Antitheist

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who actively opposes and rejects belief in any deity while often criticizing religion as harmful to humanity
2. A person who not only denies the existence of deities but actively works against religious belief and its institutions on moral or philosophical grounds
3. Someone who rejects the existence of all gods and actively opposes religious belief as morally or intellectually harmful

Etymology: The word is built from two Greek elements that have travelled a long way into English. "Anti-" comes from the Ancient Greek preposition "anti", meaning "against" or "opposite", while "theist" descends from "theos", "god", with the suffix "-istes" marking a person who holds or practises something. The Greek "theos" passed into Latin and French before English took the "-ist" ending in the form "-iste", so the final word reads literally as "one who is against the god-believer." The pairing is a logical coinage rather than an ancient term. English speakers simply attached the prefix "anti-" to the existing word "theist", a process that makes it easy to create opposites of many nouns: an anti-royalist opposes monarchy, an antitheist opposes theism. Because "anti-" adds a sense of active opposition, the word describes someone who does more than lack belief; they campaign against it.

Synonyms: atheist, nonbeliever, skeptic, doubter, disbeliever

Antonyms: theist, believer, faithful, devotee, religious