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PowerPoint is not the problem. It is how PPt is used.
Have faith in atheists | Nathan Schneider
Those who discriminate againsts non-believers should know that atheists are healthy, intelligent and well adjusted - Atheists have an image problem. According to a study led by University of Minnesota sociologist Penny Edgell, published in 2006, Americans have a lower opinion of them than homosexuals, Jews, Muslims and African-Americans. They can't get elected to political office, and most people view them as outsiders. Yet the disdain is comparatively quiet and abstract, rarely erupting into palpable conflict. Part of the reason may be that nobody seems to know who atheists are, including atheists themselves. - This year's North American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) reported that 2% of US adults don't believe in God, while another 10% aren't sure. Only 0.7%, however, called themselves atheist and only 0.9% agnostic. In all, 15% said they don't have a religious affiliation, and 27% that they won't have a religious funeral. Even apparent atheists, it seems, sense a stigma around the label. But is it deserved? "People who truly have no religion," says David Yamane, editor of the journal Sociology of Religion, "are not very well understood." - Thanks to an emerging community of researchers focusing their attention on the non-religious, that is beginning to change. The ARIS, for instance, is based out of a new centre at Trinity College in Connecticut, the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture (ISSSC), the only one of its kind in a country full of academic centres for the study of religiosity. Its fellows produce demographic studies and curriculum materials about the history and development of non-belief. - Younger researchers have begun to take a lead in the field. ISSSC fellow Ryan Cragun's dissertation identifies "risk factors" for people who are likely to leave religious communities, including relocation, education, youth and marrying outside the faith. Cragun is an atheist himself, but he doesn't advertise this among his colleagues and research subjects for fear that negative ster
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Those who discriminate againsts non-believers should know that atheists are healthy, intelligent and well adjusted
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Atheists have an image problem. According to a study led by University of Minnesota sociologist Penny Edgell, published in 2006, Americans have a lower opinion of them than homosexuals, Jews, Muslims and African-Americans. They can't get elected to political office, and most people view them as outsiders. Yet the disdain is comparatively quiet and abstract, rarely erupting into palpable conflict. Part of the reason may be that nobody seems to know who atheists are, including atheists themselves.
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