The City of Churches is a hotbed of atheists - and they're keen to start spreading the word. So what has got the non-believers all fired up?

CODY GOUGH'S BREAK with his faith came when he lit a cigarette in front of his father.

The Jehovah's Witness had spent two decades in the church, with nightly Bible study and three meetings a week. "I lived and breathed the religion from birth," he says. "It was my reality, the framework from which I built my understanding of the world." But doubts began to grow until he didn't believe any longer. Even then the young man spent a year pretending, because to give up his faith meant giving up his family and friends. Associating with anyone outside the church is strongly discouraged. His aunt had already disowned her son for that reason.

Even after Gough stopped attending meetings, he still couldn't bring himself to say the words to his dad. In desperation and wracked with nerves he lit up a cigarette - strictly forbidden by the church - and his father instantly understood."What about the rest of your family?" he said. "Your friends?" Gough said: "That's up to them. I can't fake it anymore."

Now 23, Gough says his move towards atheism was a gradual one. "As soon as you're confronted with anything that goes against (the religion) your mind shuts off," he says. "Whenever evolution was mentioned I'd disregard it. It's like brainwashing."

Gough says reading evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins' atheist manifesto The God Delusion sealed his doubts. Apart from detailing contradictions in the Bible and outlining various philosophical arguments, the book focuses on the process of evolution and the concept of "the selfish gene" - the idea genes are entirely focused on self preservation. "At any other time if I'd read it I wouldn't have been ready, but I read about the selfish gene and it was so simple," Gough says. "I was surprised I'd been against it so long as it was so logical."

Gough is one of an increasing number of Australians declaring themselves atheists. While the Christian churches will see some of the year's best attendance figures this Easter weekend, there are more than twice as many non-believers as church goers. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show the number of people identifying themselves as atheists or stating "no religion" on the census grew by more than a third to 18.8 per cent between 2001 and 2006.

A further 11.2 per cent declined to answer the question, meaning as many as a third of Australians don't believe in God. Among young people the proportion is even higher. A 2006 study by Monash University, the Australian Catholic University and the Christian Research Association found that just 48 per cent of people born between 1976 and 1990 believe in God.

And when it comes to the godless, Adelaide is atheism central. The City of the Churches is home to the Atheist Foundation of Australia, an organisation that campaigns on behalf of a secular society. It was the AFA website, which recently clicked up its one millionth unique visitor, that Gough turned to for information as he weighed up his beliefs.

It's a Wednesday evening in Eastwood and the unfaithful have gathered for the AFA's annual general meeting - held, somewhat ironically, in an old church hall. I'm keen to see exactly what this bunch of heretics and blasphemers get up to as they plan their godless activities. David Nicholls, who looks like a former hippie with his white mullet, goatee and glasses, opens proceedings with a bit of humour. After all, if there's no afterlife, you'd better get your laughs in this one. "Did you hear they've set up a dial-a-prayer service for atheists?" Nicholls tells the assembly. "You ring it - and it just rings and rings and rings . . ." Boom, boom.

And then it's down to business. About 30 well-dressed, mostly silver-haired people sit around politely discussing the meaning of life - or lack of it. And Nicholls' president's address isn't that far removed from a sermon. He preaches that the only truth can be found in atheism, details the ever increasing numbers of converts to the cause, and praises the prophet Richard Dawkins for spreading the good word.

"The winds of change have unleashed a new wave of enthusiasm for humanity . . . to exist on planet Earth without interference from numerous dogmatic interpretations of ancient writings," he solemnly tells the congregation. "They are no longer relevant in the modern era and . . . promise continued divisiveness and even the risk of total destruction of the biosphere."

As tempting as it is to continue this "atheism as religion" metaphor, it doesn't really stand up to close examination. Because among atheists nothing is sacred, everything is up for debate, and there appears to be only one commandment: Thou shalt always produce the evidence or be accused of talking poppycock. For example, Nicholls' swerve towards apocalyptic global-warming doom-mongering is immediately challenged by one of the members who is as sceptical of climate change as he is of God. As Nicholls explains later: "The only thing atheists have in common is that they don't accept there is a God. Everything else is up for grabs."

The foundation is enjoying its best publicity in years thanks to the refusal by the advertising company APN Outdoor to run a $16,000 campaign on buses promoting atheism, modelled on the successful British campaign that has since spread throughout the world. While APN has happily run Christian advertisements before, late last year it baulked at the slogan: "Atheism - because there is no credible evidence", and rejected two compromise versions that merely suggested the public "Celebrate reason" or "Sleep in on Sunday mornings".

Nicholls is both outraged on principle and delighted in practice about a ban that's resulted in him being interviewed more than 50 times by every major media outlet in the country. The AFA has launched anti-discrimination proceedings in Tasmania and Victoria and a prominent Sydney law firm has offered to take the case, pro bono, to the Supreme Court. "Our cause has had much more public interest than had the ad companies simply taken our money and done the ads," Nicholls says.

The atheist bus campaign is part of a new willingness among some atheists to spread their godless humanism.

Stephen Downs, the head of the School of Theology at Flinders University, says the emergence of vocal atheists demonstrates that religion remains strong. "One reason why there's this phenomenon of a small group of militant atheists writing publications - like Richard Dawkins - is there was an assumption religion would die out," he says. "But it hasn't. Pentecostal and evangelical protestant churches have grown enormously and religion has become involved in politics. That freaks out secularists."

Like many, Downs is uneasy with the developments in atheism. "In the past atheists didn't actively promote it, or ridicule and denigrate people practising religion," he says.

There certainly seems a new acceptance among the public for doing just that. Musical comedian Tim Minchin has been playing to crowds who applaud wildly as he mocks believers and sends up creationists. Like Downs, Minchin cites the rise of the Pentecostal churches and the emergence of Family First as reasons atheists are taking a more aggressive stance.

