title: Iron Man 3

text: Both the opening and the ending of the film were reworked in various ways. First it would begin with a flashback to Tony's childhood. Then like "Iron Man" it would begin in medias res, with Tony crashing in Tennessee before a voice-over that would lead to how he got there, until it got changed to the final version. For the climactic tanker battle, it was originally considered that Brandt would show up in the "James Bond" tradition of the henchman coming back for the heroes. Instead they chose to use Killian himself, and have Pepper, whom he abused earlier, cause his downfall as a way of poetic justice. The final dialogue was originally written as "I am Tony Stark" to be a response to the first film's ending, but eventually it changed to "I am Iron Man" to enhance the mythical qualities. On setting the film around Christmas, Black said "I think it's a sense of if you're doing something on an interesting scale that involves an entire universe of characters, one way to unite them is to have them all undergo a common experience. There's something at Christmas that unites everybody and it already sets a stage within the stage, that wherever you are, you're experiencing this world together. I think that also there's something just pleasing about it to me." Pearce added that he would have wanted to see a third "Iron Man" film set at Christmas, adding that "when you're telling a story about taking characters apart, it almost has more resonance if you put it at Christmas and if you're also telling a story about lonelier characters as well. That loneliness is heightened at Christmas." Black also felt the character Harley Keener embodied the Ghost of Christmas Past for Stark.


title: Iron Man 3

text: In September 2011, Marvel Studios reached an agreement to shoot the film primarily out of EUE/Screen Gems Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina. Michigan was also in contention to land the production, but the Michigan Film Office could not match North Carolina's tax incentives. In April 2012, Ben Kingsley entered into negotiations to play a villain in "Iron Man 3", a part which Anthony Mackie, who would later portray Sam Wilson in the MCU, also auditioned for. The following week, producer Kevin Feige revealed that "Iron Man 3" would begin shooting in North Carolina "in five weeks," and said that it "is a full-on Tony Stark-centric movie ... very much inspired by the first half of "Iron Man" ... [H]e's stripped of everything, he's backed up against a wall, and he's gotta use his intelligence to get out of it. He can't call Thor, he can't call Cap, he can't call Nick Fury, and he can't look for the Helicarrier in the sky." A few days later, The Walt Disney Company China, Marvel Studios, and DMG Entertainment announced an agreement to co-produce "Iron Man 3" in China. DMG partly financed, produced in China with Marvel, and handled co-production matters. DMG also distributed the film in China in tandem with Disney.


title: Iron Man 3

text: The next week, Guy Pearce entered into final talks to play Aldrich Killian, a character who is featured in the "Extremis" comic book story arc. Chinese star Andy Lau became involved in negotiations to join the film, as a Chinese scientist and old friend of Stark's who comes to his aid. Lau would later turn down the role, and Wang Xueqi was cast instead. Jessica Chastain entered into discussions for a role in the film, but bowed out due to scheduling conflicts. In May, Rebecca Hall was cast in her place, and her role was described as "a scientist who plays a pivotal role in the creation of a nanotechnology, known as Extremis." Over the next few weeks, James Badge Dale was cast as Eric Savin, Ashley Hamilton was cast as Firepower, and Favreau returned to reprise his role as Happy Hogan from the first two films. Stéphanie Szostak and William Sadler were also cast in the film, with Sadler playing the President of the United States. Despite erroneous early reports that Cobie Smulders would reprise her role as Maria Hill from "The Avengers" in the film, Smulders wrote on her verified Twitter page that this was not so. According to Drew Pearce, Emilia Clarke was initially cast for an unknown role, before the script was changed.


title: Iron Man 3

text: Filming began in Wilmington, North Carolina, on May 23, 2012 at EUE/Screen Gems Studios, with the working title "Caged Heat". Cinematographer John Toll opted to work with digital cameras for the first time in his career, as he found them more convenient for a visual effects-heavy production. Toll shot the film primarily on the Arri Alexa camera. From June 4 through June 6, 2012, filming took place in Cary, North Carolina, at the Epic Games headquarters and SAS Institute, with a large Christmas tree set up on the front lawn. A scene was also shot at the Wilmington International Airport. The Port of Wilmington served as a location for the oil tanker in the climactic battle, along with a soundstage recreation of the dock. The crumbling house itself was filmed in a hydraulic-powered giubo platform that could bend and split into two pieces. All the interior footage had practical effects, including debris and explosions, with computer graphics used only to add exteriors and Iron Man's armor.


title: Iron Man 3

text: From July 19 to August 1, 2012, filming took place on Oak Island, North Carolina, to "film aerial drops over the Atlantic Ocean." They were done for the scene where Iron Man rescues the people falling from the Air Force One over Miami, which were originally envisioned done with green screen effects, but were changed to using actual skydivers as second unit director Brian Smrz knew the Red Bull skydiving team. Computer graphics were only employed to add clouds, the destroyed plane and matte paintings of the Florida coastline in the background, replace a stand-in with the Iron Man armor, and some digital compositing to combine different takes of the skydivers together. Filming took place in Rose Hill, North Carolina, in early August 2012, and the town's name was incorporated into the script as the Tennessee city Stark visits. On August 14, actress Dale Dickey said she had been cast in the film, and was currently shooting her scenes. The following day, production was halted when Downey suffered an ankle injury. During the break, Black and Pearce made more script revisions before shooting resumed by August 24.


