What we’d like the world to know about us:

1. What is atheism? Why are you all atheists?
2. Won’t a society without religion devolve into a lawless and unethical barbarism?
3. Isn’t atheism/rationalism also a religion?
4. What will it take for you to believe in the existence of a god?
5. Can’t god be the explanation for some open problems in science?
6. What is your problem with faith?
7. Doesn't faith offer mental peace? If you're denouncing the concept of faith, then are you offering any alternative solution for catering to the unmet need of emotional support?
8. Do you hate god? Do you hate religious people?
9. How can Indians take a western concept such as atheism seriously? What is your understanding about the atheistic schools of thought in the Indian culture?
10. Are you different from the agnostics?
11. Can atheists be culturally religious, to identify themselves as Christian atheists, Hindu atheists, Muslim atheists, etc.? Do atheists also reject the cultural facets of religion?
12. Isn't atheism merely a negativistic, negatory, defensive, or apophatic stance?
13. Doesn't atheism isolate you from the rest of the society? Doesn't atheism make life boring? How do you deal with theist family and friends?
14. What is your take on secularism? On humanism? On egalitarianism?
15. What is your take on XYZ? And lorem ipsum?
16. Is it legal to be an atheist in India?
17. Should a government promote atheism?
18. Do you try to convert theists into atheists?
19. What are the important problems faced by atheists in India?
20. What is a 'bright'?
21. What are the goals of your organization?

1. What is atheism? Why are you atheists?

Atheism is the belief/inference/opinion that no supernatural entities (such as god, angel, ghosts, souls, karma) or any supernatural places (such as heaven or hell, or any other life after death) exist.
Although some atheists can have become atheists due to various irrational reasons, our atheism is a product of rational thinking, and atheism is an eventually inevitable and important milestone of reason. Rationalism is the process of exclusively using reason and objective experiences for separating falsehood from any likely truth. It rejects the authority of any person, subjective experience, or scripture as a dogma in determining what is true. Rationality rejects faith and embraces doubt and reasoned thinking. Rationally derived beliefs can be repeatedly questioned and modified. Therefore, rationalism can free a mind from control by a holy person, scripture, or cult, and allows the mind to be independent. Rationalism enables a person to engage in logical discussions and decision making processes for social policy. We are atheists merely because as per our knowledge and reason, all the claims and arguments for existence of the supernatural are insufficient and, to the best of our knowledge, all the searches for detecting the existence of deities and supernatural systems have failed to yield any favourable verifiable results.

2. Won’t a society without religion devolve into a lawless and unethical barbarism?

It is petty and prejudicial to assume that people can behave fairly only when they’re afraid of being punished for being unfair. A person who behaves fair only under an external compulsion or under the threat of punishment is only trivially fair, not truly or innately fair. The Euthyphro dilemma reveals the contradiction nicely: Should we consider an ethic fair only because a god/religion dictates so, or is the god/religion bound to dictate an ethic that we already know to be fair? Thus, the Euthyphro dilemma shows that humans have an innate sense of justice, independent of what religions can and do dictate. This is why similar ethical codes have independently emerged across the world among multiple societies that developed these ethics without interacting with each-other. A person behaving ethically only due to fear of punishment should not be considered truly ethical.
Additionally, if fear of any god were to be necessary to maintain law and order, prisons would have been populated predominantly by atheists. That doesn’t appear to be true, which means, atheists seem to behave with an equal or better sense of sanity than the rest. There exists a large body of theistic scholarship called theodicy that attempts to explain how the god is not able to or willing to eradicate evil. The modern law system is more efficient than religion for enforcing a justice based on fear and criminal reformation. It also works extremely well in countries where atheists outnumber the faithful.
Religions are not the source of ethics. Religions tend to uphold the contemporary concepts of morality that are prevalent in any given society. This can be observed in the evolving treatment given by religions to activities that were considered sinful or criminal in the past, such as, homosexuality, pre-marital sex, abortion, inter-caste or inter-race relationships, etc. In India, there was a religious taboo even against crossing any sea!

