Obama Admits 'Bias' Against Atheists in Bill Maher Interview, but Questions 'Active Persecution' Complaint
President Barack Obama spoke with atheist host Bill Maher on his "Real Time" show late last week, where the two debated the degree to which atheists are excluded from politics.
Maher, who had been trying for a long time to get Obama on his show, spoke with the president on a variety of different subjects, but focused a segment on the challenges for non-religious people in the country, who he said "feel like untouchables to a degree," despite making up, he claimed, almost a quarter of the population.
"We have no representation in Congress. If our numbers were represented, there'd be over a hundred congresspeople who felt that way. It just seems like we are not included in the basket of diversity in America, which is odd because we are the biggest minority," Maher said.
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He asked: "That is a bigger minority than any other minority you can name. Don't you think we should get a little more love?"
Obama, who is a Christian, responded by questioning whether there is "active persecution of atheists" in the United States, but agreed that there is bias against agnostics or atheists running for political office.
The president suggested that most average Americans are not trying to prod deep and figure out other people's religious beliefs, or lack there of, however.
"So here's what I would say, that ... we should foster a culture in which people's private religious beliefs, including atheists and agnostics, are respected. And that's the kind of culture that I think allows all of us, then, to believe what we want. That's freedom of conscience. That's what our Constitution guarantees," Obama argued.
He disagreed with Maher when the HBO host suggested that America might be "more pro-science in America if we were less religious."
"I think that the issues we have with science these days are not restricted to what's happening with respect to religion. There are a lot of very religious scientists around," Obama said, and suggested that the lack of clarity over facts, where today's young people can read Facebook posts right next to scholarly articles and have trouble deciding which is true, is creating confusion.
He insisted that America needs to do a better job of teaching children "enough critical thinking to be able to sort out what is true and what is false, what is contestable and what is incontestable."
"And we seem to have trouble with that. And our political system doesn't help," Obama added.
In June, 2014, Maher said he believed that Obama was a closet atheist and only went to Church because it was "politically necessary."
While the rise of non-believers in America has been documented in several surveys, research conducted by University of Minnesota sociologists announced in September that atheists continue to be among the most hated groups in the United States, however.
The study, which looked at perceptions of minority faith and racial groups, using data from a nationally representative survey, found that 41.9 percent of respondents said that atheists are a group that "does not at all agree with my vision of American society."
About one quarter, or 27 percent of Americans, also said that atheists "don't share my morals or values."
"We find that anti-atheist sentiment is strong, persistent, and driven in part by moral concerns about atheists and in part by agreement with cultural values that affirm religiosity as a constitutive moral grounding of citizenship and national identity," the study's authors commented.