title: Iron Man 3

text: Cast and crew began arriving in Florida on October 1, to shoot scenes on Dania Beach and around South Florida. That same day, Downey returned to the set after his ankle injury. In early October, scenes were shot at a replica of the Malibu restaurant Neptune's Net, and filming took place on location at the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens. Scenes were shot during the daytime inside the Miami Beach Resort at Miami Beach on October 10 and 11. The production returned to Wilmington in mid-October for additional filming. On November 1, scenes were shot at the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens. Filming in the United States wrapped on November 7 in Wilmington.


title: Iron Man 3

text: Filming began in Beijing, China on December 10. Filming was scheduled to wrap a week later on December 17, 2012. The China filming did not include the main cast and crew. In January 2013, it was reported that a film crew led by Shane Black would begin location scouting in Hyderabad and Bengaluru, India between January 20 and 24. Also in January, Cheadle confirmed that re-shooting was taking place in Manhattan Beach. Shooting also took place on the week of January 23, 2013 at TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. A major part of the content filmed in the reshoots regarded the Mandarin, with Drew Pearce saying that in early cuts, the character "didn't feel real enough—there wasn't a sense of him being [part of] the real world, mostly because he was just looking down a lens and threatening the world." A report on actual production costs for films from FilmL.A. Inc., indicated a gross budget of $200 million, with a net of $178.4 million for "Iron Man 3" after tax incentives from North Carolina and Florida.


title: Iron Man 3

text: Chris Townsend served as visual effects supervisor for the film, which featured over 2,000 visual effects shots and was worked on by 17 studios, including Weta Digital, Digital Domain, Scanline VFX, Trixter, Framestore, Luma Pictures, Fuel VFX, Cantina Creative, Cinesite, The Embassy Visual Effects, Lola, Capital T, Prologue and Rise FX. Townsend said that from January 2013 through the end of filming in April, the collective crew had one day of downtime, otherwise working seven days a week and 14 to 18 hours a day.


title: Iron Man 3

text: Digital Domain, Scanline VFX and Trixter each worked on separate shots featuring the Mark 42 armor, working with different digital models. The studios shared some of their files to ensure consistency between the shots. For the Mark 42 and Iron Patriot armors, Legacy Effects constructed partial suits that were worn on set. Townsend explained that "Invariably we'd shoot a soft-suit with Robert then we'd also put tracking markers on his trousers. He would also wear lifts in his shoes or be up in a box so he'd be the correct height—Iron Man is 6'5". During shooting we used multiple witness cams, Canon C300s, and we had two or three running whenever there was an Iron Man or Extremis character." The artists studied time lapse photography of decaying fruit and vegetables and actual phenomena such as the aurora borealis as reference for the effect of the glowing Extremis characters. The heads-up display features of the helmet were inspired by visualization techniques from MRI diagnostic pattern recognition and graph theory, particularly by the connectogram, a circular graph that maps all of the white-matter connections of the human brain.


title: Iron Man 3

text: The film's production was delayed following Downey's leg injury, and for certain shots they were forced to create a double for Downey. Townsend explained that "The collective VFX [supervisors] and unit leads ran into a room as soon as the incident happened to try to ascertain what sequences could they shoot." Certain shots were filmed with a body double on set, and Weta Digital created a digital body double for others.


title: Iron Man 3

text: A total of three hours and 15 minutes of footage were shot before editing, where it was brought down to 130 minutes (119 without the credits), marking the longest stand-alone "Iron Man" film. Post-production also had a 3D conversion and a digital remaster for the IMAX release. Todd-AO mixed the sound in Dolby Atmos to enhance the immersive experience. Trevor Slattery was originally meant to die in the film, appearing during the climatic oil rig battle with an Extremis injector and promptly blowing up after taking it. Pearce said that was "the most "Monty Python" of all of the beats" in the film. During the editing process, it was determined to keep Slattery alive, with new material shot during the reshoots to accommodate this.


title: Iron Man 3

text: The film is scored by Brian Tyler, who signed on in October 2012. According to Tyler, he was approached more for his "thematic" scores such as "The Greatest Game Ever Played", "Annapolis", and "Partition" rather than his "modern" action scores such as "The Fast and Furious" films, with Kevin Feige asking a theme that was recognizable and featured those dramatic tones. To employ the "deeply thematic component with a strong melody," the score employs mostly orchestra sounds. The main theme for Iron Man focuses on horns and trumpets, to be "both a march and anthem." Tyler mentioned that John Williams' work on "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was the first thing he thought of as an influence, and the cue for the Well of Souls in "Raiders" influenced the Extremis motif, as Tyler felt it should enhance an spiritual side for having a "technology so advanced that nears magic." Echoing the Mandarin's amalgamated personality, his theme was religious music "that borrows from many cultures," from "Monastic, Gothic, and Christian chants to music from the Middle-East." The score was recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios.


title: Iron Man 3

text: Along with Tyler's soundtrack album, Hollywood Records released a concept album inspired by the film, "Heroes Fall". It features twelve original alternative rock and indie rock songs, with only one appearing in the film itself, Awolnation's "Some Kind of Joke."