3. Isn’t atheism/rationalism also a religion?

Religion can be considered to have two components. At its core, it involves a faith about some supernatural entities, relationship with the supernatural, spiritual purpose, etc. However, the second and equally important aspect of religion is about a secular organisation of the faithful. It involves membership eligibility criteria, membership initiation ceremonies, duties of the members, rules for expulsion of the members, consequences of expulsion, etc.
If atheism or rationalism are being accused of being a religion in the first sense, then we need to realise that if tomorrow we were to find it reasonable to believe in the existence of any god, we should be open to consider that possibility. Since atheism is only a tentative result of rationalism, atheism is not a religion. For us, atheism is a logical and evidence-based fact, as simple as the theory of evolution or the belief that the Earth is not flat like a pancake.
However, rationalism, in itself, is indeed based on three untouchable, dogmatic beliefs:

1. Objectivity: Objective experiences and inferences are the only truths
2. Reductionism: Each truth can be reduced into a logically connected chain of convincing evidences and arguments such that each link in the chain is independently and individually acceptable as true to any human with an average intellect
3. Skepticism: All truths are tentative

Therefore, in the strictest sense, rationalism is a way-of-life/dharma/deen/religion.
However, at its deepest, these three beliefs are universally ingrained in the human mind, and therefore, these three beliefs should be excused from being branded as dogmas. We frequently exhibit an objective, reductionist, and skeptical approach in other areas of life. Since rationalism does not involve any other, superfluous/ad-hoc dogmas such as the belief in the existence of the supernatural, it does not deserve to be considered to be a religion in the conventional sense, even in a loose sense of considering hobbies such as philately, sports fandom, or gastronomy as religions.
If atheism or rationalism are being accused of being a religion in the second, organisational sense, then in that sense, even hobby or sports clubs, or professional associations can be considered to be religions.

4. What will it take for you to believe in the existence of a god?

Arthur C Clarke has written, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. For example, us humans must be appearing god-like to lab-rats. On the other hand, if we were to encounter some highly advanced aliens, they could be in possession of some science-fictionesque technologies such as resurrecting the dead, time travel, invisibility, or anti-gravity levitation. Until we understand the deeper scientific laws discovered and harnessed by these aliens, and until we study the technology behind such gadgets, we wouldn’t be able to discern them from real magic. However, they will not pass for true gods in the conventional sense. Because, the most crucial attribute of the concept of a real god is the ability to defy and supersede the laws of nature, i.e., to be able to perform miracles.
If a claim is presented about the existence of a god, and if the god-candidate were to be able to demonstrate, in a statistically significant manner, some classical feats of magic that are hitherto impossible for today’s science, it’ll be easy for us to acknowledge them to appear to be god-like. This is the first part of the answer to the question as to what it’ll take for us to acknowledge the existence of a god (or, at least, an apparently god-like entity).
However, there is no permanent boundary discovered on how much science can advance. Even if we were to initially agree that the god-candidate possesses god-like abilities, science wouldn’t be required to give up investigating ‘how’ the god-like entity could be performing those miracles. Knowing the ‘mechanism’ would then enable us to replicate and demystify the miracles demonstrated by such an alien. If we ever later were to discover the scientific principles behind those miracles, those miracles would cease to be miracles. That alien would no longer qualify as a true god, its device would be found to be operating according to the laws of nature, its own functioning would be occurring according to the laws of nature, and its own body would be subject to the laws of nature.
This means that science will never have to acknowledge any phenomenon as a true miracle. And therefore, presence of a god-like entity will not be sufficient for giving-up the possibility that the god-candidate will merely be a highly evolved, albeit, this-worldly entity. Carl Sagan has written, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” but we’d like to go one step further and assert that a claim of divinity will require an infinite amount of evidence. Any finite set of observations can be force-fitted into at least an ad-hoc scientific theory (if not in a seamless scientific paradigm), instead of accepting an assertion like 'a-god-did-it'.
The condition of falsifiability requires that any scientific theory should be falsifiable. The concept of free-will is not falsifiable because it is not distinguishable from randomness. Therefore (even if we set aside the amateurish objections such as "what if two people make mutually conflicting prayers?") any theory of god will be non-falsifiable if it proposes a god that is free to his/her whim for responding or ignoring a prayer for a miracle. If a test designed to detect the presence of such a god fails, its failure will not be taken to prove the absence of the god, because, the absence of a miracle will still leave the possibility open that the god exists but has willingly chosen to ignore the prayer. Therefore, any falsifiable theory of god will have to posit existence of a predictable, deterministic god that is bound to respond to prayers for miracles based on some probabilistic rules. Such a god is unlikely to fit the conventional concept of the god because such a god will be found to be a rule-bound, prayer-answering-machine!
Also see a comparison between atheism and agnosticism.

