Is Atheism Still Relevant Today

Today, religion is an extremely relevant, popping up along with topics of charitable acts, religious extremism, and questionable practices in the news. This is due to the diverse set of religions coexist around the modern world, each with its own interesting stories, beliefs, and participants. Along with all of these, however, exist another mindset that is neither a religion nor a belief system: atheism. Much like many religions, atheism has its own continuing story, which develops to this day, as well as certain core values and ideals. Additionally, atheism also has multiple branches, each with a different perspective of human lives and the world. Atheism is the conclusion held by atheists that gods do not exist. It is not a belief or a

Atheistic thought had appeared sporadically before major monotheistic religions like Christianity and Islam were introduced; entertained thoughts of a perceived reality guided by no god of any kind are seen in the writings of the Roman philosopher Cicero around 80 B.C.E. (James). It was around this time, especially with the intellectual enlightenment the Romans and Greeks experienced, that philosophers examined the logical organization of atheism and its implications for worldviews and religions. Since then, atheism has come a long way, notably finding itself at odds with the Catholic Church in developing Europe. Surges in atheism is found in history to be correlated rather strongly with events such as the Renaissance, Scientific Revolution, and Age of Enlightenment, where rational thought and human ability was extolled beyond religions at this time (James). This occurred as a concentration of human thought would lead to natural human questioning, causing atheism to gain attention. In periods such as these, atheists would be punished severely by their surrounding communities, who were largely religious. Today, the juxtaposition between atheism and religion is becoming more prominent, as American millennials have been shown to be losing faith in a god: in 2007, 83% of a group of surveyed millennials

The appeal of religion is generally based off of assumption, trust, and human hope, but as the world is progressing in evidenced science, technology, and information, atheism tends to line up with this type of thinking and become more appealing. The main tenet of atheism is that no god exists, and this conclusion stems from the following logic: “the burden of proof is not on the atheist to give grounds for believing that there is no reality of that order. Rather, the burden of proof is on the believer to give some evidence for a god’s existence—i.e., that there is such a reality” (Nielsen). As the default is the observable world around us, which does not display concrete, evidenced signs of a god, the argument follows that any other reality must have evidence to back it up, and thus gods do not exist. Of the options of a god existing versus not existing, the latter is the observed reality and is more rational in logic. Additional observations by atheists about many religions is that religions often rely on the logical fallacy of begging the question to support their ideals (Nielsen). Such circular reasoning can be seen in Christianity, for example, where the Bible is stated as the word of God, who is to be believed as the Bible claims God is all-knowing. Other criticisms of religion include the idea of religion not adequately explaining the existence of evil in the world. Though there are many arguments