So you are an atheist! So you have no moral compass!

That we are automatically bad people for not believing like them.

" No. I do not worship Satan " *sigh

Although I think the education will have an affect on how a person will relate to the current and popular mythology. When you don't understand how science works, comments like "believing in evolution is like believing a tornado came and built a jet airplane." If you don't understand how medicine works it's easier to convince someone to pay a shaman for a cure for your cancer, or eat only red peppers, or go on a colon cleanse.

Although there's another element that I see that transcends education: and that is "wisdom." I don't quite know how to define it, but there are those who have a certain emotional intelligence in that they are able to think deeply about stuff, to be introspective, to ask questions from life. Those people tend to be more "expressive" in how they view the current mythology of our day. So they can believe, or not believe, or live somewhere in the middle. I also think that they can be much more open to other opinions.

Devil worshippers

I've never encountered the notion that atheists are more educated other than in the context of them being arrogant or snooty like ivory tower types sometimes are even apart from religious questions.

In general what I've heard (online) is that atheists are arrogant, angry, rebellious, hateful (toward god, his believers, or both), licentious, immoral, rude, etc.

The general concept is to otherize us and deny that atheism could in any way, even mistakenly, be the result of considered opinion. To allow that is to open the door to the possibility that THEY could have wrong opinions, and there's nothing a fundamentalist lives more in terror of, than being wrong. Fundamentalism is all about being right, not about doing right.

In real life on the other hand the topic of my unbelief has only arisen twice in a quarter century, because I don't live in the Bible Belt and civilized people generally avoid discussion of religion or politics. One of my two surviving older brothers asked me about 4 years ago if I didn't believe in god anymore, I said no, he said that's too bad, and never brought it up again. More recently I started attending a men's group at the senior citizens center and one of the regulars there is an atheist and wondered if I was and I said yes. The other three persons in regular attendance are believers but have never mistreated me despite knowing that I'm an atheist.

So I think there is some disconnect between practical everyday life for an atheist, and the online experience. In part this is because of TIFS (Total Internet Fuckwad Syndrome) -- give an otherwise ordinary person a large audience and anonymity and it turns them into a jackass. Still -- typical online stereotypes that believers go by, are quite revealing.

I have met quite a few people who have a god , who when they find out I don't; want to know what it is that stops me behaving badly - I suppose badly means stealing and all that stuff whilst we are talking about god where does the bogeyman fit in because I was always told as a small child that the bogeyman would come for me in the night - also the tooth fairy came in the night and santa.

The misconception that non believers don't talk about god... they are talking about god and religion 24/7.

Personally, I really resent the repeated meme that because we lack a belief in some eternal damnation for being bad, that must mean we have nothing to stop our behavior from being abhorrent. I don't need an invisible, infinite, carrot-and-stick to know the difference between good and evil. If anything, I think those of us who do good for no other reason than we want to are doing far better than those who do good to escape some sort of hell concept.

"You just need to be open minded about God and let.him into your heart!" "Have you read the bible?" How the hell do they think I got to be an atheist!?!?!

That atheists are that way because they haven't read the bible.

Dude...many atheists became atheists because they read the bible.

One misconception I hate is when people say that atheists become atheists simply because they were angry at god. Though it might be true for some atheists, there are many atheists that either refute god because they see no evidence or are born into a non religious family. It isn't strictly that one becomes an atheist because they're angry at god.

I agree with all the negative slams already listed. Minions of Satan. By not believing in Satan, we are serving "him." Of course, it makes perfect sense.....not. Also that our criticisms of Christianity's discriminatory practices amounts to a mean-spirited, totally unfair attack on Christians, who are, naturally, only trying to spread the love of Jesus, and who could be against that? Bleh.

we have no morals

One of the most common misconceptions is that a lack of belief is belief.

The common one I hear is that we are simply assholes, even people I know well say this. They seem to either have a bad habit of running into really douchey atheists, or they overreact and simply can't take a bit of ideological criticism.

I can easily be a douche about it, but only in push back from harsh religious folk.

Let's see...
Atheists eat babies
Atheists worship Satan
Atheists hate God.
Atheists have no morals.
Atheists practice witchcraft.

I could go on and on with the shit I've heard.