5. Can’t god be the explanation for some open problems in science?

Science can entertain seemingly weird concepts such as square root of -1, wave-particle, or 26 dimensions, to try to make sense of the world. But science assumes any entities only when assuming them improves our understanding of the world. Be it a superstring, or a quark, or phlogiston, or caloric, or luminiferous aether, they are or were meant to explain how the world operates. Science holds such concepts only till they are found useful, and discards them when we can formulate a better explanation.
However, the difference between such intangible concepts with god is in the concept of what we mean by an explanation itself. It is foolish to believe that giving a name to an unknown somehow dissipates our ignorance about the unknown. When Wilhelm Roentgen discovered the X Rays, he called them X to indicate that he didn’t know what they were, the same as the x in algebra. After it was found that X Rays were merely very high frequency electromagnetic radiation, their mystery disappeared, their ‘x’ness disappeared. The mysterious nature of X Rays was ‘obviated’. The name X Rays is now used only as a tradition, not in the literal sense as what Roentgen intended.
When a magician performs a magic trick, the audience gets awed, but when the secret behind the trick is revealed, the awe disappears. The magical act becomes ‘obvious’. Such as, “oh, now that I know the secret, it becomes mundane how you could do this magic”. It isn’t a coincidence that the word ‘mundane’ means ‘this-worldly’. Science is the process of ‘obviating’ some unknowns. When scientists say that 85% of the matter in the universe is in the form of dark matter, they don’t use the phrase dark matter to indicate knowledge. Dark matter represents an ignorance about the nature of the 85% of matter in the universe. If and when they find an explanation about how 85% of the matter in the universe is so transparent, we shall know about the nature of the dark matter and then the dark matter will be given some obviated place in the scientific paradigm.
In algebra, if we want to find a number whose square is smaller by 9 than the sixth multiple of that number, we begin by assuming this number to be x. That helps us formulate an equation x² – 6x + 9 = 0 and then it leads us to the answer as x = 3. Algebra does not stop by seeking satisfaction in referring to the answer as ‘x’. The symbol ‘x’ is not meant to be the answer to the problem. The symbol ‘x’ is merely a placeholder to acknowledge the lack of knowledge. When we solve the equation, the ‘x’ dissipates, and we replace it with the answer 3.
Similarly, it is unhelpful to declare that god is the explanation for any unknowns in science. An explanation is required to make a peculiar, seemingly anomalous observation as an inevitable, obvious consequence of a paradigm. We know that most liquids shrink when they freeze. Therefore, the anomalous expansion of water while freezing deserves an explanation. However, once we understand the expansion of water into ice in terms of its molecular structure, the seeming anomaly suddenly fits in our prior knowledge of the universe, it ceases to be jarring to our minds.
However, the problem with the god-of-the-gaps argument is that it merely offers a name, ‘god’, to some unknown, to some unexpected. Naming an unexpected does not elucidate the unexpected. Labelling it as a ‘god’ does not advance our understanding of the mechanism as to how the god plays a role in accomplishing the unexpected. Say, we don’t know how a particular piece of bread came into existence. Now you might argue that a chef made it, but that answer would not explain how the chef made the bread. Nor would it be subject to verification. On the other hand, if we were to know the recipe that the chef used to make the bread, we could trace the steps and then we too could make the bread. Thus, a recipe for the bread would advance our understanding of the bread, unlike the atomic statement “chef made the bread”. The sentence “chef made the bread” is an axiomatic addition to a paradigm, compared to the recipe which is not a new axiom. The recipe tells individual steps that are already known in the paradigm, it enables us to verify if the recipe can reproduce the bread, it also helps us understand how the already known steps are involved in creating the bread. Similarly, a claim such as “god created the universe” is neither verifiable nor does it further our knowledge about the universe.

6. What is your problem with faith?

Faith provides a false sense of assurance that some magic is going to solve some problem. This can make a faithful person complacent or indolent. Faithful people can also spend a significant amount of time and resources on faith-based solutions to problems pertaining to education, health, etc., thereby wasting time and resources that could have been otherwise used for correctly mitigating those problems. Faith at its core involves unquestionable trust of a person, book, community, or tradition.
Faith in a book or a person prevents the faithful person from considering the possibility that the book’s author or the person that the faithful person is following could either be genuinely wrong, or be intentionally deceiving the faithful person. It has been proven in numerous examples that such blind trust can be misplaced because such a trusted book or person can be genuinely wrong or be intentionally dishonest. Faith prevents the faithful person from questioning and investigating the validity and honesty of the book’s author/editor/interpreter or the person that the faithful person is trusting. This gives a pathological level of power to the book’s author/editor/interpreter or the person that the faithful person trusts, and can also create an environment conducive for exploiting the faithful person.
Contrary to opinions formed using reason, faith cannot be changed using an elaborate discussion and sharing of arguments and objective evidence. Therefore, faith impedes the process of collaboration and consensus building about public policy. A faithful mindset can make a person more susceptible to overall gullibility in all walks of life. It also makes a person more likely to blindly follow and obey some charismatic leader (or ideology) without questioning the leader’s policies or motives (or the implications of pursuing the ideology), sometimes even to the extent of sacrificing one’s own fundamental rights or encroaching on someone else’s fundamental rights.

