Rousseau said that there are several types of religion, including a “private” and individual version of the belief in the transcendent and the divine, and another that is of a collective nature, based on public rituals and shared dogmas and symbols. In practice, said this philosopher, the first variant is undesirable, because it does not act to bring societies together.

Time has passed, and with it societies too; now, unlike three centuries ago, we must satisfy a need that did not exist before. This new need is to create an inclusive culture in which no one is left on the sidelines because of their beliefs or lack thereof. And, although the history of religions is full of violent conflicts between confessions, the relationship they have with atheism has not been much better .

Today, in fact, one study shows that in a world where freedom of thought and belief is increasingly defended, atheism remains stigmatized.

Atheists’ respect for believers is not reciprocated

A team of Ohio University researchers has shown that atheists are more respectful of believers than vice versa, which they offer several explanations for.

The team of researchers, led by Colleen Cowgill, used an economics-based game to find out how everyone’s personal beliefs influence the way we identify with others or whether we distance ourselves from them. Specifically, we wanted to see if being a believer or an atheist makes us act giving a lot of priority to those who share these beliefs or if this priority tends not to exist.

To do this, a simple exercise known as the dictator’s game was chosen, in which a person must decide if he wants to share his money, and how much he must give up. In this way, pairs are created in which one person is an atheist and the other is a believer, and a dominating role is assigned to one of them to decide whether he or she wants to share an amount of money.

The result showed that, knowing the beliefs of each one, the Christians distributed more money to the rest of the Christians than to the atheists, while the atheists did not give favorable treatment to any of the groups, giving on average the same amount to believers and non-believers . This ceased to occur at the moment when the religious beliefs of each person, or the absence of them, ceased to be revealed.

Stigma may be behind it

Colleen and her team propose an explanation for why atheists tend to be kinder to believers than they receive in return from believers, at least according to this study. What could be behind this phenomenon is a strategy of compensation by atheists to avoid receiving the negative consequences related to prejudice and stigma on atheism in general.

And it is necessary to take into account that for a long time religion and morality have been practically synonymous: ethics emerged from the belief in a higher order that tells us what we should do. The absence of belief in the divine, according to this logic, is a threat, because there is nothing that guarantees that an atheist will not commit the most atrocious acts if we think that the only thing that prevents us from behaving badly is our union with one or more gods.

On the other hand, even today there is still little contact with atheism (to this day there is no country where the majority of the population is atheist), so it is reasonable that anyone who does not believe in any religion should fear unfavourable treatment if it offers the slightest opportunity to be seen as the enemy.

Full integration has not yet been achieved

This study shows that the most private beliefs continue to be something that divides society, to the point where a simple label is capable of making us treat each other differently . Tending to give privileged treatment to those who are most like oneself is still a way of creating unnecessary division without any real reason for conflict.

Thus, atheists, aware of the stereotypes that still persist, do their best to “compensate” others, since they start from a situation of disadvantage. In this sense, it would still be necessary to carry out research similar to this to see if something similar occurs with religious minorities in countries where there is a high degree of fanaticism.