Atheists are intuitively distrusted as severely as rapists in experiments.

Evidence

In several studies using this design, we found that by and large participants did not intuitively judge the description representative of Christians, gays, Muslims, Jewish people, or feminists. But they did intuitively judge that a description of a criminally untrustworthy individual was representative of atheists. The magnitude of atheist distrust in these studies was especially remarkable, and shockingly, the only group we found that was distrusted to the same degree as atheists were people with a known criminal track record: rapists. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 277

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the reader’s analytical frame: distrust of nonbelievers as freeriders ties directly to the Big God mechanism enforcing partner choice among believers.