7. Doesn't faith offer mental peace? If you're denouncing the concept of faith, then are you offering any alternative solution for catering to the unmet need of emotional support?

The concept of 'faith as a mental support' is rooted in a misunderstood meaning of the concept of placebo. Placebo literally means [I] shall be pleasing. A treatment that appears genuine but doesn't have any material effect on treating a disease is called placebo. Placebo works in the minds of the caregiver and the patient. A caregiver who believes that a patient has received a real treatment is likely to 'feel' that the patient's health has improved, even if the patient has received an ineffective treatment. A patient who believes that they have been administered a real treatment are likely to 'feel' that their health has improved, and sometimes that in-turn can cause the patient's health to even undergo an objectively measurable improvement, even though the patient has received an ineffective or sham treatment. However, the popular understanding of the placebo effect is incomplete and shallow in many ways:

1. The placebo effect is weak compared to real treatments. A placebo can only induce effects on health aspects that are anyway significantly under psychological control. For example, a placebo can influence blood pressure, fever, or pain, but faith healing can't grow back an amputated limb.
2. Since a placebo depends on the faith of a patient, it's unreliable in its efficiency. A patient who suspects the caregiver to be malicious will experience and exhibit negative effects even though the administered treatment is materially harmless. This means, faith can unpredictably cause placebo effect or even a nocebo effect where the "negative expectations of the patient regarding a treatment cause the treatment to have a more negative effect than it otherwise would have".
3. While scientifically examining a treatment's utility, a treatment under investigation is always compared with a placebo and the treatment under investigation is certified as useful only if it significantly surpasses the placebo effect. This means that the ability of faith in obtaining mental peace is necessarily and significantly smaller compared to the ability of scientifically proven treatments for delivering mental peace or for alleviating other illnesses.
4. One can't wish to have faith. If you know that a treatment is not real, merely wishing for it to be deliver you a placebo effect can't let you achieve the placebo effect. At least, not if you are an intellectually mature adult. Only children can participate in make-believe whereby they can choose to believe a doll is a real person and then genuinely begin to treat the doll as a real person. On the other hand, if an adult knows that a rope is a rope and not a snake, then the adult can't subsequently choose to believe that the rope is a snake such that the adult then genuinely begins to treat the rope as a snake. We can't un-know truths; we can't fool ourselves. Therefore, once someone knows that a remedy is working only as a placebo, they stop receiving the effects that faith could have delivered. That way, a placebo or faith can't be self-administered for achieving mental peace. One might manage to deliver mental peace to someone else who genuinely has faith in the one, but there is no way for anyone to choose to benefit from faith for oneself.
5. Even to the extent that faith can provide placebo benefit, it's unethical to provide anyone a placebo effect. This is because, informed consent is a fundamental principle of medicine. A treatment can not be administered unless the patient (or someone else responsible to decide on behalf of patient) consents to receive the treatment. One may not administer a treatment to anyone without explaining the nature and consequences of the treatment to the patient (or to some caretaker of the patient). Since placebo can only be administered by keeping the patient in the dark about the treatment being a placebo, administering placebo to others violates the principle of informed consent. A second reason for not attempting to deliver a faith based help is that if the patient were to ever discover that they were receiving a placebo treatment, they could lose faith in the caregiver even to the extent that they could stop trusting the caregiver for genuine treatments - they could then begin to experience a nocebo effect! Thus, a placebo effect can backfire on getting exposed. A third reason for not using faith as a solution for any problem is discussed above in the undesirable effects of faith.
6. And ultimately, support is not a fundamental need or right - even if someone has a genuine need for mental support, it doesn't a create a right for them to receive a faith based support. The argument of "give us alternative or give us the freedom to possess faith" is designed to blame the society for all plights of an individual. Capitalism does not believe that the society is significantly responsible for the well-being of individuals. Their right to receive a support from faith does not deserve to obstruct others' right to reveal to them (and thus ruin for them) the placebo nature of the faith.

