The FBI’s 2014 Hate Crimes Report Shows That Atheists Were Almost Never Victims

The FBI just released its 2014 Hate Crime Statistics report, and I think it’s always valuable to realize how relatively good we have it compared to other kinds of minorities.

Obviously, any number is too high, but of the more than 1,000 hate crimes “motivated by religious bias,” only 1.2% of them were against people who are explicitly non-religious, and only a fraction of those involved assault (as opposed to burglary or theft). While there’s a huge stigma against atheists, we suffer from fewer hate crimes than people of pretty much every other non-Christian group. (At least when these crimes have an obvious motive.)

It’s one reason we should be careful about using the word “discrimination” as it applies to us. People may not want to vote for us and they may not trust us, but they don’t always want to be violent toward us, either.

I should also stress the obvious: this isn’t some sort of Biggest Martyr game. No one deserves to be at the receiving end of vandalism or physical violence because of his or her religious beliefs, no matter how much anyone disagrees with it.

(via Religion Clause. Portions of this article were posted earlier)