While many people, atheists and religious, see atheism as stemming from scientific developments and attribute its spread to Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory, the truth is that what can be generally considered atheism is as old as the hills. There’s also the curious etymology of the word and its shift in usage. For a long time in history, atheist was the word used to describe people who believed in other gods rather than no gods. In Ancient Greece and Rome, the state-supported religion was regarded as the one true and official religion. At the trial of Socrates, the great philosopher was called “atheos” because he did not subscribe to the Gods of the State (that is state-recognized religion) and practiced private beliefs. Likewise, in a curious irony, the Romans persecuted early Christians for being “atheists” as well since they did not subscribe to pagan beliefs. In medieval Europe, Catholics called heretics, Protestants, and dissenting priests atheists simply because they did not accept official Church doctrine. Protestants later also did this with Catholics or Jews.

In terms of atheism in its present definition, the Greek Sophists and Atomists were more important. They were the ones who started criticizing Greek myths as merely elaborate fabrications of Kings and Emperors raised to Gods. They also started describing the natural world using language stripped of metaphors. To them, Greek myths and their multiple gods were merely anthropomorphized representations of natural phenomena and fancy metaphors. The philosopher Theodoros of Cyrene even exposed the Eleusinian Mystery Cult and criticized religion as largely a fairly modern money-making scam. One Diagoras of Melos was called “The Atheist” and may have been the first philosopher in the West to disbelieve in gods explicitly. This more skeptical worldview can also be seen in the plays of Euripides, roughly contemporary to these changes. His critics often accused him of lacking in piety; in his plays, gods and Greek heroes are often depicted in a down-to-earth fashion, speaking the everyday language, as opposed to the more religious plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Epicurus, who was inspired by these writers, charted out Epicureanism, the first coherent Western materialist ideology. Although Epicurus affirmed the existence of gods, by describing the problem of evil, he stated that if the gods existed, then it was unlikely that human suffering mattered to such beings, and that it made little sense organizing life and ethics based on a morality alien to humanity. He also denied the existence of an afterlife and stressed the importance and vitality of the visible world.

It's also important to note that such skepticism of religion was by no means a Western phenomenon. Buddhism and Jainism, for instance, are philosophies without a deity figure, though other sects approached something resembling monotheism later. Hinduism had materialist schools such as the Carvaka, Samkhya, and Mimamsa. In China, Confucius developed a philosophy of education, curiosity, and learning that explicitly distanced itself from metaphysical and spiritual questions, noting that such concepts, even if true, were generally available and valuable to the very few and that society should be considered with materially improving life for everyone. Likewise, Charles Darwin, in describing his voyages to South America, stated that some native tribes did not even have a word for god and organized their society without any identifiable religion (and therefore cannot explicitly be called atheists, since they never believed in god to start with), noting that it refuted the idea that religion or belief was intrinsic or heritable, rather than cultural and acquired. During the golden age of the Arab world, several writers such as Omar Khayyam, Averroes, Ibn al-Rawandi, and Abu Bakr al-Razi expressed ideas that stressed education and materialism and criticized the infallibility of religious truths, expressing a naturalistic worldview that would supersede religious explanations. The freethinker Al-Maʿarri likewise regarded religion as a “fable invented by the ancients”. Even in the Catholic Church, Saint Augustine, a former Manichaean (an African heretical sect), stated that he considered The Bible’s fantastic stories as largely embellished to be accessible to the common man. He dismissed literal interpretations of the Bible’s account for creation, noting that as and when science advanced with superior explanations, it should supplant existing Biblical interpretations. This was the defense which Galileo (a religious man) used—unsuccessfully—in his trial argument for a heliocentric model of the solar system.^note The dispute there concerned whether the heliocentric model was a better explanation—most scientists at the time didn't think so.

Modern atheism first found a voice during The Enlightenment and The French Revolution, largely thanks to the debate about the separation between church and state. It was accompanied by Deism at first. Philosophers such as Spinoza, Voltaire, and Rousseau advocated belief in a distant, immaterial, non-human deity who governed by natural—i.e., scientific—laws. Deism attacked Christian intolerance and superstition and advocated science and democracy. The deists argued that religion should have no place in politics and that society should be free to discuss different ideas and should have total religious tolerance. In the Revolution, graffiti stating “Death Is an Eternal Sleep” often defaced churches and cemeteries. Cathedrals and altarpieces were subject to petty and creative vandalism, giving free public expression to atheist ideas for the first time in Western history. During the Reign of Terror, atheist and deist revolutionaries briefly de-Christianized France entirely. Inspired by the Revolution, romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote a pamphlet titled The Necessity of Atheism,^note Though he was actually a pantheist. and the idea was common in Romantic, Revolutionary, and Decadent circles. Politically and philosophically, Friedrich Nietzsche noted that with the Revolution, “God is Dead”—i.e., the all-powerful ideal of God, even among liberal believers, was not the same in an age gradually supplanted by scientific, philosophical, and political changes. He argued that the end of Christianity (or any other single belief as dominating Western culture) would lead to a period of nihilism from which people would then be free to create their own values and moral code. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution sparked a major change in Victorian England and, much later, America, since it provided a scientific explanation for human origins that no longer required an anthropomorphic deity to shape it for human purpose.

By the dawn of the 20th Century, it became possible—at least in the West—to live in a society wherein religion did not play a dominant role. The resulting decline in attendance and social leverage of religion has since made atheism more common.