8. Do you hate god? Do you hate religious people?

Some theists can feel angry with a god if and when they feel that the god has met them an unjust life. For us to hate some entity, we need to believe in the existence of that entity. Since atheists do not believe in the existence of any god, they do not and cannot hate any god.
A Nobel Prize winner scientist and atheist Steven Weinberg has written, “With or without religion, good people can behave well, and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion”. We do not hate religious people, but we feel disappointed about their inability in recognizing that religion can hinder them from behaving rationally, in self-interest, and in recognizing and honouring others’ rights.

9. How can Indians take a western concept such as atheism seriously? What is your understanding about the atheistic schools of thought in the Indian culture?

It is a logical fallacy to deem all western ideas bad (or to deem all western ideas good).
Nevertheless, the fact remains that atheism has been part of the Indian culture. The Nasadiya Sukta in the Rig Veda has expressed agnosticism. Ajit Keshakambali, a contemporary of Buddha, was an atheist. Charvaka was a prominent atheistic school of thought in India.
In the ancient India, atheism was often clubbed with the Nastika philosophy. The Nastika philosophy was defined as a deviant from the Astika philosophy. The Astika school of thought in turn was defined as acceptance of the Vedas as truth, in addition to belief in the existence of a soul and an ishwara (god). Although the schools of thought such as Ajivika, Buddhism, or Jainism were labelled as Nastika, this labelling was merely the result of their rejection of the authority of the Vedas. They did not reject the belief in existence of the supernatural such as soul or karma, and therefore, they cannot be considered atheistic.
Similarly, although the later reformist movements such as Lingayat, Sikh, Brahmo, or Satyashodhak rejected some discriminatory, starkly superstitious, or idol worship related aspects of dharma, we cannot consider them as atheistic because they did not reject the belief in the existence of the supernatural.
The Lokayata (literally meaning this-worldly) or Charvaka was a materialistic/atheistic school of thought. Information about the Lokayata philosophy is limited because the original source material is not available, but their beliefs and arguments can be inferred from writings of their critics.

10. Are you different from the agnostics?

Agnostics believe that the god’s presence is at least currently unknown or perhaps even eternally unknowable.
When we believe in a scientific theory, the evidence is never submitted with 100% confidence. A scientist and atheist JBS Haldane had famously said that there is a possibility that we may reject the theory of evolution if we find a fossil rabbit in the pre-Cambrian era. Even though all scientific beliefs are temporary and not known with 100% certainty, we don’t say something like, “since the theory of evolution is only 99.9999999% guaranteed to be true, I’m agnostic about its veracity”. Scientific beliefs are accepted as true even though there always exists a small possibility of them to be false. A Nobel Prize winner scientist Richard Feynman had said in 1985 that the accuracy of quantum mechanics is only equivalent to guessing the distance from Los Angeles to New York, a distance of over 3,000 miles, with an error less than the width of a human hair. So, there is still a tiny chance that the predictions of quantum physics could be coincidentally true without the quantum physics being true. In spite of having a non-zero possibility that all theories of science could be wrong, we don’t claim that we don’t believe in the theory of evolution or quantum physics, or that we are not sure if evolution or quantum physics is true or not. Just like courts, we accept claims that are proven beyond a reasonable doubt, even though a small, unreasonable doubt persists that these theories could be wrong.
And the uncertainty about truths is not limited to science. It’s a fundamental nature of our existence. Being sceptics, we believe that a god-like perfect mind can not exist, and therefore, we are open to doubting all beliefs. Everyone is fallible, and we can’t trust anything as the ultimate truth. We retain our desire to review all opinions expressed in or inferences formed by any person or book. Since we ourselves too are humans, we’re open to having even our own opinions re-examined. This means we need to not be 100% certain of our opinions in all fields of life, not merely limited to science.
Even in the field of mathematics, we do not deserve to hold a 100% confidence about any truths, be they as simple as the Pythagoras theorem, or as complex as the four colour theorem. Bertrand Russel and Alfred North Whitehead had to write a detailed proof even to establish that the addition of one plus one is indeed two. Even in the field of mathematics, false proofs of the four colour theorem were believed to be true for eleven years in the 19th century. Andrew Wiles’ 1993 proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem was found to be flawed in merely two months. His 1995 proof is still believed to be true as of today, but if his previous proof was found to be flawed then how can we have 100% confidence in his new proof? Therefore, even mathematical truths are always accepted as true without 100% confidence.
Similarly, based on the currently available experimental observations and logical deductions, we conclude merely ‘beyond any reasonable doubt’ that any god does not exist. An unreasonable level of doubt, a tiny doubt, may still remain. Atheism fundamentally differs from agnosticism in a sense that agnosticism puts an unfair bar on what qualifies as a truth. On the 7 point scale of the theism-atheism spectrum, most atheists admit of not being on the extreme position of 7. Therefore, one doesn’t need to consider oneself as agnostic merely because the one is less than 100% (but very near 100%) certain of any god’s absence.

