Atheism

Atheism, in common usage, means "lack of belief in any Gods". Atheism discounts supernatural phenomena such as the afterlife, divine revelation, and other such ideas.

Atheism is popularly divided into Strong and Weak Atheism: Strong Atheism can be defined as a dogma in itself: The assertion that there absolutely is no God, despite the fact that the existence of the supernatural cannot be disproven. Weak Atheists acknowledge that nothing can be disproven, and while this does not suggest that there *is* a god (no more than the fact that we cannot disprove leprechauns suggests that they exist) it would nonetheless be unscientific to declare a God or godlike being impossible. Because of this distinction, many confuse Weak Atheism with Agnosticism, even persons who believe themselves to be Agnostics.

Atheism is closely tied with Secular Humanism. Popularly-known Atheists include Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, Stephen J. Gould, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.

Atheist morality

Many atheists base their moral code upon emotion, experience and empirically derived ethics, such as those promoted by secular humanism. Atheists hold that the Bible cannot be our source of morality as it contains countless calls for immoral behavior such as killing any who try to convert you, stoning homosexuals and adulterers to death, and the institution of slavery. Instead, most Christians actually rely on their own innate philanthropic sense to cherry pick the pleasant parts of the Bible and ignore the rest.

Atheists often subscribe to the secular humanist idea that it is far more ethical to do what is right simply because you feel that it's right, rather than because you fear divine punishment.

The common argument that Nazism and Stalinism were atheistic in nature and that their violence stemmed from that nature ignores more recent examples of what they actually were; Personality cults. Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, and more recently despots like Kim Jong Il were or are at the center of governments which enforce reverence unto them as though they were deities.

As for allegations that atheism contributes to crime, here are studies showing that in fact the opposite is true: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article571206.ece

Finally, evidence of the inverse correlation between religiosity and intelligence: http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/religiosity-and-intelligence/