It is no stretch to say that practically every American knows freedoms. Freedom of speech, right to bare arms and the freedom of religion. The freedom of religion would imply a sort of unprejudiced equality for all, regardless of belief. But, a freedom for the lack of religion has yet to be properly established.

“Atheism is the belief in no deity what-so-ever; science and math based for the most part. Agnostisics typically are iffy on it; they like to believe there could be a god or there couldn’t be, it doesn’t really matter to them,” sophomore Travis Cumming said.

It is a struggle for some students of religious descent, as prejudices for their own belief can come from their community, adding another load of stress to the struggle of teenage life.

“Living in the Bible Belt of the South, generally when people hear atheist or agnostic, they think ‘oh, so you are a Satan worshiper,’ or something of the sort,” junior Ploy Freebarin said. “A lot of the time people associate atheism with just being bad, and not having morals or anything like that. Like, ‘baby-killers’ and such.”

According to Freebarin, people who don’t identify with the mass majority are targeted for their beliefs

“But, there are also atheist who are actually good people,” Freebarin said. “Generally, I deal with a lot of people that judge me negatively as soon as they find out I’m atheist, even though before hand they had no problem with me. ”

This bit of prejudice, while prevalent among the uninformed, isn’t to say that all those who believe in a religion hate upon those without.

“I think that atheist or agnostics are just misguided and that if they knew the truth, they would believe it,” junior Kaylie Klava said, “I’m not going to judge anybody for their personal belief’s. If that’s how they choose to live, it’s between them and god. I’m not going to hate them for it.”

While this thought is reassuring, there is still a vast majority of people who think more negatively of the subject.

“It’s not like I go out of my way to be atheist,” Freebarin said, “It’s because I’m big on scientifically proven facts and the only reason I stuck with Christianity was probably because I was afraid of being alone in the world. But I felt that I didn’t need that, and that I didn’t truly believe all the principles of the Bible.”