Do people really not know what atheism is?

>Do people really not know what atheism is?

Yep. There are still lots of people who believe that atheists hate God or worship Satan or something, and others who believe that atheists really believe in God and are just in denial. The ignorance just astounds, doesn't it?

>I think these people genuinely believe what they're saying.

Unfortunately, yes.

>The definition of atheist seems pretty simple to me, but is it actually quite hard to understand?

No. However, you have to keep in mind that religion thrives off people not understanding things. If everyone understood everything, there would be no religion at all! This is why many churches are careful to feed people misleading information about atheists, other religions, and many other things besides. The people then perpetuate it among themselves, forming a sort of barrier to rational thought that helps these people resist being educated by those who know the facts. I mean, if a christian is told by all their relatives that atheists worship Satan and eat babies, and by some random atheist on the Internet that atheists don't believe in either God or Satan and hardly ever eat babies, who are they going to believe? It takes a lot to educate someone surrounded by such a thick shroud of ignorance. Fortunately though, we have the facts on our side.

Atheism is easy to understand. It is the belief that there are no gods, god or deities of any type. End of story!

This is in contrast to a theist, a person that believes in the existence of some form of god, gods or deities. That's it!

There are different types of atheists. There are implicit atheists and explicit atheist, strong and weak atheism. There is pragmatic atheism and contemplative atheism as well. Then there are antitheist. Antitheists, like myself, believe that theism, the belief is god, gods and the 'divine' is detrimental to humanity. While most atheists are also irreligious, meaning that they have no religion (and is some cases are also against religion from a philosophical perspective) there are others that are very religious. There are forms of Zen Buddhism that do not require or teach the existence of any form of god just as there are schools of Hinduism that are atheistic. Also some of the more modern religions, such as LaVeyan Satanism is completely atheistic. They do not believe in god, gods, deities or devils in any way.

Now, you may find this all confusing and thing how can anyone understand atheism. The point is that while there are various types of atheism and atheists have a multitude of personal beliefs, the only important concept is that atheists do NOT believe in a god, gods or deities.

That said, theism is FAR more diverse. After all, Christians, Jews, Muslims, some forms of Hinduism, Shinto, Taoism, Wicca and dozens of other religions are all theistic and their adherents are theists. Within the large grouping of theists there is monotheism, polytheism, henotheism, pantheism, panentheism and deism and some of these can be broken down into other sub groupings such as monodeism and polydeism. Some theists believe that god MUST be worshiped others believe that he just exists and a few believe that anyone who does not believe in and worship their god is subhuman and should be punished, killed or enslaved. Still others believe that all gods on earth are in reality the same god just perceived differently depending on the location and the time period. But despite these various differences, the only important thing to remember is that theists believe in a god, gods or deities. Outside of this, you are entering the realm of other classifications and distinctions.

So, the answer is YES, people really do know what atheism is...and now, so do you. ;-)

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Atheism = lack of belief in deities.

Some other definitions:

"Strong" atheism = belief there is no god (rare)

"Weak" atheism = lack of belief in deities (me!)

Anything else that people attach to atheism is not part of atheism itself. For instance, some Christians see science as an important tool for understanding the world or improving modern medicine. That does not make Science Christian though!

Most atheists have arrived at the doorstep of non-belief due to lack of empirical evidence for any religion. That kind of thought process is often part of a process called "skepticism," "reason," or "critical thinking." You'll see that thing in lots of posts by non-theists. But it is not a part of atheism itself - it is peripheral. Some people mistake the uniformity of those answers as evidence that atheism is a belief system - when it is not.

Hope this helps!

Also, some movements or philosophies associated with (but not) atheism include Secular Humanism, which supports secular governments and has no belief in deities.

P.S. Some Christians (cough, cough) like to attach the word "militant" in front of anything they dislike. You get "militant atheism," "militant Islam," "militant secularism." It's all just aggrandizing. When did you last see an atheist plowing a skyscraper into a building? Is it really considered "militant" (implying physical violence) to debate with gusto on the boards or to ask that public tax dollars don't go to specific religious institutions? I know of a few mainstream Christians whose beliefs would be considered "militant" if we turned the same definitions on their programming (Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell).

Yikes, there is so much baloney said about atheists these days.

The atheism item of itself is pretty easy to define: an atehiest is without belief in God. We could then further divide these people into gnostic and agnostic atheists to distinguish those who know there is no God from those who don't know but aren't persuaded by any form of theism.

More regrettably, in certain circles there is a tendency to apply political clustering to atheists, by way of implying that if they are atheists, that then they must also...be communists, homosexuals, art majors, admirers of Dane Cook and myriad other evils.

I've always thought of atheists as people who don't believe in god, or any deities, and that there is no divine anything, and no higher powers at all. Nothing but this world, and us.

But I think that a lot of people call themselves atheists, because they don't know what else to call themselves, and they're not sure what they believe in.

I know people that call themselves atheists, but they believe in heaven and hell. But if I believed in heaven and hell I wouldn't call myself an atheist.

I think lots of people just define it in different ways.

It's really difficult to understand.

Everyone has to believe in something - aetheists themselves believe strongly in the fact that there is no God - that is what drives them, just as the beleif IN God (or some higher being or force), is what drives others.

The only people who really don't believe in anything are agnostics, who have no view whatsoever.

Its hard to understand if you can't fathom that our existence is the final existence. We as atheists accept that this life is our only life we got. We're blessed by sheer dumb luck. Not in an entity sense but just out of random. We don't have a purpose, only to live and reproduce. No need for worship, no need for faith, no need for a spiritual dogma. We got ourselves and that's all we need.

It is a belief in no God. But it is not a belief system. It is not a religion of fellows united in unbelief. There are no fanatical atheists. It just looks like that to some of us.

Nowadays one is either an 'atheist' or a 'militant atheist'.

They are almost completely different. Atheism historically is not believing and does not imply any animus against those who do believe.

But nowadays (just look here at Yahoo! Answers) to not believe is often to agressively attack those who do.

You are an example. I can't tell which you are.

For some people, particularly religionists, even the simplest things can be quite difficult to grasp. That's what brainwashing does to people. They are so brainwashed into believing that god exists that they can't comprehend that some people don't believe in god.