11. Can atheists be culturally religious, to identify themselves as Christian atheists, Hindu atheists, Muslim atheists, etc.? Do atheists also reject the cultural facets of religion?

A scientist and militant atheist Richard Dawkins identifies himself as a cultural Christian. A cultural Christian is a person who does not believe in God/spirit/afterlife, does not believe in the trinity of Jesus/Holy-Spirit/Yahweh, denies the divinity of Jesus, does not believe that Jesus came back to life. Yet, the cultural Christian person celebrates the Christian festivals in a secular way, takes a Christmas vacation, eats a Christmas cake, gives Christmas gifts, illuminates Christmas lights and decorates. Old/new music/paintings made for Christianity give them a transcendental joy, and they might identify it as a spiritual feeling. That person’s morals are, at least partially, influenced by the basic morals taught by Jesus (non-stealing, honesty, non-violence, brotherhood, etc.). The concept of cultural Christianity exists for the last two to three hundred years. Along the same lines, some atheists in India also identify themselves as cultural Hindus.
Dawkins may have called himself as a cultural Christian in order to appease the Christians so that Christians will be more likely to pay attention to his writing on atheism instead of being hostile and continuing a prejudice against atheism. Also, unlike India which has no state religion, the official religion of Britain is Christianity. Their King is the supreme authority of the Church of England. The local community is homogeneously Christian. It is difficult to perceive the dichotomy between religion and culture there.
Whatever may have been Dawkins’ intention, it is wrong to credit the religion for the culture because the religion is not the source of culture; the society is the source of the culture. Religion assimilates the culture that is already prevalent in any society when the religion develops or enters in that society. For example, the festivals of Easter and Christmas predate Christianity. If those festivals are celebrated in a secular manner, they should not be counted as Christian festivals. Christianity has adopted some pre-existing customs, like Christmas and Easter, as its own. This is even more pronounced in the case of ‘religious cultures’ in India because of the plurality here. If someone calls himself a cultural Hindu because the one greets people using a namaste instead of shaking hands, or because the one eats tilgul, puranpoli, or modak, the same one can also be a cultural Muslim by eating biryani, a cultural Roman or Buddhist by hanging a windchime, a cultural hippie by wearing jeans, a cultural Christian by eating birthday cake. This will be shallow and absurd. Tilgul, Puranpoli, Modak must have been in our society independent of the Hindu religion. These foods were conceived for any transcendental tenet of Hinduism. Hindu chaste/holy foods like sago, peanuts etc. did not exist in ancient India. Even before any religion started, sisters must have loved their brothers. Unlike the cultural Hinduism which waits for Rakhi Purnima to express her love to her brother, a sister not bound by cultural religion becomes freer to express her love to her brother whenever she feels like it, without looking for any excuse/moment such as rakhi poornima or bhaubeej invented by the religion. Tilgul, Puranpoli, Modak, Biryani, and Cake can be consumed on any day of the year. Jeans can now be worn in formal occasions in contrast to the culture of the hippies.
Even if Hitler were to be the first to prove 2+2=4, accepting 2+2=4 would not have automatically made one a Nazi. Even if it were to have been said by the Nazis, we wouldn’t have agreed to it by the authority of the Nazis. We would still have accepted 2+2=4 merely by accepting the intrinsic value of the truth of the statement 2+2=4. Similarly, atheists who accept rakshabandhan, modak, dhoti, etc., have accepted that custom/food/clothing because of the intrinsic value of that custom/food/clothing, not because of the religious identity of that custom/food/clothing.
If atheists credit a religion for the secular culture associated with that religion, then they also risk giving credence to the supernatural aspects of that religion. Just as there are festivals in a religious culture, even the rituals like sati and casteism are also a part of the religious culture. So, rationalist atheists should not identify themselves as ‘culturally religious’.

12. Isn't atheism merely a negativistic, negatory, defensive, or apophatic stance?

Sometimes, atheism gets accused of being an evasive and avoidant position. Such argument goes something like this: "By declaring that you are an atheist, you merely reveal what you do NOT believe. There might be many beliefs that you do not subscribe to, but why do you single out theism as a belief to actively deny? Instead, why don't you merely state what you DO believe in?"
It is a fact that there are many entities in whose existence we do not believe in. For example, we don't believe that unicorns exists. But we don't identify ourselves as unicorn deniers. On the other hand, we identify as atheists merely because we believe that theism wields a significant and negative influence in the world around us. If tomorrow religion were to become an insignificant and minority belief, we'll no longer need to identify and unite as atheist.
Also, this doesn't mean that we avoid revealing what we do believe in. For example, we've positively identified the pillars of our rationality above.

