ABSTRACT
Freethought remains a convenient label for questioning and criticizing religion, religious institutions, and civil authorities relying on religion. Freethought can involve philosophizing about god, humanity, and nature, reveling in intense emotions, reforming religious practice and religious institutions, and rearranging church-state politics. Four primary methods of atheology can be distinguished, depending on whether atheology relies on rationality alone, scientific reasoning, moral norms of health, personal conduct, and social ethics or human rights, civil rights, and justice. Practical atheology offers persuasive discussions about atheism designed for adult audiences. Philosophical atheology takes atheology to its highest intellectual level, distinguishing its tasks into rational, scientific, moral, and civil atheologies. The possibility that atheists have taken contrary stands on the meaning and justification for atheism has rarely been entertained by the historiography of unbelief. Political criticism treated religion as a social institution deserving replacement as civilization advances, and its atheism consists of regarding religion as a human invention.