title: Iron Man 3

text: In July 2012, at the San Diego Comic-Con International, a new Iron Man armor from the film, the Mark XLII, was on display on the convention floor, along with the Marks I-VII from the first two "Iron Man" films and "The Avengers". A panel was held, during which Shane Black, Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle, Jon Favreau and Kevin Feige discussed making the film, and several minutes of footage from the film were shown. The first television advertisement aired during Super Bowl XLVII on the CBS network in the United States. On March 25, 2013, Marvel and Disney revealed on the official "Iron Man" Facebook page, "Iron Man 3: Armor Unlock," to reveal suits Stark has made before the events of the film. In January 2013, Marvel Comics released a two-issue comic book prelude by writers Christos Gage and Will Corona Pilgrim with art by Steve Kurth and Drew Geraci. The story set between the second and third "Iron Man" films centers on War Machine, revealing why he was absent during the battle in New York of "The Avengers".


title: Iron Man 3

text: Like with the first two films, Audi again provided product placement with various vehicles. Oracle also returned from "Iron Man 2", showcasing both the Oracle Cloud and the Oracle Exadata server. Verizon FiOS and TCL's flat panel televisions and Alcatel One Touch smartphones are also featured in the film, and the Chinese cut also shows a Zoomlion crane and Yili milk. Promotional deals were arranged with Subway and the Schwan Food Company, and tie-ins included Lego sets, Hasbro action figures, and by Gameloft.


title: Iron Man 3

text: Disney also promoted the film at its domestic theme parks. Disneyland's Innoventions attraction received a Stark Industries exhibit beginning April 13, and Monorail Black of the Walt Disney World Monorail System was given an exterior "Iron Man" scheme. The exhibit, entitled "Iron Man Tech Presented by Stark Industries", features the same armor display that was shown at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con, with the Marks I-VII and the new Mark XLII. In addition, there is a simulator game, titled "Become Iron Man," that uses Kinect-like technology to allow the viewer to be encased in an animated Mark XLII armor and take part in a series of "tests," in which you fire repulsor rays and fly through Tony Stark's workshop. The game is guided by J.A.R.V.I.S., who is voiced again by Paul Bettany. The exhibit also has smaller displays that include helmets and chest pieces from the earlier films and the gauntlet and boot from an action sequence in "Iron Man 3". All-in-all, Disney spent $131 million marketing the film worldwide.


title: Iron Man 3

text: "Iron Man 3" was distributed worldwide by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures with the exception of China, where it was released by DMG Entertainment, and Germany and Austria, where it was released by Tele München Group. The Chinese version of the film offers specially prepared bonus footage made exclusively for the Chinese audience. This version features a four-minute longer cut of the film, with a longer scene of Tony meeting Dr. Wu, a scene showing Dr. Wu on the phone with Jarvis as Iron Man is visible on a television screen in front of him, as well as a scene of Dr. Wu preparing to operate on Stark with Fan Bingbing. The extra material also features product placement for various Chinese products.


title: Iron Man 3

text: The film's premiere happened at the Grand Rex in Paris, on April 14, 2013, with Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow in attendance. While the UK premiere of the film was originally set for April 17, the funeral of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher taking place in that date made the event be pushed to the following day. Downey, Ben Kingsley and Rebecca Hall were present for the advance screening at London's Odeon Leicester Square. The El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles hosted the United States premiere of "Iron Man 3" on April 24. The film opened in 46 countries through April 22–24, with the United States release, in 4,253 screens, happening one week later. Regal Cinemas, AMC Theatres and Carmike Cinemas put presale tickets on hold, two weeks before the US premiere. The cinemas were in a contract dispute with Disney, who wished to receive more of the ticket sale profit than they currently did, largely based on the projected premiere-weekend intake "Iron Man 3" was expected to have. Carmike was the first to come to terms with Disney. It was later reported that Cinemark Theatres had also stopped selling presale tickets, and Regal Cinemas had removed all marketing material for the film from its locations. On April 25, 2013, Regal, AMC and Disney ended their dispute, which allowed Regal and AMC to proceed with selling presale tickets again.


title: Iron Man 3

text: IMAX screenings began on April 25, 2013 internationally and May 3 in the United States. The film was shown in the 4DX format, featuring strobe lights, tilting seats, blowing wind and fog and odor effects in selected countries. In Japan, the technology opened its first room at the Korona World theater in Nagoya, Japan with the release of the film. "Iron Man 3" was the first film released in of the MCU.


title: Iron Man 3

text: "Iron Man 3" was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment in digital download form on September 3, 2013. This was followed by the film's release on Blu-ray, 3D Blu-ray, DVD, digital copy, and on demand on September 24, 2013. The home video release includes a Marvel One-Shot short film titled "Agent Carter" starring Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter from "". It debuted atop the DVD and Blu-ray charts in the United States, and second in the rental charts behind "World War Z". "Iron Man 3" has earned more than $82 million in home media sales in the U.S.


title: Iron Man 3

text: The film was also collected in a 13-disc box set titled "", which includes all of the Phase Two films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was released on December 8, 2015.