13. Doesn't atheism isolate you from the rest of the society? Doesn't atheism make life boring? How do you deal with theist family and friends?

This is a tough question. We may be forced to balance between betraying own thoughts v/s getting isolated from the society. We can surely try to demonstrate to the society using our life as an example that atheists are just like other normal, productive members of the society. Many of us have experienced that, most theists drop their prejudices about atheists after they get an opportunity to closely interact with some atheists.
Atheism involves freedom from some external controls, and offers more avenues for living our life, not less. Atheism does not preclude secular entertainments, music, or sports.
Generally, relationships are short or long term contracts, involving a mutual exchange of commitments. Therefore, a person's faith or ideology are insignificant factors in determining how they are treated in a relationship - their utility and contribution in a relationship are the most important factors that decide the treatment they receive in a relationship. When family and friends expect atheists to cede own atheism for honoring the relationship, we need to investigate the quid pro quo transactions. Theist family and friends that are prepared to accommodate atheists by sacrificing or compromising own faith may deserve a reciprocal discount from atheists. Also, when theist family and friends appeal atheists to participate in religious rituals merely to honor the request of the theist family and friends, we can surely ask them if such sham participation is likely to satisfy a deity that knows that the atheist is participating in the ritual without actually believing in the deity.

14. What is your take on secularism? On humanism? On egalitarianism?

Secularism means protecting governance from any religious influence. Secularism is a necessary facet of rationalism because any belief in the existence of a supernatural entity is not rational. Since this world is free from any supernatural influence, taking cognizance of any belief about the existence of the supernatural makes any government's performance sub-optimal, e.g., if a rocket scientist takes multiple prayer breaks during the day or carries a replica of the rocket for spiritual blessings, it will either make the rocket more expensive or will delay its launch or will cause overwork-burnout for the scientist.
Secularism is crucial in a multicultural society as the only common minimum ground for conflicting faiths to arrive at a consensus for public policy. Secularism is also important in a culturally homogenous society as a form of pluralism.
Take on humanism/egalitarianism to be translated and consolidated from https://brightssociety.org/community/topicid/32/

15. What is your take on XYZ? And lorem ipsum?

An atheist can be tall or dwarf or something in-between. An atheist can be dark or fair or something in-between. An atheist can be smart or stupid. Same way, an atheist can hold any belief on any topic except for the topic of atheism. An atheist can be selfish or altruistic or any shade of those qualities, petty or philanthropic or anything in-between, leftist or centrist or rightist on economic policies, humanist or nihilist or absurdist or hedonist or anything else on the question of purpose and meaning of life. We can’t judge a person’s opinions about any other topic, merely based on their support of atheism. All atheists might not hold a unanimous opinion about topics unrelated to atheism.
Even though our atheism is a product of rationality, it doesn’t mean we claim to be rational in the entirety of our lives. We acknowledge the possibility that we might be irrational in some of our this-worldly beliefs, but as atheists, none of our irrational beliefs are about the supernatural.

16. Is it legal to be an atheist in India?

Courts and legal experts have ruled (link, link) that the freedom of conscience granted in the Article 25 of the Indian Constitution includes freedom to be irreligious or freedom to be an atheist. According to the Article 51Ah of the Indian Constitution, it is a fundamental duty of every citizen of India to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform. Therefore, atheists not only have a fundamental right to be atheists in India, but they are also fulfilling an ideal duty enshrined in the Constitution of India.

17. Should a government promote atheism?

Government should and does promote various facts of public importance. For example, the government does teach in schools that the Moon was probably formed when an asteroid collided with the Earth. The government also teaches controversial subjects such as evolution or human role in global warming.
Since we believe that the absence of any god is a fact, we don’t have any theoretical objections if a government teaches something like, ”a belief in the existence of a god is not consistent with science”. However, if a government is not careful in teaching the process by which a rational person can arrive at atheism, a mere propaganda of atheism can make atheism stoop to the level of a dogma, and that too, as an organized, state-sponsored dogma. Instead, it may suffice and may be safer if a government merely encourages a spirit of inquiry, skepticism, and scientific temper, because that itself can nudge inquisitive minds towards atheism.

