Got God? Atheists: America's Most Distrusted Minority & How to Fix It

Some of my internet buddies posted an interesting article recently. Apparently, the University of Minnesota ran a study which states that atheists are identified as America's most distrusted minority. They are rated below politicians, illegal immigrants and used car salesmen. This is pretty amazing considering I never bought a Yugo from an atheist.

But on the other hand, in a country that has held groups like Catholics, Jews, Muslims and the Dutch as untrustworthy in rotation throughout its history, I guess it was bound to happen. Or the poll takers misread the word as "At heist," which does sound pretty shady. Also, as I've learned from my dealings with atheists, they are under the impression that since they don't believe in God their "holier-than-thou" attitude doesn't count. I've dealt with atheists whose smug behavior ranks up there with any self-righteous televangelist.

But, man, I hate to see anyone picked on and I've been doing some thinking. What can we do to help this nation's atheists work their way up the old trust totem? They've all ready got one leg up on most religions in that atheists haven't made a habit of killing people in God's name. Okay, Mao and Stalin, maybe, but they'll get an asterisk beside their numbers. Technically these Communist-Atheists committed genocide for political reasons and not just because the people were God-happy farmers. Plausible deniability like this can be useful. It's how I continue to believe in money even though millions have been killed in its name for centuries.

So, thinking long and hard one lunch hour, I put together a list of some of the ways atheists can become more trusted:

-Start some rockin' 12-step programs. So many friends of Bill gather in groups to overcome various addictions through recognition of a higher authority. What the atheists have to do is get some high-profile celebrity train wrecks to clean up their acts under their umbrella and brag about it.

-Start winning some Entertainment Industry Awards. With all these entertainment winners every year thanking God, Jesus and Allah for their latest hits like "Upside my Pimpin' Ho" or "Dude, Where's my Condom?" atheists need to get in there, rank up some big prizes then, upon winning an award, make sure they don't thank any deity for their win. If we're talking about movies it's even easier to not thank God…just think of God as one of the writers.

-Set up hospitals, schools, charities, disaster relief programs around the world. Hey, when people need help, they always wind up at one of these places. Get out there and open up your own chain of soup kitchens or homeless shelters. Why should faith-based organizations be the glory hounds here?

-Out sport figures. Obviously, God doesn't care about who wins what sport championship but a lot of the players seem to think He does. Find some who don't and get them to stop thanking God and give the thanks to where it really belongs: steroids.

-Get a holiday going. Seriously, who's wants to give props to a group that can't even get us a day off? Slackers. I mean, atheists get to take off for Christmas and Thanksgiving, but what are they giving back? You guys, get working on a national federal holiday. Something in March or August would be helpful.

-Start feeding poor kids for pennies a day. Find yourself a heathen Sally Struthers and start cranking out those late night "feel guilty" commercials.

-Start talking up Sciencetology. I mean, come on, these people should be way higher up on that survey.

I think by taking a few of these suggestions that we might see the stock of atheists rise in this country. Of course, since they're only about 3 percent of the population and not formally organized, who cares?