Anti-atheist prejudice tracks wherever religious majorities dominate

Evidence

One might think that anti-atheist prejudice is peculiar to America—a religious country with a history founded on puritanical zeal. And indeed, international surveys do show that there is considerable variability in the prevalence of this prejudice across nations. For example, there is virtually no rejection of atheists in Scandinavian societies such as Denmark and Sweden (more on this later). But these same international surveys also show that wherever there are religious majorities—that is, most of the world—there is also strong anti-atheist prejudice (although there are mitigating factors, which I discuss later). In Arabic, for example, calling someone “lacking religion” is a grave insult. Worldwide trust toward religion and toward people who are religious is quite high. The flipside is that worldwide trust toward atheists tends to be quite low. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 240

Categorization

• XREF: Global distribution of distrust toward nonbelievers aligns with the Big God surveillance logic; Scandinavia’s secular trust becomes a natural test case for Norenzayan’s claims about belief-based vs. secular prosociality. — connects to: Religious priming causally increases prejudice toward LGBT people and atheists — Annetta Snell and Miron Zuckerman and Bonnie M. Le, Does Religious Priming Induce Greater…, 108