A purity culture within atheist communities where the rejection of religious belief becomes a comprehensive test of virtue and belonging. Atheistic puritanism demands not just disbelief but active opposition to religion, not just absence of faith but presence of the right kind of secular identity. Members are judged by the purity of their atheism—whether they're atheist enough, whether they compromise with religion, whether they associate with believers, whether they acknowledge any value in religious traditions. The result is a community that reproduces the structure of religious purity culture while claiming to be free of it—complete with orthodoxy, heresy, excommunication, and the constant policing of boundaries. Atheism ceases to be a conclusion about gods and becomes an identity so demanding that few can satisfy its requirements.
Example: "They turned on him for saying he'd learned something from reading a Buddhist text—Atheistic Puritanism, where any engagement with religion, even critical, is contamination."
by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal March 14, 2026
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