People become atheists for different reasons
Some atheists assume that if they point out evils committed in the name of religion, people will renounce or drift away from religion. But this is not the motivation of many atheists. Ahmed Benchemsi, editor in chief of FreeArabs.com, wrote "Invisible Atheists: The spread of disbelief in the Arab world" for the New Republic on April 23, 2015. Benchemsi said, for Arabs who do renounce Islam, "repudiating terror is rarely the motivation." That doesn't mean that they endorse terrorism, of course; it means that they have entirely different reasons for whether they believe in God. Benchemsi quoted Brian Whitaker, author of Arabs Without God, who noted that "atheism is a rejection of all forms of religion, not just the more outlandish variants of it." Benchemsi observes that Amir Ahmad Nasr, Afro-Arab Sudanese blogger and author of My Isl@m: How Fundamentalism Stole My Mind—and Doubt Freed My Soul, from a young age observed contradictions in scripture and theology. That's the most popular reason for labeling oneself an atheist, and the second is "oppression they personally experienced in the name of religion."
Benchemsi writes:
"'Religion is a form of surveillance,' said [Moroccan atheist activist Imad Iddine] Habib. 'It's not about God; it’s about the power wielded by those who act in his name.' Habib, Willoughby, and many others have switched to atheism as an act of rebellion. But their rebellion is less against Islam than against the abuses committed by religiously powered individuals and political systems."
Another viewpoint:
Lilith Helstrom, editor of Deconstructing Christianity on Medium, says Christianity "itself" is "corrupt" and "causes otherwise kind people to believe really mean things," and thus she says her complaint isn't merely that "a couple of [Christian] people were bad to us." To me, this seems similar to what was described in the New Republic article. Her principled complaint about what she names as Christianity's corruption may roughly correspond to what other people describe as theology that ultimately doesn't make sense and is used as a justification for surveillance-power; the more personal complaint about having suffered injuries is also a real complaint, but often a matter of secondary focus when explaining or fueling atheism itself.
Listen to these reflections about atheism in the United States:
People have their own reasons for choosing religion, too
Ayaan Hirsi Ali used to be a New Atheist. When she announced her conversion to Christianity in November 2023, she didn't address the truth of religious claims, but instead pointed to a need for meaning in a world full of unanswers.
People do different things with their atheism
Regarding a movement called "New Atheism" in the early 2000s that centered on the work of several atheist superstars who were mutual colleagues:
"...New Atheism, from the start, was more of a popular movement than a scholarly effort in the philosophy of religion. New Atheism tended to present rather simplistic arguments in a forceful and sometimes compelling way - it did not engage with the most sophisticated forms of religious thought or practice. In this way it mirrored most Christian apologetics, the vast majority of which is targeted to a lay audience and completely ignores scholarly work on atheism.
"Finally, New Atheism was too reactive and anti, and didn’t have much of a positive programme to offer. ...there was frequently little said about how to live life without religion. This became a major problem when the movement began to examine questions more broad than simply the direct effects of religion on people’s lives, because there was no base of shared values from which to construct a response to those questions."
— James Croft, "Giving New Atheism What It Deserves," Being Human (Substack), November 1, 2023
One outcome I described in a long 2021 article: How did Richard Dawkins undermine transgender people? And, in November 2023, this follow-up: New 'New Atheist' cry: There is no trans, in which I give links to this podcast that is quite disappointing.
Atheists have a diversity of opinions and interests related to their atheism. Here's one popular book: Yes, You Can Have ‘Ethics Without God’ — on Ethics Without God (1972, 1990) by Kai Nielsen
Simply being an atheist does not in itself ensure that one's atheism will be used for good. That is something that requires extra effort.
Projects to which to donate or volunteer: The American Humanist Association's American Empathy Project
AHA sent this email on 9 Feb 2026: "On May 2nd, we will ignite a nationwide wave of 100 mass community service projects — food drives, medical-debt jubilees, trans youth support, immigrant welcome kits, environmental cleanups, senior-center joy drives, and entirely new ideas that have not been invented yet but live inside someone who simply needs resources and permission to try." Learn more: americanempathyproject.org
Why did so many people who knew what he [Jeffrey Epstein] was convicted of decide he was still worth knowing? What did they value more than the safety of children?
The answer, in every case, is the same. Access. Prestige. Money. Intellectual celebrity. The usual currency of people who believe the rules apply to everyone but them.
We are, after all, the company we keep.
This should matter to every humanist, because some of the names in those files belong to our movement. People who built careers in the secular world. People who were celebrated at our conferences, published in our magazines, and held up as representatives of what humanism stands for.
We spent decades telling the world that morality doesn’t require religion. That humanists hold themselves to a high ethical standard not because God commands it but because human dignity demands it. That we are accountable to each other and to our principles — not to an authority that can grant absolution.
If that’s true – and I believe it is – then we have to be more willing to hold our own to account, not less.
* * *
I’ll be the first to say that public accountability sometimes goes sideways – that shame is a lousy tool for changing behavior, and that the impulse to punish can overtake the impulse to repair. But I’ve also noticed that “cancel culture” has become the phrase powerful people reach for when they’d rather not answer hard questions. And when the hard question is why you kept breaking bread with a convicted child sex offender, it starts to make me wonder whether spending so much time and oxygen making an enemy of public accountability in the first place was actually about principle, or about protecting your brand.
— A Message from Executive Director Fish Stark, TheHumanist.com, February 13, 2026
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