They don’t believe in God — or at least they’re not sure he exists. And because of their unbelief, they often find themselves misjudged and misunderstood.

Heimir Geirsson, assistant professor of philosophy, said some people think atheists and agnostics cannot have morals because they do not necessarily believe in God’s existence.

Geirsson, however, believes morality exists outside of a religious context.

“All it means to be an atheist is that you believe God does not exist, and if you’re an agnostic, it means you’re not sure,” he said.

Doug Ficek, an agnostic and junior in philosophy, is not concerned with the issues of whether God exists or whether there is life after death.

“I’m not opposed to the idea of an afterlife,” he said, “but I don’t think it’s important.”

Ficek said abiding by moral principles and respecting others is extremely imperative to him.

“The bottom line is how we act,” he said.

Ficek said he thinks people are fully able to be good without any divine influence or reason.

“Life is rich enough and the faculties of human beings are capable enough to formulate reasonable principles of justice and morality,” he said.

David Wilcox, youth associate pastor at First Assembly of God, 409 13th St., said there are two types of atheists: practical and theological.

Wilcox said theological atheists believe God doesn’t exist while practical atheists believe there is a god, but it doesn’t change their lifestyles.

Wilcox said it is rare for an atheist to “convert” to Christianity because “most of them come from within intellectual circles, and they already have a deep body of thought that they’re coming from.”

Wilcox said he thinks atheism stems from rebellion against traditional values. Whereas a Christian relies on his or her faith as a safety net, Wilcox said an atheist’s safety net is his or her intellectual abilities.

Gary Comstock, associate professor of philosophy and religious studies, said although he doesn’t think it is irrational to be an atheist, his personal experience with God has led him to be a theist.

“A theist perceives God in emotional experiences such as the birth of the daughter, death of a niece or seeing Mount Princeton for the first time. We encounter the world as charged with the grandeur of the creator’s hand,” Comstock said.

The best traditional argument for theism from a philosophic perspective, Comstock said, is a version of the “cosmological” argument, which says that everything in existence must have a sufficient reason for being.

Hector Avalos, associate professor of religious studies, said he would rather make the most of his life on Earth by helping others rather than spending his time worrying about the “next world.”

Avalos used to be a “fundamentalist preacher who wanted to convert the world,” he said. However, in studying the history of the Bible, prophecies, miracles and counterarguments against Christianity, he became an atheist.

Although he has been “near death” many times, Avalos said he has not wavered.

He said he sees too many people who fail to make well-informed decisions when deciding upon their beliefs.

“It doesn’t matter to me what you believe,” Avalos said. “What matters to me is that you make an informed choice.”

Geirsson said he made the choice to be agnostic because he finds it hard to believe God exists when so many atrocities occur worldwide.

“If God exists, he is all-good, all-powerful and all-knowing,” he said. “But there seems to be unnecessary evil in the world … like abused children and murder.”

Geirsson said he questions why an “all-good” God would not intervene to prevent such heinousness.

“But he doesn’t,” he said. “So it follows that God doesn’t exist.”

The only reason Geirsson said he leans toward being an agnostic as opposed to an atheist is because “there’s a slight possibly that all of this evil is going to serve the purpose of the greater good.”

Ficek admitted that some people are atheists for the wrong reasons.

Sometimes, he said, people look at how established religion has performed atrocities in the past, and then they decide by those that God does not exist.

“There’s no logical connection between any religious organization and God,” he said.

Ficek said other times atheists’ beliefs stem from some sort of anger or bitterness.

“But they are simply bad reasons,” he said. “Cynicism doesn’t prove anything.”