• Begin with the obvious: atheists don’t believe that gods exist. As previously mentioned, this is not as rigid a position as you might expect; some self-identified agnostics will give as high as even odds that a god exists, and all but the most confident atheists grant scarcely less credence to the existence of a god than they do to the existence of a jackalope. And, as also previously mentioned, people can also be atheists simply by never having considered whether gods exist—implicit atheism. Such a position by necessity is not rigid at all: technically, every human being is born an implicit atheist.
  • The above includes self-proclaimed strong atheists as well—many will say their beliefs are based on the current evidence at their disposal, emphasizing that they would change their mind if sufficient evidence came forth.
• What leads many people to become atheists is skepticism, which is derived from the same basic principles as The Scientific Method. The argument is: as there is no good evidence for the existence of a god or gods, there is no reason to believe that they exist, and anyone who thinks otherwise is invited to prove it. Skepticism does not necessarily mean the atheist is a cynic; atheists’ opinions range like everyone else’s.
  • That said, not every skeptic is an atheist, and not every atheist got there through skeptical thinking. They are two overlapping circles of a Venn Diagram, not a solid equivalency.
• There’s also a strain in atheism, what is regarded as being its secular strain, at least among some European writers, where it is a sentiment that doesn’t come from opposition or hostility to religion. These writers will admit that religion has moments of beauty and truth and that the negative aspects of Christianity can’t be regarded as its core tenets. Their critique is simply: what can Christianity, even the beautiful, nice kind, provide to people who live in the modern world?
  • People with problems in modern society, even ones who call themselves believers, will necessarily consult therapists or psychologists, family, and friends, form communities based on shared interests. Charitable works and political causes, as well as human rights problems, are the domain of government watchdogs, rights groups, United Nations, and NGOs. Art and architecture are no longer patronized by the Church. This argument essentially sees religion in need of solving existential questions to justify its function, rather than atheists having to do so. It has become possible in developed European nations to go through life without really thinking deeply or meaningfully about religion, to the point that some don't even feel the need to define themselves as atheists since the word only has force in the context of inter-faith disputes, which have little value when the believers are so few.
  • They also point out that liberals in religious circles are trying to keep pace with the modern world, either by inter-faith dialogues, acknowledging criticism of their holy texts, considering the ordination of women as priests, open acceptance of homosexuality, and so on. It’s important to note that this existential question has also been embraced by religious writers such as former nun Karen Armstrong, who argue that religious organizations should confront atheist and secular critiques if they want to play a meaningful role in the future.

What do atheists think of organized religions?

• It is worth repeating at this juncture that although atheism is a religious posture, it is in no way a religion.
  1. As the popular quip goes, atheism is a religion as much as baldness is a hair color, or not collecting stamps is a hobby. The term "atheism" refers to nothing more than the absence of a single doctrine, not to a complete moral system.
  2. ‘Atheism’ is more on the level of ‘monotheism’ or ‘polytheism’ than ‘Christianity’ or ‘Islam’, or ‘Hinduism’ or ‘Shintoism’. It tells you how many gods the person believes in (zero) without telling you anything about what they precisely believe about the world or which rules they live by beyond that.
  3. Atheism is a religious posture held by other religions as well. Most Buddhists and Satanists do not believe in any deities. Some Neo-Pagans, as well as some sects of Hinduism and Jainism, do not believe in any deities either. Given this, it would be difficult to declare atheism as an entirely separate religion.
• Many atheists believe that religious organizations generally do more harm than good to society, and some may even quote scientific studies on the subject; and for atheists who are not certain gods don’t exist, they generally think that if any exist they’re not doing much good compared to the harm caused by religious organizations overall.
• Many consider the widespread cultivation of unskeptical credulity from childhood (which they posit a religious upbringing will necessarily do) to be inherently damaging. As this is a core feature of nearly all supernatural belief systems, they blame religion for enabling Real Life Agent Mulder advocates of issues outside their own religion (notably to the extent of denying evidence-based reasoning altogether, as anti-science polls repeatedly indicate, in favor of perceived sincerity and emotional fervor).
• That said, some atheists take the opposite route and believe that religion is positive and enriching, but they are less likely to advertise their atheism—indeed, some atheists go so far as to pretend to be theists and become priests and suchlike because they still think that their chosen religion is a positive force, even if they don’t believe that its central claims are true. Others more openly join nontheistic religions such as those listed above, or those who accept nontheists, like Unitarian Universalism.
• Others don’t really care about religion at all and don’t think much about it. But even in their indifference such atheists still don’t usually take kindly to people trying to convert them and/or make them feel bad or inadequate about their atheism or assuming they are evil just because they’re atheists. In general, most atheists have real a problem with organized religion when it starts harming others.
• Many atheists also recognize that temples and religions are as varied as anything else and that many religious people are motivated to do good things because of their beliefs. A temple that provides food and shelter to the homeless, or that works for social justice, is apt to get a much more favorable opinion than, say, the Westboro Baptist Church.
• Most atheists believe that the scientific method is a valid and valuable means of learning about nature, and many agree that science is good. Many also feel that science contradicts religious claims in one sense or another, either because they lack proof, or they have been disproven, or they should be ruled out a priori for reasons of scientific philosophy. However, the question of whether science and religion are "incompatible" (and what that question means, exactly) is contentious and is one of the things that separates ‘New Atheists’ and ‘accommodationists’. Many theists and some atheists agree that religion deals with separate issues or questions than science (so that, e.g., it doesn’t make sense to ask for scientific proof of a miracle), while some atheists argue that they do in fact deal with the same issues and religions simply have it all wrong. Conversely, some theists argue that science can give evidence for miracles.
• Most atheists (and some theists, too) believe that old holy books (of any religion) are plagued with centuries of Anvilicious politics, Too Many Cooks Spoil the Soup, Executive Meddling, Retcon, and Epileptic Trees being used and retained to justify new beliefs which were grafted into religion under historical accidents or intimidation/bribes by large empires, and other notable flaws, all while believing God himself has never done much wrong under nonintervention or nonexistence. Also, decades of oral tradition and the evolution/death of the language it was originally written in leaves room for Fridge Logic interpretations which certainly did not reflect the original perfectly, nor was it the best a God should come up with—which all results in more Adaptation Decay in the versions religious leaders use, as opposed to selectively ignoring the written version. Not to mention the literal Word of Dante effect.
• Trying to convert atheists to ‘save their souls’ will likely only make you agitate them. Similarly, promising that ‘I'll pray for your soul’ will at best get a reply along the lines of ‘If you must’. Save yourself the trouble.

What about other supernatural or paranormal beliefs?

