Discriminatory laws against atheists span many religious-majority countries

Evidence

However we do not need to rely on opinion surveys to see evidence of worldwide intolerance of atheists. A recent global report by the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) found that laws and public practices that discriminate against atheists and religious skeptics are widespread in many countries with religious majorities. Yet these kinds of analyses, as important as they are, cannot tell us if religious conviction is the key elicitor of distrust or hostility toward atheism, rather than something else that is tied up with a country’s level of religiosity (such as low levels of human development, or traditionalism). Experiments are needed where peoples’ actual social behavior or attitudes could be observed in controlled conditions. While such experiments are in very short supply, the available evidence lends support to the survey findings and cross-national analyses of laws, and points to a link between religious conviction and trust. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 214

Categorization

• XREF: The methodological worry — legal/cultural hostility to atheism might track low human development or traditionalism rather than religiosity per se — parallels the reader’s need to isolate religion’s causal role in the fumi-e dynamics of Silence, where surrounding political context confounds the religious variable.
• QUESTION: The confounding problem Norenzayan flags here — religiosity vs. traditionalism vs. development — is exactly the kind of mechanism-isolation issue worth chasing when building the cross-textual argument about apostasy as a signal.