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.

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.

See what we’ve been up to

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’.

Don't Divide Us
Stop the Morrison Government's Religious Privilege BillEveryone 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.


Atheism is not a religion, mark “no religion”

Census21 No Religion Campaign Rejects Fake News and Fearmongering

Census No Religion Campaign
Religious Discrimination Bill is resurrected
Religious Freedom Bill Submission
Submission to the Australian Bureau of Statistics – Review of 2021 Census Topics
Submission to the Queensland Law Reform Commission Review of Termination of Pregnancy Laws
Non-believers now Australia's largest religious group: Time to listen to what we want
Religious Freedom Review Panel Submission
Politicians cannot hide from fact any more regarding voluntary assisted dying
I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will – and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain.

It’s an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death. Even corporations with their reward systems don’t try to make it posthumous.

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration – courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.

The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for their existence. It is a bit like a rich person living in a wealthy neighborhood not seeing any poverty.

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?

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

The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.

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.

Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.

No Gods – No Masters.
