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Who are these people and what do they believe in?
Atheists know that the gods-not-to-believe-in come in two sorts.
The first sort of god is the hands-on type. He (it is usually a he) having made heaven and earth now simply can't leave things alone and will willingly interfere in any earthly and human event given the slightest chance.
This is a god of human appearance, alive and well and living in heaven with a host of assorted angles, saints, believers and a few repentant sinners.
And he, in all his guises, exists because the majority of people believe in him.
The second sort of god is the kiss-and-run sort.
This is the sort of god that creates the universe, the earth, man, bed-bugs and all things in between and then clears off to a safe distance to do whatever it is that gods of that sort do.
He also lives in far away heaven and is surrounded by ethereal spirits to whom he has delegated the more mundane tasks of maintaining his creation.
And he also exists because the majority of people (who don't believe in the anthropomorphic type version) believe in him instead.
The two sorts of gods may command the attention and respect of the majority of human beings on the planet but, say the Atheists, the simple fact that the majority of human beings believe in one or other version of god is no proof of god's existence.
No proof at all.
Ancient Indian Vedas both told of and questioned the existence of gods, ancient Greeks discussed the subject endlessly and even gave the problem a name, a which means 'not' and theos which means 'god'.
Karl Marx believed that religion was created by society and saw it as the materialistic, and much more real, alternative to metaphysics. Immanuel Kant believed and wrote that human actions were the result of human experiences rather than divine intervention, as did David Hume. And Ludwig Feuerbach thought that god existed merely as a symbol for the achievement of high ideals - which was why Karl Marx saw materialism it as the alternative to metaphysics.
Charles Darwin came up with the theory of natural evolution as opposed to the creation theory. Friedrich Nietzsche believed there were no answers to the great questions of life and is remembered (among other things) for his use of the word nihilism, by which he meant the 'achievement of power through the destruction of all existing organisations' - particularly religious ones.
Jean-Paul Satre's alternative philosophy was that man had to choose to deny the existence of God in order to make any and every other choice and Sigmund Freud thought that belief in any religion was simply a nice warm comfort blanket that society threw over itself, especially in times of moral uncertainty.
For a subject that a great number of the world's philosophers and thinkers did not believe in, they certainly had a lot to say.
The belief that man is free to make up his own mind and free to determine his own future is one that has an undoubted attraction to the 'thinking man' and the small fact that individual choice is almost always influenced by factors outside the control of the individual is one of those niggling little inconsistencies that undermine what would otherwise be a perfectly good theory.
And of course the perfectly good excuse for not doing all those things that should have been done yesterday.
When this theory is taken to its logical next step and 'thinking man' accepts that there are outside influences controlling individual freedom, he is then faced with the question 'what determines the outside influences'?
For the believers - this is the easy one. It is God.
For the Atheists this too is the easy one. It is not god.
For Atheists, actions are determined first by impressions and instinct, (like not jumping off a cliff) and in later life by a combination of experience and memory.
To believe in something that cannot be seen, heard or felt and is impossible to explain is, say the Atheists, a complete waste of time.
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