Someone tells you there's a god. If they haven't shown you enough good reasons to believe it, you're not convinced. That's all atheism is. It doesn't mean you hate God, have no morals, or claim to know for certain there's nothing out there.
Atheism is about belief: "Do you believe a god exists?" If the answer isn't "yes", you're an atheist. Agnosticism is about knowledge: "Do you know?" Most atheists are also agnostic: they don't claim to know there's no god, they just haven't seen good evidence for one.
1. Belief vs. knowledge: find yourself on the map
Two different questions, so four possible answers. Tap a square.
2. Who has to prove what?
Whoever makes a claim has to support it. That's called the burden of proof. If someone says "there's a dragon in my garage", it's not your job to prove there isn't. It's their job to show there is. Remember the gumball jar: not believing "it's even" doesn't mean you believe "it's odd".
- "You can't prove God doesn't exist." True. You also can't prove there are no invisible fairies. That's why we don't believe things just because they can't be disproven.
- "It takes more faith to be an atheist." Not believing a claim takes no faith. Faith is what you need when there isn't enough evidence.
- "Everyone believes in something." Sure: atheists believe in lots of things, like friends, science, and doing right by people. Just not in gods.
3. The world's religions, by the numbers
Share of the world's population in 2020, from Pew Research Center's 2025 global study.1
In the United States, 29% of adults are religiously unaffiliated: 5% call themselves atheists, 6% agnostics, and 19% "nothing in particular". 62% are Christian.2 Between 2010 and 2020 only two groups grew as a share of the world: Muslims, mainly because of young populations and high birth rates, and the unaffiliated, mainly because people left religion.
4. Doubt is ancient
People have questioned the gods as long as there have been gods to question.
5. Common myths about atheists
| Myth | Reality |
|---|---|
| "Atheists have no morals." | Morality comes from empathy, fairness and living together. See Morality without God. |
| "Atheism is a religion." | No beliefs, rituals, holy book or leaders are required. "Not collecting stamps" isn't a hobby. |
| "Atheists are angry at God." | You can't be angry at something you don't think exists. People may be angry at how religion has treated them. |
| "There are no atheists in foxholes." | There are. Military atheist groups exist in many countries. |
| "Atheists think the universe came from nothing." | "We don't know yet" is the honest answer to some questions. See The Big Bang and Where did life come from? |
6. Watch it explained
About a quarter of the world's people have no religion, and doubt about the gods goes back more than 2,500 years.
Deep down, everyone knows God exists (Romans 1:19–20), so atheists are suppressing the truth.
Philosophers like Alvin Plantinga argue that belief in God can be "properly basic", like trusting your memory or believing other minds exist: reasonable without proof. Others say that defining atheism as "lack of belief" dodges the work of defending a view. The reply: plenty of atheists do give positive arguments (the problem of evil, divine hiddenness; see Arguments for & against God). And "properly basic" beliefs are ones nearly everyone shares, while belief in a particular god depends heavily on where you were born.
Sources
- Pew Research Center, How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020 (June 2025).
- Pew Research Center, 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study: Executive Summary (February 2025).
- Tim Whitmarsh, Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World (Knopf, 2015); Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927).