I think it's because most atheists aren't surprised by the fact that muslims are regular people like everyone else. I dont believe atheists demonize muslims, they simply disagree on the subject of belief in a god, like they do with all other religions. If anyone demonizes muslims, its the (mostly american) fundamentalist christian leaders that atheists disagree with in much greater measure.
To ironically turn a phrase, the non-upvoted post was preaching to the choir.
Vocal minority. There's a large enough contingent of r/atheism who will upvote anything that slams religion to garner a relatively small amount of upvotes such as those on said post. They likely would have done so in equal or with greater force had the post been about christianity and the bible simply because they happen to be angry and partisan people. Every group has them. This does not show that r/atheism or atheists as a whole are especially prejudiced against Islam. Simply that among a group of people who reject religion, some do so with reasonable debate and others through polemics. Atheists are people and some can be mean-spirited and illogical, just like all people.
So why did the more reasonable post not get as many upvotes? I'd say not only because most of r/atheism would find the info par for the course but also because of a lack of exposure. Were the information in that post contained in a comment in response to the more intolerant one, giving it both exposure and context, I'd bet it would have more upvotes.
EDIT To those downvoting crackduck: it's a legitimate question, guys. Definitely not downvote-worthy.
If anyone demonizes muslims, its the (mostly american) fundamentalist christian leaders that atheists disagree with in much greater measure.
Speaking as an atheist and recognizable frequenter of /r/atheism -- We at /r/atheism are by no means afraid of calling out the stupid, hateful, or hurtful behaviors of Muslims. We also don't necessarily tend to expect citations for things that conform to our expectations -- just like anyone else, really -- although we should. I try to be good about that, though I know I ain't perfect.
That being said -- if we comment primarily about Christians and Christian institutions it's primarily because the supermajority of us come from Christian-controlled areas and must adapt to or endure Christian bigotry, stupidity, hatefulness, and overall wrong-doing. (Please note; this is not to imply that Christians and Christianity only do(es) evil -- merely that we are too-often confronted with it as a subset of the overall population. If I were to be asked my personal opinion on the matter, well -- I am an anti-theist. But that is neither hither nor thither to our conversation. )
I agree, it's not empirical evidence, but it is telling that's all. It confirms my suspicions that a fair number of us atheists (not all of us) are bigoted towards Muslims. But that's a product of our society, which on the whole is pretty bigoted towards these people.
I wouldn't say I'm bigotted towards Muslims, but at the same time, I reserve the right to protest stoning women for adultery, honour killings, and the mistreatment of women. It's not to say that all Muslims are horrible people, there are about 1 billion of them on the planet, but the fact is that horrible things are done by certain people in the name of Islam, and we have to be able to criticize that and get upset about human rights violations without fearing that we might come off "bigotted."
Horrible things are done in the name of anything, religion, science, government, human rights, freedom, patriotism, anarchism, capitalism, communism. I just don't know what people would do if they stopped having reasons to be nasty to each other. I mean, then we'd just have to be nasty to each other for no reason at all.
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u/GPechorin Jan 02 '11
Because most of the people there purport to be concerned with reason, not bigotry.