What is atheism, and what does the Bible say about it?

The Heart's Verdict

Denying God Begins in the Heart

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.

Psalms 14:1 (NIV)

David identifies practical and theoretical denial of God not as mental incapacity, but as moral rebellion born within the inner person.

In Psalm 14:1, David diagnoses unbelief at its root: the denial of God is not an intellectual defect, but a moral revolt of the human heart. The fool (nabal) is not someone who cannot reason, but someone who casts off moral restraint, declaring inwardly that God does not govern or judge. This diagnosis is so vital to Scripture's indictment of mankind that it is repeated verbatim in Psalm 53:1. Both passages demonstrate that when God is dismissed from view, the immediate fruit is corrupt character and abominable deeds.

The rest of Scripture consistently traces this denial to pride and self-sufficiency rather than honest lack of evidence. Psalm 10:4 explains that in the pride of his countenance the wicked does not seek Him, and all his thoughts conclude that there is no God. Such brutish individuals, as Psalm 92:6 laments, simply lack the spiritual appetite to comprehend God's deep counsels. This refusal often surfaces as practical atheism. In Psalm 10:11 and Psalm 10:13, the transgressor reassures his conscience by claiming that God has forgotten, hides His face, and will never call anyone to account. In Zephaniah 1:12, the complacent say in their hearts that the Lord will do neither good nor evil, imagining Him entirely indifferent to human conduct.

Job records the exact same insolence among prosperous rebels. In Job 21:14-15, the ungodly tell God to depart from them, bluntly asking what profit lies in praying to the Almighty. In Job 22:13-14, Eliphaz describes the wicked supposing that thick clouds veil God so completely that He cannot see through the darkness to evaluate the earth. Even the wise Agur recognized this temptation of self-satisfied human autonomy: in Proverbs 30:8-9, he prayed against excessive abundance, lest he become full, deny God, and arrogantly ask who the Lord is.

Suppressed Truth

Unbelief Rejects Plain Light

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Romans 1:21 (NIV)

Paul reveals that unbelief is an active refusal to glorify God despite clear internal and external revelation.

In Romans 1:21, the Apostle Paul exposes the fundamental mechanism of human unbelief: humanity knew God, yet refused to honor Him as God or offer Him thanks. Unbelief is never an innocent lack of information; it is the deliberate stifling of light. According to Romans 1:18, God's righteous wrath is revealed from heaven precisely against those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Verses 19 and 20 explain that what can be known about God is completely plain to them, because God has shown it. His invisible attributes—namely His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made, so that every denier is left without excuse.

When men reject that clear revelation, Romans 1:21 notes that their thinking becomes utterly futile and their foolish hearts are darkened. By Romans 1:28, because they refuse to acknowledge God, He hands them over to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done. The physical cosmos offers relentless testimony against this willful blindness. Psalm 19:1-4 declares that the heavens continuously recount the glory of God and the sky proclaims His handiwork, their voice going out through all the earth without verbal speech.

God has left no culture without this witness. Paul told the pagans at Lystra in Acts 14:15-17 that the living God gave constant testimony to Himself through rain, fruitful seasons, and food. In Athens, Acts 17:24-28 affirmed that the God who made the world gives life, breath, and everything to all men, being near to every single one. Even the physical animals, birds, and earth itself proclaim this truth, as Job 12:7-10 insists: ask the beasts and the fish of the sea, and they will declare that the hand of the Lord has made all life.

Universal Ruin

A Symptom of Human Depravity

As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;

Romans 3:10 (NIV)

Paul shows that the moral vacuum of denying God describes the universal condition of mankind apart from divine grace.

In Romans 3:10, Scripture levels a sweeping universal indictment: there is no one righteous, not even one, and none who seeks for God. Paul demonstrates from the Old Testament that practical and philosophical atheism is not an isolated posture of a few philosophers, but the default state of all fallen humanity. In Romans 3:10-12, all have turned aside and become worthless. Humanity apart from Christ does not move naturally toward God; it flees Him.

Paul details this tragic spiritual deadness in Ephesians 2:1-3, noting that before salvation, every believer walked according to the course of this world and the prince of the power of the air. Ephesians 4:18 adds that unregenerate minds are darkened in understanding and thoroughly alienated from the life of God because of internal ignorance and hardness of heart. Paul starkly summarizes this pagan existence in Ephesians 2:12 as having no hope and being literally without God (atheoi) in the world.

Human intellect cannot overcome this spiritual death on its own. In 1 Corinthians 1:18-21, the world through its accumulated human wisdom failed to know God, stumbling over the message of the cross. 1 Corinthians 2:14 explains why: the natural person cannot accept the things of the Spirit of God because they are foolishness to him and must be spiritually discerned. In 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, the god of this age has actively blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of Christ. As Titus 1:15-16 warns, their defiled minds corrupt even their conscience; many profess to know God while denying Him in practice, echoing the rebellious claim in Jeremiah 5:12 that the Lord will do nothing and that judgment will never come.

Gospel Hope

Grace Rescues the Darkened Mind

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

Ephesians 2:4-5 (NIV)

God's sovereign mercy makes spiritually dead deniers alive together with Christ, overcoming natural rebellion.

