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Charges of atheism (meaning any subversion of religion) were often used similarly to charges of heresy and impiety as a political tool to eliminate enemies. Early Christians were widely reviled as atheists because they did not participate in the cults of the Greco-Roman gods .
An atheist who said "I do not accept the Christian or any other form of religious belief" but not a secularist, saying he supported the established church "from the outside". He likened religion in general to a "dangerous narcotic" and said he thought death meant simply "black velvet - eternal sleep". [172]
Accurate demographics of atheism are difficult to obtain since conceptions of atheism and self-identification are context dependent by culture. [12] In 2009, Pew stated that only 5% of the US population did not have a belief in a god and out of that small group only 24% self-identified as "atheist", while 15% self-identified as "agnostic" and ...
State atheism or atheist state is the incorporation of hard atheism or non-theism into political regimes. [27] It is considered the opposite of theocracy and may also refer to large-scale secularization attempts by governments. [ 28 ]
The secular movement refers to a social and political trend in the United States, [1] beginning in the early years of the 20th century, with the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism in 1925 and the American Humanist Association in 1941, in which atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, and other nonreligious and nontheistic Americans have grown in ...
Less violent attempts to reduce or eliminate the influence of religion in society were also carried out at other times in Soviet history. For instance, it was usually necessary to be an atheist in order to acquire any important political position or any prestigious scientific job; thus, many people became atheists in order to advance their careers.
The political history of the world is the history of the various political entities created by the human race throughout their existence and the way these states define their borders. Throughout history , political systems have expanded from basic systems of self-governance and monarchy to the complex democratic and totalitarian systems that ...
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the 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 is the belief that at least one deity exists.