• If Jesus, Then Aliens does not necessarily apply. Atheism and skepticism complement each other but are not synonymous. While most atheists are skeptics, not all are, and atheists are often quite willing to believe in things that they consider more likely than the existence of God (and on the other side of the coin, many theists are skeptical about psychic powers, aliens, Bigfoot, and so on). However, many vocal atheists tend to be skeptics who actively refute the existence of what could be considered supernatural phenomena as well as pseudoscientific claims.
• Lack of belief in an afterlife is not a requirement of atheism (many atheists believe that the afterlife can exist as a scientific phenomenon, not spiritual), but since 1) atheism is strongly correlated with skepticism and free-thought in general and 2) people who, for whatever reason, don’t believe in the supernatural are usually atheists, the two tend to coincide. This does not mean that atheists believe in The Nothing After Death; rather, those who don’t believe in an afterlife or reincarnation view life as an event, like a fire, that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Whatever is left of a person after they die does not really resemble a living person, any more than a pile of ashes resembles a fire.
• Atheism’s strong correlation with skepticism might be true for the United States or other countries with a large religious majority, but it certainly doesn’t apply to countries with an atheistic majority or large minority. In European areas like Scandinavia, (former) East Germany, the Czech Republic, etc., lots of people just grew up as atheists and believe in all kinds of superstition, astrology, pseudoscientific stuff, and New Age mysticism.
• Atheists would not treat actual bona fide miracles occurring (e.g., raising the dead, ‘impossible’ healing of sickness or injury, etc.) as automatic proof that the Christian god is ‘real’ in the Biblical sense. Assuming for the moment that such miracles occur, it’s also possible that they are unusual yet natural happenings in our universe propelled by a mechanism we do not yet understand, or that the beings that style themselves as gods are another kind of life form that chooses to interact with us by posing as gods for some reason. There are also all those thousands of other gods people worship or have worshipped to consider.
  • Interestingly, for much of history, the investigation of ‘miracles’ and the discovery of natural explanations for these phenomena was considered an affirmation of faith (as in, ‘Hey, look how God made this amazing thing we thought was impossible actually happen without leaving any direct fingerprints’).

As mentioned in the summary, atheism is more complicated than just ‘gods do not exist.’ There’s a lot more to it, and it encompasses everything from your classic ‘Gods don't exist!’ Hollywood Atheist to more subtle varieties. However, generally, atheists can be classified into two broader categories, namely Positive Atheism and Negative Atheism, with even further breakdowns under each category, and even then you have some overlap.

Positive Atheism

Also referred to as “Strong Atheism” or “Hard Atheism.” In short, it means the person firmly believes no god exists. This is the position most people think of when they hear the term atheist and the position most often held by the Hollywood Atheist in fiction. These people are convinced that there are no higher powers and that we are ultimately on our own. It could be because they think ‘gods’ do not exist at all, or that the physical universe they reside in still limits them (thus disqualifying them from being true deities), or it could be that they believe ancient aliens were spotted and were treated as gods due to their technological superiority.

Negative Atheism

Also referred to as “Weak Atheism” or “Soft Atheism.” You can’t effectively describe negative atheism without understanding what separates it from positive atheism. In short, this variety of atheism comprises several categories that basically boil down to being unconvinced that gods exist, rather than convinced any do. Note the difference between the two. Positive atheists make a firm assertion, gods do not exist, whereas negative atheists make a much more open assertion, they don’t think gods exist but that doesn't mean gods aren’t there.

This broader category fits more than one ‘variety’ into it.

• Babies and young children, humans too young to be truly able to ponder the subject.
• Humans who are old enough but have never heard of the concept of ‘god’ before.
• Agnostics, or the truly undecided. People who simply are not sure one way or the other and are in no hurry to pick a side.
• Apatheists, people who simply feel the question of god’s existence is completely irrelevant to their life.
• Theological Non-Cognitivists, people who feel terms like ‘God’ are imprecise or incoherent and do not effectively communicate the person’s precise meaning. The late great Carl Sagan was one such person.

Explicit vs. Implicit Atheism

Further muddying the waters, you have these two terms. Explicit vs. Implicit in this case refers to their positions on the very concept of god, much less their existence. Explicit atheists do not believe in gods in full awareness of the concept and its meaning, whereas implicit atheists are not fully aware or simply do not care enough about the question of gods’ existence to decide. Even though it seems as though it should be as simple as ‘Explicit = Positive’ and ‘Implicit = Negative’, explicit atheism incorporates a few categories of negative atheist too, namely those who have heard of the concept of a god but have thought about it and have concluded that they simply do not believe.

Other Types of Atheist

While every variety of atheist fits into the above classifications, there are still other varieties of atheist that come with their own opinions on the concept of god and can overlap between the two. Sometimes they may exist in settings with higher powers, but their attitude toward them is what sets them apart.

• Antitheism: A form of atheism practised by people who, heedless of whether they believe a higher power can exist, share the hallmark of belief that theism is an inherently negative influence on humanity and oppose it. In fiction, their portrayal can range from the Hollywood Atheist, as portrayed (in straw capacity) in God's Not Dead and its sequels, to the Nay-Theist, someone who exists in a setting where gods or higher powers exist and perhaps even acknowledges their station but considers them undeserving of worship and veneration, because the gods themselves are unjust, because the gods let us animals get on with things (something deists believe, overlapping with actual theism), or possibly because they simply cannot be counted on due to their flaws or they are too incompetent to be taken seriously.
• Post-Theism: This variety of atheism is explicitly atheist more often than not, but rather than feel religion ought to be opposed or condemned, people who think this typically believe that religion had its time and place in the development of human society, but that time and place have passed. Society should no longer lean on religion like a crutch and should put its crutch away so that it can better walk, before learning to run and more. In short, post-theists feel religion is simply an old idea needlessly holding society back.

Atheist Religions

Now with all this in mind, special cases such as several religions whose tenets include no gods (for example, Buddhism and Jainism) as well as religions that openly allow for atheistic practitioners (for example, Hinduism) complicate the picture further. According to Vivekananda, the attainment of moksha (salvation) does not actually require belief in a God at all, but it is usually regarded as making the process easier, particularly in the beginning. Even Pantheism can sometimes be conflated with atheism.