title: Iron Man 3

text: "Iron Man 3" grossed $409 million in North America and $805.8 million in other countries for a worldwide total of $1.215 billion, outgrossing both of its predecessors combined. Worldwide, it became the fifth-highest-grossing film, the second-highest-grossing film of 2013, the second-highest-grossing film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (behind "Marvel's The Avengers"), and the highest-grossing film of the "Iron Man" film series, as well as the fourth-highest-grossing comic-book and superhero film overall. It achieved the sixth-largest worldwide opening weekend with $372.5 million. On the weekend of May 3–5, 2013, the film set a record for the largest worldwide weekend in IMAX with $28.6 million. On its 23rd day in theaters, "Iron Man 3" became the sixth Disney film and the 16th film overall to reach $1 billion. It is the first "Iron Man" film to gross over $1 billion, becoming the second Marvel film to do so after "The Avengers", and was the fourth-fastest film to reach the milestone. As part of the earlier distribution agreement made with Disney in 2010, Paramount Pictures received 9% of the box office gross generated by "Iron Man 3". "Deadline Hollywood" calculated the film's net profit as $391.8 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues for the film.


title: Iron Man 3

text: By the end of its opening day, "Iron Man 3" made $68.9 million (including $15.6 million from late Thursday shows), achieving the seventh-highest-grossing opening day. By the end of its opening weekend, the film earned $174.1 million, making it the second-highest opening weekend of all time, behind "The Avengers". Of the opening-weekend audience, 55% was over 25 years old, and 61% were males, while only 45% of the gross originated from 3-D screenings. Opening-weekend earnings from IMAX amounted to $16.5 million. It topped the box office during two consecutive weekends and achieved the fourth-largest second-weekend gross with $72.5 million.


title: Iron Man 3

text: The film earned $13.2 million on its opening day (Wednesday, April 24, 2013) from 12 countries. Through Sunday, April 28, it earned a five-day opening weekend of $198.4 million from 42 countries. The film's opening-weekend gross included $7.1 million from IMAX venues. It set opening-day records in the Philippines (surpassed by "Man of Steel"), Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, China, Ukraine, Russia and the CIS, both single- and opening-day records in Thailand and South Africa, as well as a single-day record in Hong Kong. It also scored the second-biggest opening day in Argentina, only behind "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2". The film set opening-weekend records in the Asia Pacific region, in Latin America, and in individual countries including Argentina (first surpassed by "Fast & Furious 6", when including weekday previews), Ecuador, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates. It also achieved the second-largest opening weekend in Mexico, Brazil, and Russia and the CIS. In India, it had the second-best opening weekend for a Hollywood film, after "The Amazing Spider-Man". IMAX opening-weekend records were set in Taiwan, the Netherlands, Brazil, and the Philippines. It is the highest-grossing film in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam and the second-highest-grossing film in Singapore and the Philippines, behind "The Avengers". It topped the weekend box office outside North America three consecutive times.


title: Iron Man 3

text: In China, where part of the production took place, the film set a midnight-showings record with $2.1 million, as well as single-day and opening-day records with $21.5 million (on its opening day). Through its first Sunday, the film earned an opening-weekend total of $64.1 million, making China's opening the largest for the film, followed by a $23.1 million opening in Russia and the CIS, and a $21.2 million opening in the UK, Ireland and Malta. With total earnings reaching $124 million, it was the highest-grossing American film in China in 2013, and the country is the film's highest-grossing market after North America, followed by South Korea ($64.2 million) and the UK, Ireland, and Malta ($57.1 million).


title: Iron Man 3

text: The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of , with an average score of , based on reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "With the help of its charismatic lead, some impressive action sequences, and even a few surprises, "Iron Man 3" is a witty, entertaining adventure and a strong addition to the Marvel canon." Metacritic gave a weighted average score of 62 out of 100, based on 44 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, the same score as both its predecessors.


title: Iron Man 3

text: In an early review by the trade magazine "The Hollywood Reporter", Todd McCarthy said that, "After nearly crashing and burning on his last solo flight in 2010, Iron Man returns refreshed and ready for action in this spirited third installment ... [that] benefits immeasurably from the irreverent quicksilver humor of co-writer and director Shane Black. Calling the film "darker and more serious than its predecessors," Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" credited Black for "chang[ing] this billion-dollar-plus franchise's tone for the better while keeping the same actor as Tony Stark. ... There is quite a bit of Black's trademark attitude and humor here as well, things like a throwaway reference to the sci-fi classic "Westworld" and a goofy character who has Tony Stark's likeness tattooed on his forearm. Black and company throw all kinds of stuff at the audience, and though it doesn't all work, a lot of it does and the attempt to be different and create unguessable twists is always appreciated." Rafer Guzman of "Newsday" characterized Iron Man as "the anti-Batman, all zip and zingers. He's also, suddenly, rather family-friendly. Some of the movie's best moments are shared by Stark and latchkey kid Harley (Ty Simpkins), who mock their budding father-son relationship while acting it out." "Psychology Today" concluded that the film presented an accurate portrayal of Tony Stark's posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. Michael Arbeiter of Hollywood.com praised the film as "Marvel's First True Action-Comedy", commenting that "Tony's camaraderie with preteen tech geek Harley Keener is one gigantic superhero/'90s-kid-sidekick laugh riot (the friggin' kid's name is "Harley Keener" ... is there anything more '90s-kid-sidekick-sounding than that?!)."


