Sigh:
According to the Vancouver Sun, University of British Columbia researchers conducted a total of six experiments on 350 Americans and 420 UBC students, of varying religions (67% of the Americans were Christian). In one experiment, they presented participants with the story of an “archetypal freerider” who cheats and steals a lot, and asked what group they thought that person might belong to. Participants were more likely to categorize the person as an atheist than as a Christian, Jew, Muslim, gay person, or feminist (some of the groups were chosen because they were “often described as threatening to majority religious values and morality”). Only rapists fared as poorly — participants were about as likely to put the “freerider” in this group. According to the study, “People did not significantly differentiate atheists from rapists.”
Emphasis mine.
I can’t muster up a comment on this one. I’m just going to go look at some cute baby animals for a while. You like me, don’t you, little anteater?
mist42nz on 
Christopher on 
Just as well they didn’t ask the participants which group was most likely to eat babies
This test is just as valid as changing the questions to …
Ask an American what is the likely nationality of a killer, crook, terrorist, etc
and giving them a choice of Russian, Chinese, middle eastern, American, etc
and how many answers will be American????
In general people are bigots.
If I’m asked as in the article my answer is ‘religious’ because 85% of America is religious so the chances of being right are greater. Where the religious person saying ‘atheist’ has a 85% chance of being wrong. But not knowing anything this simple allows his natural bigotry to rule and they will say ‘atheist’.