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Atheism

23 Episodes

Atheism is not a single stable essence but a shifting category for people or positions defined in relation to gods, worship, and social belonging. Across history it can mean opposition to state cult, rejection of particular gods, lack of belief, or an identity claimed or imposed within larger struggles over power and community.

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Why this topic matters

Atheism recurs on the show wherever debates about religion, identity, and category boundaries turn into struggles over who gets to belong and who gets to define the terms. Discussions collected here push back against the idea that atheist names a timeless, self-evident position, tracing instead how the label shifts from accusations of impiety in the ancient world to modern arguments about belief, evidence, stigma, and public identity.

That makes atheism a useful pressure test for larger questions the show returns to again and again. The topic exposes how badly religious and secular labels break down when people try to force them into neat binaries, and how often identity works through community, practice, and social power rather than through a single creed that everyone inside the category actually shares.

Where to start

Start here for the best in-depth listening on Atheism: featured segments, featured episodes, and the episode with the most mentions.

Quotes from the Data

“I want to suggest that atheism fundamentally is about membership in a group and an identity.”

Dan McClellan Episode 77

“People think of religious identity and religion as just a set of truth claims. But it's never been that. It's community. It's ritual. It's meaning-making. It's behaviors. It is anxiety, death anxiety curating. It's all of these things all wrapped into one. And there are an awful lot of people who enjoy everything about it, but maybe not so much the truth claims. That doesn't make them any less Christian or Jewish or Muslim, right? Or atheist.”

Dan McClellan Episode 124

“There's about 3 or 4% of self-identified atheists who are certain there is a God.”

Dan McClellan Episode 77

“You can't define it, you can only describe it. And so everybody's going to have different understandings of it.”

Dan McClellan Episode 77

Top episodes

Ranked by mentions of Atheism across the transcript. Start with the top mention above, then keep going here.

All episodes

Every episode currently tagged with Atheism.