Atheist Documentary: Anything but an Atheist: Chapter One

Earlier this week it was my pleasure to be introduced to a site devoted entirely to showing documentaries.  I also found out they have an entire category for atheist documentaries. 

As I browsed through their selection deciding which one to watch first Anything but an Atheist caught my eye.  The title grabbed me because it’s something I can relate to as an American atheist.  Some people don’t seem to be bothered by whatever you are just so long as you aren’t an atheist.  In any case I loaded it up and watched chapter one of Anything but an Atheist today.

It starts out with a graphical depiction of the statistics from the University of Minnesota’s data showing how atheists are America’s least trusted minority.  It moves on to show some very revealing clips from television shows illustrating how very acceptable it still is to bash or hate atheists in a very open manner. 

The documentary shows quite a few prominent people who are atheists or who were atheists when they were alive throughout the video.  While I’ve seen a lot of lists of celebrity atheists I liked seeing their faces.  I think it’s really helpful to put faces to people to break down the stereotypes. 

There are also a few segments showing interviews with atheists who have experienced discrimination.  While I’ve seen the clip from 20/20 with the young lady in Utah who was treated so awfully once her family came out as atheists, it still got me a bit teary-eyed because her experience being a young atheist in small town America is so similar to my own.  There’s no reason people need to do this to people whose beliefs aren’t harming them one bit.

Anyway, I think that chapter one of Anything but an Atheist is well worth a watch.  I look forward to watching more of this documentary.  I also think it might be a good tool to help atheists show their friends and family members what kind of problems atheists in America face.  Many theists aren’t even aware that this kind of thing goes on and I think they need to be if we’re ever going to be accepted by the society we live in.