18. Do you try to convert theists into atheists?

A person cannot be forced to become an atheist because rationalism requires a mind to be free from the authority of any book or person. We may try to convince theists by presenting our opinions, arguments, and evidence for atheism to those who’re interested to discuss, but if anyone accepts atheism then it’ll be on their own accord. In reciprocation, we too are open to knowing anyone’s arguments if they think that a belief in god’s existence can be consistent with reason and objective facts.

19. What are the important problems faced by atheists in India?

Until modern times, religion also used to be the law of the land. Therefore, anyone rejecting religion was automatically committing a crime. Even today, people are prohibited from being atheists in some countries. In India, we know about ancient atheistic schools of thought, such as Charvaka, only through the strong criticism written against them by others, because the original writings by the ancient Indian atheists have been lost. This indicates that atheism was not welcomed by the society. Until 1961, some states in USA had barred atheists from holding some public offices. This attitude of distrust and ostracism towards atheists has remnants and atheism bears a stigma even today. Gallup surveys have repeatedly reported (link, link) that in USA, voters avoid atheist candidates even strongly than avoiding either Muslim or gay candidates. According to a 2020 Pew survey (link), 64% Indian Hindus believe that being Hindu is very important for qualifying as a true Indian. Many atheists in India and Bangladesh have been assassinated for their atheism, and many other atheists have faced assaults, social and legal persecution, or exile as a price for supporting atheism. Indian politicians sometimes derogatorily accuse each other as atheist and then the electoral politics compels the accused politician to strive to prove own theism. Most movies tend to portray atheists in a bad light. Sometimes, Indian police have denied permission even for private and enclosed meetings of atheists, under pressure from religious fanatics.
Some people find anything unfamiliar as a threat. Some people find atheism offensive merely because they don’t sufficiently know it. It is a form of nationalism to associate pride with a communal identity such as religion, geographic region, caste, or language. People with inflated, unrealistic aspirations or with material insecurities tend to find solace in a communal pride. They feel safe in a group of people similar to them. And this feeling of belonging to the group can be further emphasized by ‘othering’ of those practicing a different way of life. Demeaning, excluding, or vilifying some ‘others’ grants them a sense of superiority and allows them to forget their own material problems (regardless of whether those problems are real or perceived). On the contrary, rational atheists are enlightened to not seek pride from any communal identity and they do not feel threatened when their opinions are challenged.
Rationalism requires unrestricted questioning and a quest for answers. Academicians need to state facts and analyze them. Social reformists need to challenge and condemn harmful traditions. Artists need a free use of creativity in their art. And everyone needs the right to freedom of expression during the pursuit of happiness. All these activities are considered to be offensive by many people. The current Indian laws, particularly the sections 295A, 298, and 153A of the Indian Penal Code (sections 299, 302, and 196 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita) provide a scope for legal prosecution if anyone complains that their religious sentiments were hurt by these activities. In most of the cases against these rationalists, academicians, reformists, artists, or protestors do not yield into punishment. Therefore, the use of the prosecution process as a deterrent should be stopped. As long as an expression does not involve any deception or instigation for violence, the society deserves a complete freedom of expression.

20. What is a 'bright'?

An atheist, Paul Geisert had observed that when homosexuals were facing severe persecution abroad, their mere choosing an epithet 'gay', meaning 'happy', for themselves helped to reduce the social stigma associated with homosexuality. Inspired by this observation, Geisert proposed to use a new noun 'bright' for atheists to avoid the negative connotation involved in identifying oneself as an atheist. The concept 'bright' is defined slightly differently than the concept 'atheist'. While an atheist per se only rejects the belief in the existence of any god or at most rejection of supernatural religions, a bright rejects the beliefs in the existence of all supernatural entities including soul, heaven/hell, or life after death. One doesn’t need to reject the belief in the existence of any god to be considered as a bright – it suffices even if one merely believes that this world operates without any supernatural intervention. Therefore, even agnostics, skeptics, freethinkers, naturalists, or materialists might be able to consider themselves as brights.
We, at brights' Society, India, are not affiliated (legally or otherwise) with https://www.the-brights.net/ , but we describe ourselves with the word 'bright' according to the meaning that they have coined.

21. What are the goals of your organisation?

We offer a platform for atheists to communicate with each other and to collaborate in addressing the problems that atheists face because of being atheists. We want isolated atheists to feel that they are not alone or wrong. We want closet atheists to feel safe to come out. We also want to improve the public perception of atheists and establish that rational atheists are productive members of society and valuable participants in democracy. We are also committed to spreading scientific temperament.
As stated earlier, we do not seek to actively convert theists to atheism. Our core expectation from the larger society including theists is to de-stigmatize and normalize atheism and to urge them to endorse secular public policies.