• Atheism does not prescribe a system of morality or code of behavior. There is no built-in system of reward for good acts and punishment for evil ones. While some religious people would expect this to lead atheists to become Straw Nihilist-esque, atheists form moral codes as they grow up through their education, culture and personal reflection like everyone else. This is not an explicitly self-imposed limitation, but the natural way things happen in a normal, sane, developing human brain.^note Science has theories like kin selection and reciprocal altruism to explain how things like empathy, moral intuition, and self-sacrificing behavior could have evolved. And it’s for their benefit too, of course, as Good Feels Good and sanity is its own advantage.
• Just like honest citizens don’t need the police constantly watching over their shoulder to abide by the law, atheists don’t need a God watching over them to do good.
• An atheist might view the idea that the fear of hell would be ‘necessary’ to act morally as rather flattering: aren’t they amazing, managing it without such fear? Or more critically, they might say that one should do good because virtue is its own reward, it’s just the right thing to do, or it would be for the greatest benefit, not because of fear of punishment (which is the lowest of the Kohlberg stages of moral development).
• Some moral principles and systems used by atheists are:
  • The Golden Rule, “One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself” (a concept which has existed at least since 1780 B.C.), usually comes up.
    • Further developed by Immanuel Kant into the Categorical Imperative, which generally follows “Treat others how you would want everyone to treat each other, so long as your actions exercise goodwill” (a clarification that stops, for example, masochists from hurting other people and still being morally good).
  • Utilitarianism (in a nutshell, happiness good, suffering bad. More specifically, they advocate the greatest good for the greatest number).
    • Contrasted with Kantianism above. Kantianism, in contrast to utilitarianism, justifies rights such as private property despite the happiness/suffering of others. Consider, for example, that you currently have two kidneys. Someone in the world is surely and currently needs one of the kidneys you can provide right now and will only suffer and be less happy without it. Under utilitarianism, ANY action that promotes happiness and limits suffering is morally good, therefore under some interpretations you have an obligation to give up one kidney by a nominally painless surgical procedure.^note Most modern utilitarians reject such reasoning because forcing people to give up organs generally makes them unhappy and knowing a society has authorized such an invasive violation of the individual leads to less happiness overall. They would have far less problem with mandating that organs be harvested from people that have died (with allowances for those with religious objections, say), a policy some countries have implemented, like Australia. Under Kantianism, you’re only obligated to act on a rule that you yourself would want to be generally applied to society. Because a society where people are forced to give up body parts isn’t ideal, nor does it exercise goodwill, you are under no obligation to render your meat stuff to the sick (and therefore have a right to your private property). Kantianism is independent of the consequential suffering of others and thereby negative responsibility. For example, say somebody with a gun takes you and five other people hostage. Your assailant threatens to shoot all the other hostages except if you kill one of them yourself. For this reason, utilitarianism might dictate that you kill one of your fellow hostages or else you’d be morally wrong for letting four hostages die (more suffering, less happiness). Kantianism considers the decisions of your actions and the assailant’s actions as two separate entities: i.e., you’re only responsible for your own actions and the assailant for their own. Therefore, you’re under no moral obligation to murder at gunpoint, and the assailant is solely at fault if they therefore murder the other hostages when you refuse to accept this Sadistic Choice.
  • Religious “moral bundles”, for those who follow a religion that is compatible with atheism such as Buddhism or Jainism, will build their moral code around that.
  • Secular Humanism (basically the idea that humans define morality independent of religion or supernatural forces). It often is some form of utilitarianism, as discussed above.
• Finally, truly cynical people are less likely to call themselves atheists where it is an unpopular label. It’s easier and more rewarding to accept whatever faith is locally considered prestigious, without taking the faith seriously.

• Taking the supernatural out of the equation does remove the basis for many kinds of ‘meaning of life’. Atheists often don’t believe that there is any kind of universal meaning of life, which means that they have to decide the purpose of their life on their own instead. This can be pretty liberating and give a lot of destiny-screwing satisfaction. Indeed, some atheists claim that even if a higher power did exist, it would have no any right to dictate their life and they would still choose their own purpose.
  • The philosophical concept that there is no ultimate meaning that can universally apply to all human beings is called, somewhat confusingly, Philosophical Absurdism. R. Scott Bakker, author of the Second Apocalypse, coined the slightly cooler term Semantic Apocalypse.
  • The man who coined the term Absurdism, Albert Camus, wrote a significant body of work about this idea. The term “absurdism” comes from the idea that the conflict between the impermanence of life and human actions is a paradox and, well, absurd. To quote Wikipedia: “We value our lives and existence so greatly, but at the same time we know we will eventually die, and ultimately our endeavors are meaningless. While we can live with a dualism (I can accept periods of unhappiness, because I know I will also experience happiness to come), we cannot live with the paradox (I think my life is of great importance, but I also think it is meaningless).” Camus’ writings were based around the theme that the paradox, the absurd, showed that the universe was meaningless—but that human endeavors could still create meaning. Basically, we live in a Cosmic Horror Story where the Straw Nihilist is right… yet we create meaning despite it.
• Oddly enough, most atheistic belief systems tend to sit farther toward the idealistic end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism than the religious ones do. This comes in a large part from their acceptance of their own mortality and belief in this world as the only world that matters: if this is all we have, we should do right with it. Further, since atheists believe that we humans have only ourselves to rely on when it comes to moral guidance, the apparent fact that most societies grow more compassionate and egalitarian over time suggests that human nature is pretty virtuous.

Liberal theologians often complain that atheists don’t talk about their religion—that atheists instead mock a caricature based on a shallow understanding of their holy texts. Here are a few possible reasons:

• Interpretations of holy texts are extremely varied between people and over time, and the actual text is the part that can be readily analysed and criticized.
• Religions move the goalposts as time goes by, declaring that parts that were previously considered literal truth are actually myth or parable when science has proven that it can’t be literal truth, or society has evolved too much for the literal sense to be acceptable by contemporary morality. This makes it pointless to attack any specific selection of what is parable and what is literal truth, since they can always simply concede a tiny point and keep everything else unchanged.
  • In fact, one might be led to believe that readers largely decide religious morality and wisdom independently from the text, and interpret the text to mean whatever they want, reading it literally when possible and seeing it as parable otherwise.
• Atheists are more concerned with the literal, extremist religious fringe, who do more harm to society. And those are whom they address. This is particularly aggravating because the two sides are often political allies, for example in defending the separation of church and state.
• Churches that do teach that their holy books are meant to be read literally are powerful social and political forces in some areas, including most of the Deep South of America. Those churches tend to be the ones that push young-Earth creationism and that Noah’s flood was a historical event, and are generally the same people who insist that it is either entirely true or entirely false (‘either the world was created in six literal days 6000 years ago or Jesus doesn’t love you’). They tend to produce atheists at a disproportionately high rate, and those people are just as marked by their culture as those of Catholic origin.

