are not treated well in society compared to the majority being religious and makes the statistics that way.

My personal experience of myself is contrary to the study. I'm both agnostic & transgender. I suffer daily from my gender dysphoria and how society treated me in life because of my gender dysphoria. I was conditioned growing up in the anti-gay era of time and I wasn't able to transition young. I'm not in the financial situation to really do anything to help myself and approaching my 30s. I've been seeking suicide by the legal process of going to Switzerland & in my birth country Canada (I grew up in the USA). The main drive for suicide has been acknowledging the possibility of how a lot of the bad experiences in my life, maybe influenced by a higher power, is wanting me to die and so my sex can be corrected. Society isn't really getting better for people like me with the trump administration and with the recent news showing to limit people like me further. I sort of come to conclusion the atmosphere now of things are getting better isn't really true but just a moment in time where things were more positive but can easily be reversed. I don't even know what to really trust anymore but the point is that maybe my life has been so poor because I should die because an all loving God would correct my problem; which made me miss out on a lot in life.

So much for me to process here, but I’ll give it a try. First let me say I respect and acknowledge you as a human being FIRST. I don’t know which gender you were born into and to which you do desperately want to transition. What I’m confused by is why does it matter? Better said: why does something you know to be the truth (your gender) become real only if those around you acknowledge it?

Maybe im missing something. I’m female and the last thing on my mind at any given second of the day is obsessing whether those around me find me “female“ enough. I’ve had suicidal thoughts but it’s never involved anything having to do with how others perceived me.

Again, trying to understand here and trying not to preach. If you do have a maker, He loves the being you are. The beautiful being He made. You have to be more - much more - than your genitalia or physical appearance. Your comment was highly intelligent and caught my attention. You are someone I’d love to have a conversation with at a party.

So why so much emphasis on how people perceive you if you know, to your core, the truth? Why bring up Trump at all when he’s a tiny, close-minded moron? You have to think you’re something more than a physical body on a rock barreling through black space. I don’t even know you and I’m convinced you are.

Your physical body doesn’t need to be “corrected”. What would it fix? Seriously, you are an intelligent soul in a temporary meat uniform and are probably gorgeous the way you are.

In the uk its a non thing. 50% of my friends are atheists. Its such a non issue that it hardly ever comes up. The first time i had a problem is when i couldnt have a church wedding because I couldnt morally profess a belief in a christian god. My mum in law was very very unhappy. In fact ive felt socially threatened amongst my developer friends when I have been inable to say that I am atheist (I think in a certain sense God is the world and in another sense it also silly to make a claim for or against god, since I believe its impossible to say anything for certain). That opinion gets me ridiculed!

So you're agnostic.

As an American, I honestly haven't run into this. I am religious, and most of my coworkers are religious, but we have had an atheist and an agnostic in our group (we're all developers) and it really didn't seem to matter. Religion rarely comes up in a professional setting, and it didn't come up when we did things outside of work as friends.

As long as you aren't aggressive against that which you don't believe, there really shouldn't be any problems. Most of the problems I run into are from atheists and agnostics picking a fight with theists. Treat others with respect and you'll get it in return.

Are you saying that the most reviled, despised, and shamed group in America "picks fights" against the juggernaut of believers? The mere act of stating we're a non-believer is considered militant. Attending a gathering of other non-believers is considered aggressive and obnoxious. Why would that be?

Treat others with respect? Do atheists get any respect from the religious? From our own government? Is it respectful to get religion (theistic or not) and god shoved down my throat everywhere I turn?

Where do you live? Not the US, surely. I don't recognize the America you're describing at all. Christianity is probably one of the most tolerant religions on the planet. Christians regularly turn the other cheek and love to "live and let live". They only get aggressive when people try to interfere with their ability to practice their religion.

If you haven't noticed, there's a war against christianity in the US. Nativity scenes being shut down. Not being able to pray in school. The constant attacks from popular culture and the media. Atheists tend to be especially vocal about the fact that they shouldn't have to see, think or hear anything even tangentially related to Christianity (although they have no problem with Islam. Go figure.) Christians see this as an attack on their ability to practice their religion.

Oh you...Where are atheists lining up to protest nativity scenes at churches? No one gives a fart about Christianity being practiced, until it infringes on other rights. Nativity scenes? Nothing wrong with them as long as other religions can partake as well. Christians don't tend to like Satanist scenes though.

Christians in America are however attacking abortion rights. They also attack marriage rights, gay rights, transgender rights, help for the poor, human rights, and basically everything that Jesus was for. To claim that the majority of Americans are practicing anything Jesus stood for is quite frankly silly. No one has said kids can't pray in school, what's been said is that you can't force prayer in school unless it's a religious school,in which case religion rules.

This silly "Attack on Christianity" ginned up by Fox News and the religious right is absurd in a country where the vast majority of the country proclaims to be Christian.

Regarding the tolerance to Christianity check out https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_to_a_Christian_Nation

Maybe it’s because they feel isolated and socially rejected ?

In France, there is a lot of atheists or agnostics, but they live as well as any

> I don't know why, but humans are hard wired for religion.

As Richard Feynman once said, in order to answer a "why" you need to be in a framework where you allow things to be true.

I'm not sure we're hardwired for religion, but it's pretty clear were hardwired for semiotics. Try to look at something without your brain picking out symbols to assign to everything. This is the thing we do all the time but can't seem to teach computers how to do.

So there is a certain seductive logic in viewing God as just another attempt the brain makes to sort things out on the symbolic level.

> Maybe it's because Americans like to be alive and atheists have an alarming tendency to kill themselves.

If a religious belief is preventing suicide then it sounds like theists are afraid of punishment more than having a stronger desire to live than atheists.

Personally I think condemning someone to hell for eternity just for being unable to cope in this life is one of the most morally reprehensible things imaginable.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Why did Christianity gain acceptance in the first place? People believe in Christianity not out of fear, but out of hope. Atheism doesn't provide any hope, comfort or love. Just the brutal reality that this life is all there is and that there's no point to the pain suffered in this life. Atheists kill themselves because they have no hope that things will ever improve. That they're utterly alone and always will be. Christians know they are never alone and that at least one person will always love them, even if nobody else ever does.

You're thinking about Christianity like it's something evil. You might have a better time of it if you think of Christianity as the firmware that runs western civilization.

Persecuted people tend to kill themselves more often, yes. That's not the evidence that humans are hardwired to be straight white cis Christian males.

Atheists aren't persecuted. They aren't being executed for their beliefs. Christians still are, though, in China, Africa and the Middle East.

Atheists are killed in Africa and the Middle East as well to also include some places in the South Pacific. Basically all the places Christians are persecuted, Atheists are too.

Atheists are also banned from serving in government in 7 US states as part of their state Constitutions, though the laws are unenforceable. Atheists also can't be Freemasons or Boy Scouts. So yeah you're wrong again.

You can't be serious. There are countries where there's literally death penalty for atheism.