By David Carlin, The Catholic Thing - I cannot prove it, but my strong impression is that for typical well-educated and relatively affluent Americans under forty years of age atheism is now the “default” position... When I speak of atheists, I have three kinds in mind: (1) Outright atheists, persons who are quite frank as to their disbelief; (2) diffident atheists, usually known as agnostics, who don’t believe in God, but like to tell themselves and others that they are open-minded about the question – even though they are not ....