Atheists do not (usually):

• Worship Satan: Atheists do not believe Satan exists any more than they believe God does. Therefore, they cannot worship either. Worshiping the Devil and atheism are mutually incompatible. However, there are a range of philosophies that call themselves “Satanist” without actually requiring belief in a devil. Adherents of those philosophies will typically identify first and foremost as that variety of Satanist, even when "atheist" would also be an accurate description (at least of their position vis-à-vis deities).
• Worship Science, Richard Dawkins, Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection, Galileo (for being persecuted by the Church), and <insert anything science-y here>: Atheists do not worship, venerate, idolize or serve (in the religious sense) anything or anyone, regardless of their stature, existence or whatever. They may respect or even admire certain scientists for their achievements, but they do so without thinking they or anyone else were infallible or had all the answers—or were even necessarily pleasant people. It’s not as if claiming ‘Darwin was racist’ disproves evolutionary biology, for example.
  • In the same vein, atheists do not ‘adhere to’ or ‘believe in’ science in the religious sense of those words. Scientific atheists consider the scientific method an objective method to ascertain how pretty much everything works (or as much of it as we can figure out). It is not a dogmatic belief system. Indeed, the scientific method is based upon the principle that we do not really ‘know’ what is going on and we are constantly trying to learn more. (As Dara Ó Briain said, “Science knows it doesn’t know everything! If it did, it’d stop!”) The nomenclature for hypotheses, theories, and even laws is ‘these ideas seem to work pretty well’, not ‘these are complete and immutable understandings.’ Science assumes a newer, more comprehensive theory will eventually prove every theory incomplete. Therefore, saying things that put on the same level ‘belief in God’ and ‘belief in science’ is a surefire way to make most scientifically minded atheists (which is to say, usually, the majority) really angry. Same with assuming that quotations from the Scriptures are worth as much as quotations from scientific texts during debates.
  • You will occasionally encounter a Vocal Minority who, despite claiming the above, fairly obviously do have an attitude towards ‘science’ (or a false, anthropomorphic projection thereof) which is primarily emotive and illogical. When interacting with such people, it is important to remember that they are a small minority of atheists and that you should not allow them to give you an equally inaccurate and negative preconception, of the many more genuinely rational atheists you will encounter. Honest atheists are willing to recognize and acknowledge that this obnoxious minority genuinely exists (which is also part of the reason why some tropes have been cataloged describing them) and to empathize with those who find said minority annoying; but again, it must be emphasized that that is all these types are; a minority.
• Close their minds and unfairly dismiss all supernatural claims without consideration: A common mantra is “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” If you make a convincing argument for the universe having a ‘first cause’, an atheist might ask you how you know that that cause was intelligent, that it still exists now, and so on. To most atheists, declaring that something is beyond the reach of science is not only obscenely arrogant (just because you can’t detect it doesn’t mean nobody can), but it also disarms you of any objective means to know.
  • This is also a non sequitur: not believing in God does not imply that one will not believe in anything else supernatural, and, conversely, believing in God does not imply that one will believe anything else supernatural.
  • Most atheists dismiss claims of the supernatural because of the lack of evidence. Furthermore, most atheists, especially the truly (and not Strawman-style) skeptical, will admit that their beliefs would change if appropriate evidence were discovered.
  • And some also assert that proving any kind of god wouldn’t mean automatic conversion, as there are still questions like: ‘Is this god worthy of worship?’ ‘Are they good, or some of the other alternatives?’ ‘Do they even want to be worshipped?’ Etc.
  • It is worth considering that any truly supernatural claim is, at its heart, saying that the observable and testable fundamental laws of the universe that humanity has thus far been able to determine were, in this specific instance, violated; that being the case, the explanation had better have some seriously convincing evidence or reasoning attached to it. Most supernatural claims fall at the first hurdle under one of the following:
    • It’s from a seriously ancient document, which has no external corroboration from any other historical account, and can easily be classified as mythology, propaganda, poetic metaphor, or some other form of storytelling.
    • It has no determinable primary source: something that happened to a friend of a friend one time, in another country, years ago, we lost the photos when we moved…
    • It can be explained more simply by being just a coincidence, even if it’s a somewhat remarkable coincidence. Coincidences do happen, and in a population of more than eight billion people, some pretty remarkable coincidences are going to happen somewhere, to someone with surprising regularity.
    • It is, sadly, much more easily explained by outright fraud, con-artistry, or a magic trick presented as being real. Be they a faith-healer, a psychic, a medium, or a spoon-bender, first ask: Is there a professional stage magician who can also do this without claiming they do it with supernatural powers? If so, above all else, keep hold of your money.
    • It is totally unremarkable when you trim away the extraneous detail: ‘I prayed for rain, and it rained!’ Right: how long after you prayed did the rain start? Three days, you say? Four, if you count the day you prayed? And it was in England? In the rainy season?^note That is, for England, either Winter, Spring, Autumn, or Summer. And you prayed… right after the weather forecaster said there was rain on the way this week?
• Hate God/Christians/Jews/Muslims/religious people: Well, not all atheists. While there really are die-hard strong atheists that you do not want to put along with fundamentalists in the same forum (and, as you would expect, they are overrepresented in the public eye), being an atheist does not oblige one to despise God or the concept of him/her/them, look down on religious people, or point and laugh and say ‘Those ignorant primitives!’ Those who do are what we like to call ‘Jerks.’ First, many atheists will tell you numerous points on which they agree with major religious figures. Second, almost all atheists have friends who believe in a God and will gladly maintain that friendship as long as neither person in the relationship is a jerk or Knight Templar about their beliefs.
  • Many atheists assert that they cannot hate that in which they do not believe, which makes the idea that they ‘hate’ God quite … strange. In a similar sense, most atheists do not believe in dragons and as such cannot hate them.
  • Technically, hatred of God is called misotheism, and the belief that God actually exists but is evil is called dystheism or maltheism. In TV Tropes we call that Nay Theism. In contrast, the distaste some atheists have for God as a fictional character is unrelated to God’s existence, the same way a lot of Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar Binks but don’t think he actually exists. It's called “hypothetical misotheism” specifically.
