The meaning of Atheism.

[Entropist]

If you were to ask me what being an "atheist" means, it simply means I simply have no belief in the existence any gods (and by extension, no belief in anything "supernatural"). That's it, end of story.

What follows from an individual's atheism will vary from one person to the next, but this has nothing to do with atheism per se, but rather philosophical views that are, in part, atheistic: existentialists, communists, nihilists, objectivists, certain Buddhists and secular humanists may all be atheists, but their ideological views are all very different. In many cases, the only thing these different ideologies have in common is a lack of belief in gods, and that is all.

If someone says to you "Hi, I'm an atheist," they haven't told you much about themselves at all. Only when they state something more specific, like "I am an avid reader of Ayn Rand" or "I belong to the x Humanist Association" or "I am a member of the Communist Party" will you have some clearer idea of where they are coming from.

Atheism itself doesn't mean a whole lot. But it makes certain philosophical ideologies available that couldn't otherwise exist from a theistic standpoint.