12 Facts About Atheism

Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities.

Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.

Atheism has been regarded as compatible with agnosticism, but has been contrasted with it.

Atheism is commonly defined as the simple absence of belief that any deities exist.

Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.

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Atheism was first used to describe a self-avowed belief in late 18th-century Europe, specifically denoting disbelief in the monotheistic Abrahamic god.

Atheism describes the "expansive naturalism" of John McDowell, James Griffin and David Wiggins as giving "due respect to scientific findings" while asserting there are things in human experience which cannot be explained in such terms, such as the concept of value, leaving room for theism.

Atheism is not mutually exclusive with respect to some religious and spiritual belief systems, including Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Syntheism, Raelism, and Neopagan movementssuch as Wicca.

Atheism found that there are much lower concentrations of atheism and secularity in poorer, less developed nations than in the richer industrialized democracies.

Atheism's findings relating specifically to atheism in the US were that compared to religious people in the US, "atheists and secular people" are less nationalistic, prejudiced, antisemitic, racist, dogmatic, ethnocentric, closed-minded, and authoritarian, and in US states with the highest percentages of atheists, the murder rate is lower than average.

Atheism is accepted as a valid philosophical position within some varieties of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism.

Atheism was followed by two other explicit atheist writers, the Polish ex-Jesuit philosopher Kazimierz Lyszczynski and in the 1720s by the French priest Jean Meslier.