Practicing atheism : culture media and ritual in the contemporary atheist network Practicing Atheism is a cultural study of contemporary atheism focusing on how atheists negotiate meanings and values through media. This book examines a variety of cultural products both corporate driven and grassroots that circulate messages about what atheism means what ideas values affinities and attitudes the term denotes. Through the creation consumption and exchange of this media atheism gains positive content the term signaling much more than lack of belief in god(s) for those who identify with the emergent culture. Primary source materials for this book include grassroots Internet communities popular television programming organized atheist events and material culture representations of the movement such as those found in atheist fan art. Practicing Atheism argues that atheist culture emerges from a unique tension with religion a category atheists critique and resist but also at times imitate and approximate. Using a framework based on ritual studies this book theorizes ambivalence ambiguity and in betweenness as the essential condition of contemporary atheist culture