How to Be an Atheist?

An atheist is someone that does not believe in gods or deities. Just like religious people, atheists have their own boundaries, beliefs, and ethical stances, and any two atheists may exercise their lack of religion in completely different ways. In order to be an atheist, you must decide what it means to you to live without religion — whether your background is religious or secular. You must define your own morals, face your own mortality, and figure out how to respectfully explain your beliefs to your religious peers.

The Facts of Evolution

"Let me lay my cards on the table. If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone has ever had, I'd give it to Darwin, ahead of Newton and Einstein and everyone else." - Daniel Dennett

Creationists, when they complain about the theory of evolution, do not really do either of those things. Either they misunderstand the theory when they try to comprehend it or they grouse without even trying to comprehend. Every time the creationists complain against the theory, it is very obvious that they have no idea of what they are talking about. Here, I am going to show 9 sheer facts of the theory of evolution, which definitely could help a rational person to defend the theory while a creationist would whine against it.

History of Atheism

Atheism has existed in various forms for well over two thousand years, but became a culturally powerful movement only in the past two centuries. Several ancient philosophers, such as Democritus and Epicurus, disputed the existence of the popular Greek and Roman gods or at least questioned their involvement in human affairs. Sextus Empiricus advocated an extreme form of skepticism that was also atheistic. The Enlightenment, an intellectual and cultural movement emerging toward the end of the eighteenth century, rejected the Bible and any other revelation and insisted on unguided human reason as the sole authority in all matters of knowledge. Enlightenment thinkers tended at first to hold to Deism, the belief that a Creator God made the universe but has no further involvement in it, but its method led quickly to atheism.

What is Atheism?

Atheism is, in the broadest sense, the absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is the rejection of belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which, in its most general form, is the belief that at least one deity exists.

The term atheism originated from the Greek ἄθεος (atheos), meaning "without god(s)", used as a pejorative term applied to those thought to reject the gods worshiped by the larger society.

Why Do Atheists Debate Theists?

There is a common perception that there must be something more to atheism than simply disbelief in gods because of the fact that atheists are so often engaged in debates with theists. After all, what’s the point of debating if not to convert someone to some other philosophy or religion? It is, then, legitimate to ask why atheists get involved in such debates and what they hope to achieve. Does this indicate that atheism is some sort of philosophy or even a religion?