  • Most atheists are not interested in the full annihilation of theistic beliefs, though many are concerned about its real-world effects. More common is support for both freedom of religion and strict separation of church and state: protection for religion where it exists, but restriction of its support to that of its adherents.
  • Some atheists, perhaps unexpectedly, even practice religions. Atheism is quite compatible with Buddhism, secular Judaism, and Unitarian Universalism; some branches of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) have atheist/agnostic members as well. That said, religious atheists are not likely to self-identify as atheists, but instead as members of their religions. There are even atheists who attend theist churches (such as Christian Services) because they grew up in it and find it comforting, or because it is a part of their community, or because they like singing loudly where no one complains if they do badly.
  • Also, most atheists will observe the holidays common to their cultures regardless of religious content, like Christmas. This is more a matter of tradition and having an excuse to party or spend time with family and friends than religion for them.
  • In a similar vein, most atheists will not make a conscious effort to avoid religious exclamations that have long been a cultural norm, such as ‘Oh my God!’, ‘Hell no’, et cetera.
  • The belief that atheists hate religious people likely stems from a confusion between atheism, anti-theism and anti-religion. To be an anti-theist is to disagree with the concept of theism or of a God in whatever form, usually by criticizing such beliefs. Anti-religious people oppose at least one religion or could oppose religions in general, including atheistic religions. It is perfectly possible for a religious person to be anti-theistic or anti-religious to a rival religion. Some atheists are anti-theists or anti-religious, while others are neither. The fact that the most prominent critics of religion and theism tend to be atheists likely gave rise to the confusion.
    • Even the strongest anti-theist or anti-religious persons don’t necessarily hate the members of that religion, commonly stating things such as ‘you are better than your god’, as they attempt to explain how the religious person is moral even in the face of a god they claim is evil. It is quite similar, perhaps ironically, to the Christian principle of ‘love the sinner, hate the sin.’ Other than that, atheists who believe that religious belief stems from childhood indoctrination tend to go to the logical conclusion that religious people never chose to be religious and cannot hate them or despise them because of their unchosen beliefs.
  • On a related note, the classic origin of the Hollywood Atheist where a terrible event that causes the to-be atheist to lose faith in their deity or religion does happen, but these cases are not the majority or even a sizeable minority. Becoming an atheist/losing or acknowledging your loss of faith is mostly a lengthy process and it mostly takes years before a former theist is ready to call themselves an atheist. On the other hand, some people may have originally identified as theists, yet faith was just never a big part of their lives, so there is no real defining point of when they started being atheists. Others yet simply never were theists.
• Adhere to Moral Nihilism / Deny God so they can do the wrong thing without guilt: The argument goes, ‘Without God, who would give us right and wrong and a meaning in life?’ If God disappeared, would everybody then immediately be Driven to Suicide or default to evil? The atheist would argue that there are ways to determine right and wrong (see below) and that they can figure them out on their own, sometimes through well-thought-out reason, a search for enlightenment or just plain empathy, without needing any God or metaphysics. Buddhism and Secular Humanism (non-theistic ethical codes) might be referenced.
  • Some atheists usually respond to this by pointing out that the fundamentalists aren’t really moral because they’re basically confessing that they need a dogma to avoid becoming evil. The argument is that if the Fifth Commandment is the only thing stopping you from committing murder, you’re obeying because you fear divine punishment, not out of the goodness of your heart.
  • Besides, this suggestion doesn’t even make sense; if the ‘atheist’ really believed there was a God who would punish actions of which He/She/They disapproved, they would be as averse to performing those actions as any other person who believed this (which, granted, isn’t very in some cases). It would be worse than pointless to use their fake atheism as a fig leaf, since that would presumably just compound the problems they would face when God caught up with them.
  • This may coincide with the concept of the ‘virtuous pagan’, someone not of the religion or who lived before the religion in question existed and still did good works.
  • Besides the above, most atheists will also point out that being atheists does not absolve them of moral accountability, since they must operate within their society and are thus answerable to other humans for their actions.
• Have an angry, bitter or depressed disposition: The common stereotype that atheists are perpetually angry and/or defensive is often used as ‘proof’ that atheism makes people unhappy. Ironically, atheists might be less cranky if fewer people of faith asked them ‘Why are you unbelievers so mad all the time?’ (Less ironically, the continual repetition of any of these myths can have a similarly infuriating effect.) For one thing, the existence of angry atheists does not invalidate the existence of generally cheerful and upbeat ones, just as there are ‘God is love’ believers as well as ‘fire and brimstone’ believers. For another, many people have things they get upset about, which may be the perception and treatment of atheists in society for atheists. It doesn’t mean that the non-religious are angry all the time. Many atheists are simply happy, well-adjusted people who aren’t bitter at all. The stereotype seems to originate from the idea that atheists must be angry at God (see above), or that without belief in God, atheists must be unhappy all the time. Heck, some atheists are even happier without the concept of God.
  • Unsurprisingly, there have been scientific studies on this subject, although the conclusions might be fairly described as ‘ambiguous’: some studies found a positive correlation between religious fervor and happiness, some studies found no significant correlation, and at least one study has found a negative correlation. None, of course, has found a binary division between uniformly contented theists and uniformly depressed atheists.
  • One study found a U-curve when happiness was plotted with the strongly religious on one side, the strongly atheistic on the other, and the more in-between/uncertain people in the middle. The most strongly atheistic and religious people were the happiest, with those caught in between the least. This implied that happiness was caused by your degree of certainty in your worldview rather than on the content of that belief, or at least that those who had decided which answer they were satisfied with spent less time worrying over it than those who hadn’t.
  • Given the degree and severity of psychological (and sometimes sexual) abuse which some Christians have experienced during childhood, you may at times encounter new atheists/former Christians who appear to conform to the ‘angry’ stereotype. This can be because they are still experiencing pain due to post-traumatic stress, or it may also be due to cognitive dissonance. If reinforcement of the idea that they were going to Hell was particularly strong, then residual mind control along these lines may still cause a former Christian considerable emotional distress, even if logically they no longer have this belief.
    