title: Iron Man 3

text: Nick De Semlyen of the UK film magazine "Empire" had criticisms, even while giving the film four of five stars. Finding it "a swinging caper with wit, balls, heart and exploding baubles," he said the villainous "super-soldiers who can regenerate body parts and survive astounding damage [are] visually interesting ... but their motivation is murky and unconvincing." Likewise Joshua Rothkopf of "Time Out" New York bestowed 3 of 5 stars, saying, "Black has massively upped the verbal sparring and kept the broad inventiveness of comic-book malleability in mind. ... The most wonderful of Black's surprises harkens back to his '80s reputation for character revision and is simply too good to ruin here." But, he asked, "[W]hy, finally, are we down at the docks—in the dark, no less—for one of those lumbering climaxes involving swinging shipping cranes? The energy bleeds out of the film; it's as if the producers were scared the crowd would riot over "not enough" digital fakeness."


title: Iron Man 3

text: Reacting more negatively, Stephen Whitty of "The Star-Ledger" found the film "slickly enjoyable" for the visual effects, but said, "[T]here's something empty about the film. Like Tony's suits, it's shiny and polished. But this time, there's nobody inside ... This movie has neither the emotionalism of the first film, nor the flashy villains of the second ... Tony's relationship with girlfriend Pepper Potts is in inexplicable jeopardy—and then simply fixes itself. A supposedly cute kid sidekick—a true sign of authorial desperation—is introduced, and then dropped." Michael Phillips of the "Chicago Tribune" echoed this, saying, "[I]n a gleefully cynical bid for a preteen audience (a few years too young for the violence in "Iron Man 3", I'd say), Stark befriends a bullied 8-year-old (Ty Simpkins) who becomes his tag-along and sometime savior ... Stark no longer needs to be in the Iron Man suit. He's able to operate the thing remotely when needed. The movie's like that too. It's decent superhero blockbustering, but rather remote and vaguely secondhand. At this point, even with Black's flashes of black humor, the machinery is more or less taking care of itself, offering roughly half of the genial wit and enjoyment of the first "Iron Man"."


title: Iron Man 3

text: "Iron Man 3" focuses on contemporary U.S. foreign policy and its consequences. Like the first "Iron Man" film, it is about the military industrial complex. The main antagonist, Killian, tries to take over the US government and capitalize on the War on Terror with a decoy villain actor, the Mandarin; the supposed looming menace distracts the public from Killian's actions with a narrative of the constant threat that also makes the war profitable. Using Stark as a metaphor of American society, Charlie Jane Anders of "Gizmodo" notes that the film differs in the portrayal of the country from the previous two entries; whereas the previous films were about the guilt of ruining areas in foreign countries, "Iron Man 3" is about the feeling of powerlessness, in that a trusted, wealthy and individualistic celebrity like Stark is unable to find a powerful terrorist such as the Mandarian.


title: Iron Man 3

text: The Mandarin, a cover-up adversary that is otherwise non-threatening, is a take on Americans' xenophobia towards Middle Easterns, and how people's fear is taken advantage of to create and pass harmful policies. The Mandarin's characteristics are what the population expects from a terrorist, such as a large beard, army pants, and comments he gives to the media that condemn the US. The twist that the Mandarin is fake also plays on audiences' availability heuristics that make them think if someone is a danger or not.


title: Iron Man 3

text: "Iron Man 3" is part of a trend in post-9/11 superhero films consisting of vulnerable, weak superheroes and complex antagonists with realistic motivations. Psychologist and author Dr. Travis Langley believed Stark meets all of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders's criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, and Stark, like those with PTSD in real-life, denies he could have it. Stark enacts its symptoms, such as anxiety attacks, hypervigilance, frequent nightmares, and an inability to be in the public; this deviates from most portrayals of not only superheroes but also strong male leads in general, where they are not traumatized from perilous situations.


title: Iron Man 3

text: In March 2013, Black stated that Downey's original contract with Marvel Studios, which expired after the release of "Iron Man 3", may be extended in order for the actor to appear in a second "Avengers" film and at least one more "Iron Man" film. He said: "There has been a lot of discussion about it: 'Is this the last "Iron Man" for Robert [Downey, Jr.]?' Something tells me that it will not be the case, and [he] will be seen in a fourth, or fifth." In April 2013, Cheadle stated that "Iron Man 3" could be the final film in the series, saying, "The door is always left open in these kinds of movies especially when they do as well as they have done. I know there was talk of making sure we did this one right, and if it worked it could be the last one. There's room for more to be done with these characters. We're getting to a sweet spot with Tony and Rhodey, anyway." In September 2014, in regards to a fourth film, Downey said, "There isn't one in the pipe ... No, there's no plan for a fourth "Iron Man"." In April 2016, Downey stated that he was open to reprising his role in a potential fourth "Iron Man" film. After the death of Tony Stark in "" (2019), co-screenwriter Stephen McFeely said, "You would've already had "Iron Man 4" if it was any other studio", remarking that it was a bold move by Marvel to kill off the character. In January 2020, when asked if he would reprise the role of Iron Man, Downey noted, "Yeah, anything could happen... As far as I'm concerned, I hung up my guns and I'm good to let it go... It's hard to project."


title: Iron Man 3

text: In February 2014, Marvel released the One-Shot film, "All Hail the King", on ""s home media, featuring Kingsley reprising his role as Trevor Slattery. It continues Slattery's story from the end of the film, revealing that the real Mandarin actually exists in the MCU.


title: Atheism

text: Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.


