Atheist Foundation of Australia

  • To encourage and to provide a means of expression for informed free-thought on philosophical and social issues.
  • To safeguard the rights of all non-religious people.
  • To serve as a focal point for the community of non-religious people.
  • To offer verifiable information in place of superstition and to promote logic and reason.
  • To promote atheism.
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Our Philosophy

The Atheist Foundation of Australia recognises the scientific method as the only rational means toward understanding reality. To question and critically examine all ideas, testing them in the light of experiment, leads to the discovery of facts.

As there seems to be no scientific evidence for supernatural phenomena, atheists reject belief in ‘God’, gods, and other supernatural beings. The universe, the world in which we live, and the evolution of life seem to be entirely natural occurrences.

No personality or mind can exist without the process of living matter to sustain it. We have only one life – here and now. All that remains after a person dies is the memory of their life and deeds in the minds of those who remain.

Atheists reject superstition and prejudice along with the irrational fears they cause. We recognise the complexity and interdependence of life on this planet. As rational and ethical beings we accept the challenge of making a creative and responsible contribution to life.

Religious Affiliation in Australia

See what we’ve been up to

The Atheist Foundation of Australia Committee would like to thank for your support. We also like to update you of two of our important and successful achievements in the last two years. In 2021, we took a leading role in association with six other free-thought...
Past AFA Members

Census No Religion

The current census data does not accurately reflect our country’s religious views.

This is due to a large number of Australians marking that they belong to a religion in the census when in fact they no longer really practise or hold those beliefs.

Census data is used by government and many other organisations to inform a wide range of important decisions like the amount of public funding religious organisations receive, to the voice and influence religion is given in public affairs and media.

The next Australian Census will be held on Tuesday 10th August 2021 and we need it to accurately reflect what Australians truly believe.

So, when you’re filling in the census and you come to the question on religion, this is your chance to think carefully and decide whether you still see yourself as religious.

If you don’t see yourself as religious anymore, this census, mark ‘No Religion’.

Visit the Campaign Web Site

Don't Divide Us

Stop the Morrison Government's Religious Privilege Bill

Everyone should be able to go about their lives free from discrimination.

But the Morrison Government is writing laws that would see people discriminate against their fellow Australians in ways that will affect all of us.

Australia is a great country and we need your help to stop these invasive laws and to keep Australia free from discrimination.

Visit the Campaign Web Site

Atheism is not a religion, mark “no religion”

As you know, the Australian Government is conducting a census of the population on the 10th August 2021. The census is an important snapshot of the country and informs government and businesses in their decision making. Census data is used to plan and deliver services...

Census21 No Religion Campaign Rejects Fake News and Fearmongering

The Census No Religion campaign is aware of a particularly hateful and misleading message circulating on social media, by email and SMS text message. The message suggests that non-religious people should incorrectly record that they are religious or face the...

Census No Religion Campaign

On the 10th of August, a census is being conducted to collect important data on the circumstances and attitudes of the Australian people. Your friends and family will be asked if they hold religious beliefs, and it’s an important...

Religious Discrimination Bill is resurrected

In a recent webinar with Family Voice Australia, Kevin Andrews (Liberal Party Back Bencher) indicated that "compromise had been reached" regarding the proposed Religious Discrimination Bill, and that it would be introduced into the Parliament "shortly". Mr. Andrews...

Religious Freedom Bill Submission

Religious Discrimination Bill – Second Exposure Draft Date: 19 January 2020 Submission type: Non-Profit – Atheist Foundation Of Australia and Sydney Atheists Email: [email protected] Confidentiality: For Public Release The Atheist Foundation of...

Submission to the Australian Bureau of Statistics – Review of 2021 Census Topics

The question on religion in the Australian Census contains an element which is problematical in obtaining accurate figures. The problem is that it asks “What is the person’s religion?” This is a leading question and can elicit a religion of baptism when the person may...

Submission to the Queensland Law Reform Commission Review of Termination of Pregnancy Laws

February 2018 In line with the recommendations of groups such as the Queensland Branch of the Australian Medical Association (AMAQ), Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG), the Queensland Nurses Union, the Health...

Non-believers now Australia's largest religious group: Time to listen to what we want

What is the role of the godless in Australia’s current social and political climate? What level of influence should the the non-religious have in Australia’s version of secularism? The Atheist Foundation of Australia (AFA) is calling for a national discussion on these...

Religious Freedom Review Panel Submission

Religious Freedom Review, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Parliament House, Canberra. Submission: Copies to all members of the Review Panel and PMC Secretariat: To whom it may concern, The Australian Law Reform Commission interim report 127 has previously...

Politicians cannot hide from fact any more regarding voluntary assisted dying

The Atheist Foundation of Australia (AFA) supports the two Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) Bills before state Parliaments in NSW and Victoria. This is an important demonstration of evidence-based medical opinion and indisputable patient need triumphing over...

It is usually when men are at their most religious that they behave with the least sense and the greatest cruelty.

Ilka Chase 
Ilka Chase

My neurologist once told me that people with temporal lobe epilepsy are very often intensely religious. Certainly just before I have a grand mal fit I have a ‘vision’ of such peace, joy and significance that I can only call it God. What does this say about the whole nature of religious vision? Certain episodes in the lives of the saints have acquired a new meaning for me. When Theresa of Avila had her three-day vision of hell, was she simply having a temporal lobe attack? The horrors she saw are similar to those I have experienced, but in her case informed by the religious imagery of her time. Like other saints who have ‘seen’ hell she describes an appalling stench, which is part of an epileptic aura. Is it possible that the feeling I have had all my life that something – God, perhaps? – is just over the horizon, something unimaginable but almost tangibly present, is simply the result of an electrical irregularity in my brain? It is a question that can’t yet be answered, unless it be that God, if He exists, could have created us with that capacity for Him, glimpsed at only when the brain is convulsed. What I can say, however, is that if my ‘visions’ have sometimes let me into ‘Hell’ they have also given me possible intimations of a Heaven which I would not have been without.

Karen Armstrong 
Karen Armstrong

I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose.

Clarence Darrow 
Clarence Darrow

Scientific research confirms that humans are a link in the evolutionary life chain. There is no credible evidence for the existence of an immortal supernatural element. Our only life is here and now. Make it worthy of a moral person.

Keith S. Cornish 
Keith S. Cornish

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

Bertrand Russell 
Bertrand Russell

Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?

Arthur C. Clarke 
Arthur C. Clarke

To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.

Cardinal Robert Bellarmine 
Cardinal Robert Bellarmine

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

Richard Dawkins 
Richard Dawkins

If God has spoken, why is the world not convinced.

Percy Bysshe Shelley 
Percy Bysshe Shelley

I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I’ve been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn’t have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.

Isaac Asimov 
Isaac Asimov