    When you encounter atheists or former Christians who are in this situation, it is important to remember that the main thing they need is compassion. While they may at times react to you in a similar manner to that of the proverbial wounded animal (that is, use aggression to alienate or drive people away, etc.), you should not falsely associate their pain with atheism as a whole, but should instead recognize it as a consequence of the abuse that they have suffered. They don’t need more condemnation for their anger; they need understanding and healing.
  • As a related point to the above, some atheists can have an extremely strong sense of positive morality themselves, and if they appear angry, it can be due to the mistreatment which they have seen people receive at the hands of Christians. In some cases, this has led some atheists to positive action, as far as activism against Catholic child sexual abuse is concerned or attempting to start secular charitable organisations.
• Adhere to Communism, Nazism, or <insert extreme or acceptable-target political ideology here>: Atheism by itself does not entail any political views; there are atheists who are liberals, conservatives, socialists, social democrats, anarchists, libertarians, and every other affiliation conceivable. Certain trends or tendencies occasionally manifest—e.g., the strong religious bent of the American right causes many atheists there to gravitate towards the American left—but they are by no means decisive or shared by all. To give an obvious counterexample: Objectivism, which is an ideology based on an atheistic interpretation of the world, endorses a radically pro-free market and laissez-faire agenda. It may not be popular among western atheists, but it still counts.
  
  Incidentally, Communism is associated with atheism because most communist philosophies denounce religion and embrace state atheism and the Red Scare was America's first encounter with widespread rejection of religion (one that would last for several decades). Even so, the association of Communism with irreligion is hardly perfect. As noted in the Reality Is Unrealistic page, even at the height of the USSR’s power, religion was never suppressed completely, or even as much as the Red Scare portrayals would have you believe. The Russian Empire had one of the largest populations of Orthodox Christians in history, and a mere few decades would not have been enough to enforce atheism over it even had the Soviets seriously tried. They didn’t. While they did start trying to enforce it, reality on the ground made it extremely difficult to implement, and the Russian Orthodox Church remained a significant enough force in the USSR’s internal politics that even Stalin had to play nice with them. Khrushchev did try to bring some of the sanctions back, but these were again relaxed by the Brezhnev era. There were antisemitic actions aplenty, but the long history of European antisemitism had much more to do with it than the communist doctrine of the USSR (and it was more ethnic than religious persecution of Jews in any case—they were classed as a distinct ethnicity in the USSR). “Opium of the people” or not, even the USSR’s doctrine had to bend to the sociopolitical demands of reality.
  • Some atheists use the ‘political religion’ idea to argue that totalitarian systems of government are simply another form of the irrationality they see and reject in religion. Indeed, empiricism, humanism and skepticism are concepts frequently associated with atheism (or that atheists frequently associate themselves with) but are hardly the values smart dictators want their people to be familiar with. To use the words of Sam Harris: “The problem with Nazism and Communism is not that they are not religions, but that they are too much like religions!”, albeit particularly cruel and inhuman ones. Whether one believes this to be true or not, no serious historian cites atheism as a significant factor in the rise or actions of Hitler or Stalin.
• Spontaneously find God in foxholes: Contrary to the popular adage, there are and have been atheists in foxholes. Sometimes it may well be the old ‘Cynicism Catalyst leading them to abandon religion’ as per the usual origin of the Hollywood Atheist. Most often, however, some soldiers started as atheists and live through their horrible experiences with their atheism intact. Many such atheists find ‘No atheists in foxholes’ shockingly insensitive to atheist soldiers who served their country well.
  • Some take what one sees in foxholes as the best proof there could be of the nonexistence of God, or at least of a God that is at the same time all-powerful, all-knowing and benevolent; if such a being existed, so the argument goes, they would know about, want to eliminate, and be able to eliminate the evils that exist in the world, therefore if God existed (and fit the above description), the world would be a much nicer place than it is. This is actually a popular argument against specific gods (usually the God of Judaism / Christianity / Islam) and is referred to as The Problem of Evil.
  • A related misconception is that, in times of great danger or trauma, any atheist (soldier or otherwise) will prove to be so uncertain about their convictions that they will immediately abandon atheism and turn to the nearest available deity. While some atheists not so certain about their standpoint may do that, a lot fewer do so than what popular media would have you believe. Just as the atheist soldiers in the above example, most atheists are perfectly capable of living through horrible experiences with atheism intact. Contrary suggestions are downright insulting, not just insensitive.
  • Some people use the full line, ‘“There are no atheists in foxholes” isn’t an argument against atheism, it’s an argument against foxholes,’ to justify that the use of the first part of the phrase isn’t really meant to be offensive towards atheists. Such people go on to state that it’s meant to portray atheists and anyone else in foxholes positively along the lines of ‘race, color, or creed doesn’t matter’ during times of war. Many atheists don’t buy this explanation and cite that replacing atheists in the full line with some other minority like Jews or homosexuals illustrates perfectly how offensive the line is at its core, as doing so would produce an instant uproar from such groups. Essentially, even the full line comes across more as saying ‘You Are a Credit to Unbelievers’ than anything else.
  • Indeed, there are several atheist organizations for military members. One? Foxhole Atheists.
  • Even if this does happen sometimes, it’s highly debatable what it tells us about anything. If somebody makes a desperate move when in mortal peril, does that say anything about the validity of the considered opinion they formed in complete safety?
• Want to take your rights/religion/babies away/believe killing theists is morally justified: If only because atheists are a minority in many countries, many atheists are strong supporters of individual rights with respect to religion and context. Atheists often argue that religion ought not to be perpetuated, but they are usually arguing this as an idea which people should support, not a law. An ironic point is that some religious doctrines, usually applied in conservative places, condone the murder of specific people, based on religion or lack of it, as well as other factors.
  • Atheism attracts fanatics just like everything else, who believe it is not only their right but their science-given duty to shame, embarrass, ridicule, and mock religion, making it uncomfortable for those who follow it. However, outside a few totalitarian countries, past and present, few people demand atheism by force, and not only does fighting ‘the tyranny of religion’ so they can impose the tyranny of atheism not help, they are marginalized.
    • Even those who do believe in shaming religious believers do not usually advocate laws banning religious freedom. P.Z. Myers of the blog Pharyngula is probably the most well-known ‘Mock the religious’ atheist, but he has on several occasions shown disgust at religious oppression in Middle Eastern countries. The Scathing Atheist crew, whose general attitude to religion you can infer from the title of the podcast, will gladly and enthusiastically stand with people of minority religions who suffer oppression from those of majority religions, wherever in the world they may be, despite all the jokes they make about wanting to BLEEEEEEEEP certain joyless and hateful religious fundamentalists.
    • One idea to add is that many conflate the term ‘ridicule’ with ‘criticize,’ hopefully without bias, as well as ‘a theist being accused of wrongdoing’ with ‘their religious doctrines being the target of the attack.’ Pointing out inconsistencies in a set of scriptures as objectively as possible (done mostly if people intend to teach parts of their scriptures as indisputable facts) does not equal bashing it mindlessly as mere glorified fan-fiction; attacking someone over their actions does not equal attacking the entire premises of their religion if any—or all—of that religion’s practitioners because of said person’s deeds. Finally, denouncing religious doctrines that obviously harm people should not be blindly labeled as bad. After all, if only because sentient beings have rights while mere ideas don’t, no idea should be above reasonable criticism, though no idea should be randomly bashed either.