"Suddenly people are getting the feeling that the nice movement towards secularism is being arrested and is actually being challenged, and people like us need to go, 'hang on!'" he says.

"Now they . . . are getting into politics like Family First. Stem cells and abortion debates that require intelligent, sensible debate, are being ruined by people saying: 'Yeah, but I know what God thinks.'"

The reason for this new acceptance of atheism probably lies in the fact that organised religion's influence on society is dwindling. These days, 91.6 per cent of the population does sleep in on Sunday mornings (or at least, doesn't go to church). And while many have focused on the growth of Hillsong and other Pentecostal Christian churches, they have only added a net 13,800 converts over the past decade, according to the multi-denominational Christian Research Association. Over the same period, the ranks of atheists have grown by hundreds of thousands.

However, the numbers are murky. Neither religious nor atheist groups have much faith in the census data. This is because they were designed to measure identification with religious belief - not belief itself or its absence. Demographer Bernard Salt says the data underestimates the number of atheists because some people who don't believe in God tick "Christian" purely because they were brought up in Christian households or went to Christian schools. "Twenty per cent of the population are declared atheists and I would say another 20 per cent are 'practising' atheists," he says. "And, of course, parents tick a box for their children saying: my child is Catholic or Protestant. By the time you work it out probably 40 per cent of the population are atheist."

Phillip Hughes, from the Christian Research Association, also says the data is flawed. "Some people who write 'no religion' are spiritual and religious; they just don't wish to identify with religious groups." Hughes says the rate of atheism hasn't changed much since the 1970s: what has occurred has been a "drift to secularisation". "People are adopting a non-religious approach to life, but that's different to atheism because they don't think there is no God, they just choose to live without regard to the question," he says.

Hughes says a large group of people don't know what to think and just try and muddle through without dwelling on the subject too much. "Secular by default, not atheist by commitment," is how he puts it. "Militant atheism is a product of the 1970s," he says. "(The AFA) are a group who formed in the 1970s and it was part of the rejection of religious traditions that happened then with a fair degree of passion and anger, and the feeling the church and faith had let people down and was misguiding people." He says younger atheists - most of whom have never believed - don't have the same anger.

The term "militant atheist" riles Nicholls. "What is a militant atheist?" he asks. "If you say gays should be allowed to be married is that militant? We don't have people bare-breasted running through the streets waving their swords about saying, 'Darwin rules!' Atheists aren't like that."

So what are atheists like? It's hard to generalise but they're more likely to be young, well-educated and professional. And according to 39 studies carried out in the past 80 years, the more intelligent a person is, the more likely they are to be an atheist.

Nicholls says people join or contact the AFA for a variety of reasons. "I think people would be surprised by how many people are angered by religious intrusions in schools," he says. But these sorts of inquires don't translate into big numbers. "Atheists aren't big joiners. We'll never have numbers like at a church."

I speak with a number of atheists at the AGM. Mary Gallnor, 73, says she became an atheist at six after being told the central tenets of Catholicism. "I thought what they were telling me was just shocking," she says. She joined AFA 15 years ago as part of her campaign to help change the law to allow the terminally ill to die with dignity. "The only people who don't support voluntary euthanasia really are religious," she says. (Interestingly, surveys show that even among the religious there's overwhelming public support).

Fifty-something Michael Cunnington is at his first meeting. Originally from Leeds, England, he experienced what he calls "Irish Catholic indoctrination" as a child. "It took a while for me to realise what they were teaching me to do was to believe, rather than to think, and I resent that," he says. Even though he didn't believe in God, Cunnington says he called himself an agnostic for years. "I didn't want to cause any offence to anybody," he says. Two recent developments convinced him to change his mind - the banning of the atheist bus ads and when Catch the Fire Ministries leader Danny Nalliah called the Victorian bushfires God's punishment for the state's abortion laws. "Religion is quite bloody militant and it's quite prepared to enforce is views on society," Cunnington says.

"They need to know we're not all in the closet and there are a lot of people out here prepared to stand up and say, 'I'm an atheist,' and let them know we exist."

New member Louise Warren says she had a "very fundamentalist Baptist" upbringing and went through a very gradual conversion to non-belief. "People think you're going to hell because you lost the faith," she says. "But once I realised there wasn't such a place, it wasn't hard."

Her feelings about religious instruction are part of what prompted her to come along tonight, although she's not sure if she agrees with Dawkins and Nicholls, both of whom call it "child abuse". "Those are pretty strong words but still, that's what I went through and it does affect children," she says. "I feel strongly about indoctrinating children into believing something that I don't believe is true."

A member for two decades, Ronald Evans, 63, joined the Australian Skeptics in the mid-1980s. He put up $10,000 of his own money as a challenge to anyone who could demonstrate anything paranormal or supernatural. "That was 25 years ago and my money is still safe," he says with a grin. Debunking mystics led him to re-evaluate his agnosticism. "If you're a rational person you think about everything, about how science and reality works. And when you do, you really have to become an atheist. It's just inevitable."

But lots of intelligent people think about religion and do believe in God, I point out.

"The first thing you should do is read the Bible - it's dreadful," he argues. "It's amazing the number of Christians who've never read the Bible. It's full of murder and rape and ethnic cleansing. Religion in general is the cause of all - well, most of the world's problems," he says.

This is a familiar refrain of atheists, and the equally familiar retort from the other side has been played out countless times in tit-for-tat letters to the editor in newspapers and websites.

"People involved in religions have been involved in bad behaviour but it's certainly not exclusive to people of faith," Downs says. "How do you explain ideological atheists like Pol Pot, Mao Zedong or Stalin?"