title: Atheism

text: The first individuals to identify themselves as atheists lived in the 18th century during the Age of Enlightenment. The French Revolution, noted for its "unprecedented atheism", witnessed the first significant political movement in history to advocate for the supremacy of human reason. In 1967, Albania declared itself the first official atheist country according to its policy of state Marxism.


title: Atheism

text: Arguments for atheism range from philosophical to social and historical approaches. Rationales for not believing in deities include the lack of evidence, the problem of evil, the argument from inconsistent revelations, the rejection of concepts that cannot be falsified, and the argument from nonbelief. Nonbelievers contend that atheism is a more parsimonious position than theism and that everyone is born without beliefs in deities; therefore, they argue that the burden of proof lies not on the atheist to disprove the existence of gods but on the theist to provide a rationale for theism. Although some atheists have adopted secular philosophies (e.g. secular humanism), there is no ideology or code of conduct to which all atheists adhere.


title: Atheism

text: Since conceptions of atheism vary, accurate estimations of current numbers of atheists are difficult. Scholars have indicated that global atheism may be in decline due to irreligious countries having the lowest birth rates in the world and religious countries having higher birth rates in general.


title: Atheism

text: Writers disagree on how best to define and classify "atheism", contesting what supernatural entities are considered gods, whether atheism is a philosophical position in its own right or merely the absence of one, and whether it requires a conscious, explicit rejection. However the norm is to define atheism in terms of an explicit stance against theism.


title: Atheism

text: Some of the ambiguity and controversy involved in defining "atheism" arises from difficulty in reaching a consensus for the definitions of words like "deity" and "god". The variety of wildly different conceptions of God and deities lead to differing ideas regarding atheism's applicability. The ancient Romans accused Christians of being atheists for not worshiping the pagan deities. Gradually, this view fell into disfavor as "theism" came to be understood as encompassing belief in any divinity.


title: Atheism

text: With respect to the range of phenomena being rejected, atheism may counter anything from the existence of a deity, to the existence of any spiritual, supernatural, or transcendental concepts, such as those of Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Taoism.


title: Atheism

text: Definitions of atheism also vary in the degree of consideration a person must put to the idea of gods to be considered an atheist. Atheism is commonly defined as the simple absence of belief that any deities exist. This broad definition would include newborns and other people who have not been exposed to theistic ideas. As far back as 1772, Baron d'Holbach said that "All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God."


title: Atheism

text: Similarly, George H. Smith suggested that: "The man who is unacquainted with theism is an atheist because he does not believe in a god. This category would also include the child with the conceptual capacity to grasp the issues involved, but who is still unaware of those issues. The fact that this child does not believe in god qualifies him as an atheist." "Implicit atheism" is "the absence of theistic belief without a conscious rejection of it" and "explicit atheism" is the conscious rejection of belief.


title: Atheism

text: For the purposes of his paper on "philosophical atheism", Ernest Nagel contested including the mere absence of theistic belief as a type of atheism. Graham Oppy classifies as "innocents" those who never considered the question because they lack any understanding of what a god is. According to Oppy, these could be one-month-old babies, humans with severe traumatic brain injuries, or patients with advanced dementia.


title: Atheism

text: Philosophers such as Antony Flew and Michael Martin have contrasted positive (strong/hard) atheism with negative (weak/soft) atheism. Positive atheism is the explicit affirmation that gods do not exist. Negative atheism includes all other forms of non-theism. According to this categorization, anyone who is not a theist is either a negative or a positive atheist.


title: Atheism

text: The terms "weak" and "strong" are relatively recent, while the terms "negative" and "positive" atheism are of older origin, having been used (in slightly different ways) in the philosophical literature and in Catholic apologetics.


title: Atheism

text: While Martin, for example, asserts that agnosticism entails negative atheism, many agnostics see their view as distinct from atheism, which they may consider no more justified than theism or requiring an equal conviction.


title: Atheism

text: The assertion of unattainability of knowledge for or against the existence of gods is sometimes seen as an indication that atheism requires a leap of faith.


title: Atheism

text: Common atheist responses to this argument include that unproven "religious" propositions deserve as much disbelief as all "other" unproven propositions,


title: Atheism

text: and that the unprovability of a god's existence does not imply an equal probability of either possibility.


title: Atheism

text: Australian philosopher J.J.C. Smart even argues that "sometimes a person who is really an atheist may describe herself, even passionately, as an agnostic because of unreasonable generalized philosophical skepticism which would preclude us from saying that we know anything whatever, except perhaps the truths of mathematics and formal logic."


title: Atheism

text: Consequently, some atheist authors, such as Richard Dawkins, prefer distinguishing theist, agnostic, and atheist positions along a spectrum of theistic probability—the likelihood that each assigns to the statement "God exists".


title: Atheism

text: Before the 18th century, the existence of God was so accepted in the Western world that even the possibility of true atheism was questioned. This is called "theistic innatism"—the notion that all people believe in God from birth; within this view was the connotation that atheists are in denial. There is also a position claiming that atheists are quick to believe in God in times of crisis, that atheists make deathbed conversions, or that "there are no atheists in foxholes". There have, however, been examples to the contrary, among them examples of literal "atheists in foxholes". Some atheists have challenged the need for the term "atheism". In his book "Letter to a Christian Nation", Sam Harris wrote:


title: Atheism

text: In fact, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non-astrologer" or a "non-alchemist". We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.


