When did most people become atheists?

Well in history, if you admitted to being atheist you were put to death. Now many religions are mad that they can’t do that anymore. You get my point.

People were a lot more religious back then because they lacked knowledge about things. Actually, after the renaissance, they were still very religious. So, they would believe in anything that could have no proof. In the beginning of the 19s, people became a lot more knowledgeable and science took a major part of society. However, religion is passed down in families from generation to generation. And people do get brainwashed when they are young by their parents nurture.

“it just seems that throughout most history there hasn’t been much talk of atheists like in the medieval or renaissance eras”

There were many times in history were coming out as an atheist would have meant certain death not to mention that many people used god back then to explain things they didn’t understand.

Well, pumpkin, in some places in the world, admitting that you don’t believe in the god of the dominant religion can get you social ostracism by family or friends or the society at large, job loss, loss of housing, loss of educational prospects, loss of legal status, jail time, or death.

In Bangladesh, very recently, mobs marched and rioted, demanding death for atheists. Declaring one’s atheism in Muslim-dominated countries is seen as apostacy or blasphemy, which can get you the death penalty in Iran, Egypt, Somalia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Qatar, and UAE. Atheists have been jailed for Facebook posts in Indonesia and Egypt and outspoken atheists have been jailed by new “Arab Spring” regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. In Algeria, atheists cannot get an education, inherit property, or marry a Muslim. In Iran, Jordan, and Thailand, atheists are not recognized by the state and are forced to pick a religion for official status purposes. It’s not just the atheist who suffers, either – acknowledging one’s atheism can damage one’s entire family…and atheists are sometimes the victims of “honor killings.”

That kind of thing was once far more widespread, and as a result, most atheists throughout history have kept their thoughts to themselves and just gone along with the dominant religion.

Here in the US, my own mother is still vaguely convinced that it’s somehow against the law to be an atheist and is afraid that my open atheism will damage my job prospects…and I live in a fairly liberal state.

surely many people would simply have been raised that way… they didn’t become, they just always were.

I guess for a lot of people they can remember being told about God… so what if they were not?

Of course most would simply be agnostic… taking the leap of faith involved in becoming anti-God is more than most people would risk. Even among so called atheists there are many who simply say… I will believe when I see proof.

Atheists have been around as long as religions have been around, including all pre-abrahamic religions.

Where there have been people worshipping something they believe has great powers, whether it be the sun, the earth, the moon or some made up deity there have been others thinking it was all a load of hokum.

I think atheism has increased as scientific knowledge has increased and people began to realize there’s more to the world and universe than what the priest tells them. With new discoveries and advanced studies people have found answers to the questions of life and the cosmos that are grounded in solid fact, direct observation, proof through testing, and empirical evidence rather than being given an answer and told to believe it on faith alone. That’s why historically religions have been so opposed to the knowledge and advancement of science, wanting to suppress and destroy it out of fear of the knowledge itself and fear of the loss of control of the people to science. Look at Galileo for example; when he discovered that the Earth orbits around the sun the religious leaders–rather than saying, “Wow, there’s more to know about our god’s universe than we thought, we should explore further”–threatened him with excommunication (if not execution) if he was to make that knowledge public instead of denouncing his own proof.

For me personally I gave up religion and became atheist when I began to think for myself around the age of 12. It wasn’t instant of course; it happened over time as one by one those religious beliefs faded away as I no longer felt a need or desire (or any compelling reason) to believe in them.

When you are born you have no religious inklings, nor belief in any particular deity.

You are born atheist, and must ‘become’ religious, not the other way around.

As mentioned, it is safer now to declare atheism. Crazy Christians are no longer allowed to just kill us for not buying into their delusion.

The realism age, which was like 1830? That’s when atheism started a high increase in followers.

There were always atheists around, but the new militant type is a recent social construct devised to polarize society further so that a New Order of things could be more easily accepted.

Mostly when science proved the reasons for things like earthquakes and floods, it wasn’t the kraken after all.