In Ephesians 2:4-5, the hopeless diagnosis of human rebellion meets its sovereign answer: God, being rich in mercy, made dead rebels alive together with Christ by grace. Because atheism is spiritual deadness rather than mere intellectual error, it cannot be cured by mere human debate. It requires the supernatural, life-giving power of God. As 2 Corinthians 4:6 declares, the very same Creator who spoke light out of primeval darkness shines into human hearts to grant the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

When this sovereign work occurs, genuine transformation follows. In 1 Thessalonians 1:9, the believers in Thessalonica abandoned their lifeless idols and secular delusions to serve the living and true God. Coming to God requires this complete spiritual reorientation; as Hebrews 11:6 insists, whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.

This living God is not an abstract concept or distant watchmaker, but has revealed Himself definitively in His Son. John 1:18 records that while no one has seen God at any time, the only begotten God, who is at the Father's side, has made Him fully known. To know Him through Christ is the very essence of salvation: John 17:3 defines eternal life as knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. As the Apostle writes in 1 John 5:20, the Son of God has come and given us understanding to know Him who is true, grounding our lives securely in the True One.

The Scoffer's Mockery

Scoffers Deliberately Forget the Living God

Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water.

2 Peter 3:3-5 (NIV)

Peter highlights that theoretical and practical denial of divine intervention is driven by deliberate suppression rather than lack of evidence.

In 2 Peter 3:3-5, the apostle Peter identifies the engine behind the open mockery of God: unbelief is never merely a neutral intellectual stance, but a deliberate forgetting of divine reality. The scoffers of the last days do not question God's intervention because evidence is lacking; they scoff because they follow their own sinful desires. As 2 Peter 3:3-4 warns, their skepticism manifests in mocking the promise of Christ's return, arguing that all things simply continue unchanged from the very beginning of creation. By appealing to an unbroken, closed natural order, they insulate themselves from the reality of a Creator who steps into history to judge and to redeem.

Yet this argument relies on willful blindness. Peter observes in 2 Peter 3:5 that these scoffers deliberately overlook the undeniable fact that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God. To deny God's sovereign involvement in the world requires actively suppressing the foundational truth of creation itself. Jude 1:18-19 reinforces this moral diagnosis, explaining that last-time mockers are driven by ungodly passions, causing division and living as worldly individuals devoid of the Holy Spirit. Unbelief is moral and spiritual before it ever expresses itself in philosophical doubt. For this reason, Hebrews 3:12 warns believers with urgent gravity to take care lest there be in any of them an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. Scripture diagnoses atheistic mockery not as enlightened reason, but as a tragic rebellion of the heart against the God who speaks.

Where in the Bible

The story in order

1. Creation attests to God (c. 1000 BC) · Psalms 19:1-4 · The heavens declare God's glory, showing His existence and power.
2. Job's friends argue God is distant (c. 1450 BC) · Job 12:7-10 · Even animals and earth testify to God's creative hand.
3. The fool denies God in his heart (c. 1000 BC) · Psalms 14:1 · Denying God is rooted in the heart, leading to corrupt deeds.
4. Wicked reject God's rule (c. 1000 BC) · Psalms 10:4 · Pride prevents the wicked from seeking God.
5. Prophet warns against forgetting God (c. 600 BC) · Jeremiah 5:12 · People falsely claim the Lord will do nothing.
6. Atheism suppresses known truth (c. AD 55) · Romans 1:18 · God's wrath is against those who suppress the truth of His nature.
7. Creation proves God's power (c. AD 55) · Romans 1:19-20 · God's power and nature are evident in creation, leaving no excuse.
8. Unbelief leads to depraved minds (c. AD 55) · Romans 1:28 · Those who reject God are given over to minds that do wrong.
9. Human wisdom fails to know God (c. AD 55) · 1 Corinthians 1:21 · The world's wisdom did not lead to knowing God.
10. God makes the dead alive (c. AD 60) · Ephesians 2:4-5 · God's mercy brings spiritual life to those dead in sin.
11. God shines light into hearts (c. AD 56) · 2 Corinthians 4:6 · God illuminates hearts to know His glory in Christ.
12. Scoffers deny Christ's return (c. AD 65) · 2 Peter 3:3-4 · Scoffers will mock the promise of Christ's coming.
13. Eternal life is knowing God (c. AD 30) · John 17:3 · Knowing the true God and Jesus Christ is eternal life.

Suppressed Truth and Its Consequences

The Heart's Inclination Away from God

The Natural Person vs. The Spiritual Person

Key words

Atheism

The denial of the existence of God, often stemming from a heart posture rather than mere intellectual reasoning. · Psalms 14:1

Suppression of Truth (κατεχόντων τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐν ἀδικίᾳ (katechontōn tēn…)

Actively holding down or preventing the acknowledgment of God's obvious power and divine nature evident in creation. · Romans 1:18

Depraved Mind (ἀδόκιμον νοῦν (adokimon noun))

A mind given over by God as a consequence of refusing to acknowledge Him, leading to immoral actions. · Romans 1:28

Fool (אֱוִיל (ʾĕwîl))

One who declares in his heart that there is no God, leading to corrupt character. · Psalms 14:1

Natural Person (ψυχικός (psychikos))

An individual without the Holy Spirit, unable to understand or accept spiritual truths. · 1 Corinthians 2:14

Eternal Life

The gift of knowing the one true God and Jesus Christ, given through His revelation. · John 17:3