title: Atheism

text: In early ancient Greek, the adjective (, from the privative ἀ- + "god") meant "godless". It was first used as a term of censure roughly meaning "ungodly" or "impious". In the 5th century BCE, the word began to indicate more deliberate and active godlessness in the sense of "severing relations with the gods" or "denying the gods". The term () then came to be applied against those who impiously denied or disrespected the local gods, even if they believed in other gods. Modern translations of classical texts sometimes render as "atheistic". As an abstract noun, there was also (), "atheism". Cicero transliterated the Greek word into the Latin . The term found frequent use in the debate between early Christians and Hellenists, with each side attributing it, in the pejorative sense, to the other.


title: Atheism

text: The term "atheist" (from the French ), in the sense of "one who ... denies the existence of God or gods", predates "atheism" in English, being first found as early as 1566, and again in 1571. "Atheist" as a label of practical godlessness was used at least as early as 1577.


title: Atheism

text: The term "atheism" was derived from the French , and appears in English about 1587. An earlier work, from about 1534, used the term "atheonism".


title: Atheism

text: Related words emerged later: "deist" in 1621, "theist" in 1662, "deism" in 1675, and "theism" in 1678.


title: Atheism

text: "Deism" and "theism" changed meanings slightly around 1700 due to the influence of "atheism"; "deism" was originally used as a synonym for today's "theism" but came to denote a separate philosophical doctrine.


title: Atheism

text: Karen Armstrong writes that "During the 16th and 17th centuries, the word 'atheist' was still reserved exclusively for polemic ... The term 'atheist' was an insult. Nobody would have dreamed of calling an atheist."


title: Atheism

text: "Atheism" was first used to describe a self-avowed belief in late 18th-century Europe, specifically denoting disbelief in the monotheistic Abrahamic god.


title: Atheism

text: In the 20th century, globalization contributed to the expansion of the term to refer to disbelief in all deities, though it remains common in Western society to describe atheism as "disbelief in God".


title: Atheism

text: Skepticism, based on the ideas of David Hume, asserts that certainty about anything is impossible, so one can never know for sure whether or not a god exists. Hume, however, held that such unobservable metaphysical concepts should be rejected as "sophistry and illusion". The allocation of agnosticism to atheism is disputed; it can also be regarded as an independent, basic worldview.


title: Atheism

text: There are three main conditions of epistemology: truth, belief and justification. Michael Martin argues that atheism is a justified and rational true belief, but offers no extended epistemological justification because current theories are in a state of controversy. Martin instead argues for "mid-level principles of justification that are in accord with our ordinary and scientific rational practice."


title: Atheism

text: Other arguments for atheism that can be classified as epistemological or ontological, including ignosticism, assert the meaninglessness or unintelligibility of basic terms such as "God" and statements such as "God is all-powerful." Theological noncognitivism holds that the statement "God exists" does not express a proposition, but is nonsensical or cognitively meaningless. It has been argued both ways as to whether such individuals can be classified into some form of atheism or agnosticism. Philosophers A. J. Ayer and Theodore M. Drange reject both categories, stating that both camps accept "God exists" as a proposition; they instead place noncognitivism in its own category.


title: Atheism

text: Most atheists lean toward metaphysical monism: the belief that there is only one kind of ultimate substance. Historically, metaphysical monism took the form of philosophical materialism, the view that matter formed the basis of all reality; this naturally omitted the possibility of a non-material divine being. Describing the world as "basically matter" in the twenty-first century would be contrary to modern physics, so it is generally seen as an older term that is sometimes mistakenly used interchangeably with physicalism. Physicalism can incorporate the non-matter based physical phenomena, such as light and energy, into its view that only physical entities with physical powers exist, and that science defines and explains what those are. Physicalism is a monistic ontology: one ultimate substance exists, and it exists as a physical reality.


title: Atheism

text: Physicalism opposes dualism (the view that there's physical substance and separate mental activities): there is no such thing as a soul, or any other abstract object (such as a mind or a self) that exists independently of physicality. It also opposes neutral monism, which holds to one kind of substance for the universe but makes no claim about its nature, holding to the view that the physical and the mental are both just differing kinds of the same fundamental substance that is in itself neither mental nor physical. Physicalism also opposes idealism (the view that everything known is based on human mental perception).


title: Atheism

text: Naturalism is also used by atheists to describe the metaphysical view that everything that exists is fundamentally natural, and that there are no supernatural phenomena. Naturalism focuses on how science can explain the world fully with physical laws and through natural phenomena. It's about the idea that the universe is a closed system. Naturalism can be interpreted to allow for a dualist ontology of the mental and physical. Philosopher Graham Oppy references a PhilPapers survey that says 56.5% of philosophers in academics lean toward physicalism; 49.8% lean toward naturalism.


title: Atheism

text: According to Graham Oppy, direct arguments for atheism aim at showing theism fails on its own terms, while indirect arguments are those inferred from direct arguments in favor of something else that is inconsistent with theism. For example, Oppy says arguing for naturalism is an argument for atheism since naturalism and theism "cannot both be true". Fiona Ellis says that while Oppy's view is common, it is dependent on a narrow view of naturalism. She describes the "expansive naturalism" of John McDowell, James Griffin and David Wiggins as giving "due respect to scientific findings" while also asserting there are things in human experience which cannot be explained in such terms, such as the concept of value, leaving room for theism. Christopher C. Knight asserts a theistic naturalism that relies on what he terms an "incarnational naturalism" (the doctrine of immanence) and does not require any special mode of divine action that would put it outside nature. Nevertheless, Oppy argues that a strong naturalism favors atheism, though he finds the best direct arguments against theism to be the evidential problem of evil, and arguments concerning the contradictory nature of God were He to exist.


