Clap Your Hands If You Don't Believe

Since I've been blogging a bit lately about religion and people of faith, I thought it was only right to give a nod to atheists and agnostics in fiction. Oddly, while certain genres seem to be heavily populated with non-believers of some variety, there's also a ridiculously high population of evil atheists at large in Fictionland. And unfortunately, there's enough ill-will towards this group to merit an entire Wikipedia page.

First of all, atheists aren't any more cookie-cutter in their beliefs than any other group. There are those who subscribe to a non-theistic religion (such as Buddhism or Taoism); there are those who don't particularly see any evidence of a God or Gods and don't care; those who are staunchly undecided do to said lack of concrete proof; those who actively believe there is no higher power with televangelist-level enthusiasm; and those who want to stamp out all faith. While some of these people are pendantic, or amoral, or bigoted, the majority are nice people minding their own business-- basically, the same distribution as the adherents of any other belief system. Your character is just as likely to bump into a pleasant person who doesn't believe in God as they are to meet a raging Dawkins fan.

That said, athiests are a global minority, making up between 2% and 10% of any given population in general. The upshot of this that your character is unlikely to be surrounded by non-believers unless they live in a fictional universe where this is significantly more common (this seems to be the case in Star Trek, for example), or are primarily interacting with people in a group in which non-belief is more common.

It's also disconcerting to have non-believer characters in a universe which explicitly includes elements consistent with religion. Even if these elements are fairly minor-- maybe vampires are repelled by crosses--it's odd that characters seem to ignore them. (I also have a major peeve with non-believer characters who encounter some creature or phenomenon straight out of Abrahamic religion, and do not respond by sprinting to the nearest church, mosque or temple, because in universe that would be the rational response!). This is something you need to keep in mind as far as worldbuilding.

Finally, there are some settings where an athiest character is going to stick out like a sore thumb. Even in the modern world, there are countries which actively persecute non-belief (see the link up top). History is an even more hostile place (the obvious exceptions being majority-Buddhist countries and the like). So if you're writing such a character, it's important to consider whether they'll need to keep their beliefs under wraps, or even be actively in danger.