• Atheism has gained some mainstream traction, though even before it did, there were many people in the entertainment industry who were atheists. Noted examples include Gene Roddenberry, J. Michael Straczynski, Joss Whedon, and Russell T Davies. Atheistic themes tend to show up primarily in science fiction and its sub-genres, often alongside religious themes.
• Prominent television characters who are atheists include Dr. Gregory House of House and William Adama of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Though never explicitly stated, Captain Picard of Star Trek: The Next Generation often articulated ideas consistent with Roddenberry’s brand of secular humanism (the right of civilizations to develop unimpeded, the immorality and danger of using religion as a tool of manipulation, et cetera).
  • In fact, atheism seems to be the norm in Star Trek. The Bajoran Prophets are natural, though alien, beings (so the religion isn't supernatural, but they did spark debates between characters about where one draws the line between genuine gods and Sufficiently Advanced Aliens, and the importance of ‘faith’ in making that determination), and Klingon tradition is that their ancestors wiped out the gods that created them for being “more trouble than they were worth”. Everyone else is mostly secular, although later series after Roddenberry died showed religion more openly (albeit none of the majority human religions we have now, like Christianity, but that could have just been avoiding the Moral Guardians). The Next Generation episode “Who Watches the Watchers” was the most anti-religious/anti-theistic the show ever got, and even that depiction came out of nowhere, with it never being mentioned again.
• Although they are sometimes implicitly ascribed this status, unlike the clergy of organized religions well-known atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens do not actually represent other atheists in any official capacity. Non-atheists sometimes have trouble with this because they are used to the idea that (for example) a Baptist minister represents a Baptist ministry, but atheists don’t have ministries because atheism is a lack of belief, not a belief system.
  • To put it another way: such people are not spokespeople for atheism. They’re only spokespeople for their own interpretation of atheism, which will attract some people, repel others, and have a null effect on many more. Any correlation between the views of popular atheists and the views of any other random atheists is purely coincidental (beyond ‘we don’t think gods exist’). It is more likely for an atheist to say, ‘This person says what I think, only more eloquently,’ than to treat them as persons to follow.
  • Indeed, even the Four Horsemen of New Atheism themselves (Dawkins, Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris) have (or had) some very strong opinions which conflict with each other. To paraphrase Dawkins: trying to get atheists to agree with each other is the intellectual equivalent of herding cats, and just as futile.
• In London, an Atheist Bus Campaign decided to raise £11,000 to counter the evangelizing of religious groups, and lo and behold, atheists put aside their differences and stumped up the cash. Richard Dawkins offered to match the first £5,500 worth of donations. The target was reached within a few hours of the website going live and the money kept coming. After four or so days the final amount raised was about £150,000. Wikipedia has more information here.
  • Noteworthy here is that adverts by religious organizations are generally considered appeals for membership: ‘Join Our Church (because) we believe in X’, with X automatically ruled an expression of faith or point of doctrine. Atheism operates from a purely secular perspective and constitutes a public call to action, therefore falling under a more stringent set of commercial and political advertising rules.
  • Incidentally, those ads have been spotted on buses in and around Washington, D.C.
• As with the above London bus ads, a few atheist organizations have begun renting advertising in the U.S. as well. These have raised quite a bit of controversy.
  • One popular campaign gets pictures of local atheists along with a quote from them along the lines of ‘I’m an atheist and I’m a good person,’ usually with a first name and the individual’s job. Despite being a very mild example, even this has raised ire.
  • Another is the “You can be good without God” campaign.
  • There’s “Don’t believe in God? You’re not alone.” Notice that the article’s picture cuts out the bit about god.
  • And ultimately, Justin Vacula decided to test how much offense he’d generate with the most inoffensive ad he could devise, a bus ad which merely said “Atheists.”, with the name and web addresses of two atheist organizations. They refused to run it because it was too “controversial.”
• Generation Xero Films has produced a series of YouTube videos entitled “Anything But an Atheist,” dealing with recent poll results that show that atheists are “the most hated and mistrusted minority population in America”.
• During the Cold War, most of Eastern Europe was under de facto Soviet rule. Considering their socialism harshly shunned organized religion for propagating class differences, which had some merit in Marx’s time, the depiction of religion in state media was minuscule at best. Most works simply didn’t acknowledge its existence to spare themselves from the claws of state censorship. Atheism was also state-enforced through propaganda and education, so this was the sole official message people got.
• All the protagonists of The Debbie and Carrie Show (Debbie Smith, Carrie Sims, Sandy Smith, Jessica Sims and Lucy Sims) are openly atheist. Many episodes of the series deal with them fighting back at the bigotry against them for being atheist.