title: Atheism

text: Some atheists hold the view that the various conceptions of gods, such as the personal god of Christianity, are ascribed logically inconsistent qualities. Such atheists present deductive arguments against the existence of God, which assert the incompatibility between certain traits, such as perfection, creator-status, immutability, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, transcendence, personhood (a personal being), non-physicality, justice, and mercy.


title: Atheism

text: Theodicean atheists believe that the world as they experience it cannot be reconciled with the qualities commonly ascribed to God and gods by theologians. They argue that an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God is not compatible with a world where there is evil and suffering, and where divine love is hidden from many people.


title: Atheism

text: A similar argument is attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism. The medieval Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu (4/5th century) who outlined numerous Buddhist arguments against God, wrote in his "Sheath of Abhidharma (Abhidharmakosha):"Besides, do you say that God finds joy in seeing the creatures which he has created in the prey of all the distress of existence, including the tortures of the hells? Homage to this kind of God! The profane stanza expresses it well: "One calls him Rudra because he burns, because he is sharp, fierce, redoubtable, an eater of flesh, blood and marrow.


title: Atheism

text: and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud have argued that God and other religious beliefs are human inventions, created to fulfill various psychological and emotional wants or needs, or a projection mechanism from the 'Id' omnipotence; for Vladimir Lenin, in 'Materialism and Empirio-criticism', against the Russian Machism, the followers of Ernst Mach, Feuerbach was the final argument against belief in a god. This is also a view of many Buddhists. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, influenced by the work of Feuerbach, argued that belief in God and religion are social functions, used by those in power to oppress the working class. According to Mikhail Bakunin, "the idea of God implies the abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, in theory, and practice." He reversed Voltaire's aphorism that if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him, writing instead that "if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him."


title: Atheism

text: Atheism is not mutually exclusive with respect to some religious and spiritual belief systems, including Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Syntheism, Raëlism, and Neopagan movements


title: Atheism

text: Āstika schools in Hinduism hold atheism to be a valid path to moksha, but extremely difficult, for the atheist cannot expect any help from the divine on their journey.


title: Atheism

text: Jainism believes the universe is eternal and has no need for a creator deity, however Tirthankaras are revered beings who can transcend space and time and have more power than the god Indra.


title: Atheism

text: Secular Buddhism does not advocate belief in gods. Early Buddhism was atheistic as Gautama Buddha's path involved no mention of gods. Later conceptions of Buddhism consider Buddha himself a god, suggest adherents can attain godhood, and revere Bodhisattvas.


title: Atheism

text: Apophatic theology is often assessed as being a version of atheism or agnosticism, since it cannot say truly that God exists. "The comparison is crude, however, for conventional atheism treats the existence of God as a predicate that can be denied ("God is nonexistent"), whereas negative theology denies that God has predicates". "God or the Divine is" without being able to attribute qualities about "what He is" would be the prerequisite of positive theology in negative theology that distinguishes theism from atheism. "Negative theology is a complement to, not the enemy of, positive theology".


title: Atheism

text: Axiological, or constructive, atheism rejects the existence of gods in favor of a "higher absolute", such as humanity. This form of atheism favors humanity as the absolute source of ethics and values, and permits individuals to resolve moral problems without resorting to God. Marx and Freud used this argument to convey messages of liberation, full-development, and unfettered happiness. One of the most common criticisms of atheism has been to the contrary: that denying the existence of a god either leads to moral relativism and leaves one with no moral or ethical foundation, or renders life meaningless and miserable. Blaise Pascal argued this view in his "Pensées".


title: Atheism

text: French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre identified himself as a representative of an "atheist existentialism"


title: Atheism

text: concerned less with denying the existence of God than with establishing that "man needs ... to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God."


title: Atheism

text: Sartre said a corollary of his atheism was that "if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and ... this being is man."


title: Atheism

text: Sartre described the practical consequence of this atheism as meaning that there are no "a priori" rules or absolute values that can be invoked to govern human conduct, and that humans are "condemned" to invent these for themselves, making "man" absolutely "responsible for everything he does".


title: Atheism

text: Joseph Baker and Buster Smith assert that one of the common themes of atheism is that most atheists "typically construe atheism as more moral than religion".


title: Atheism

text: Sociologist Phil Zuckerman analyzed previous social science research on secularity and non-belief and concluded that societal well-being is positively correlated with irreligion. He found that there are much lower concentrations of atheism and secularity in poorer, less developed nations (particularly in Africa and South America) than in the richer industrialized democracies.


title: Atheism

text: His findings relating specifically to atheism in the US were that compared to religious people in the US, "atheists and secular people" are less nationalistic, prejudiced, antisemitic, racist, dogmatic, ethnocentric, closed-minded, and authoritarian, and in US states with the highest percentages of atheists, the murder rate is lower than average. In the most religious states, the murder rate is higher than average.


title: Atheism

text: People who self-identify as atheists are often assumed to be irreligious, but some sects within major religions reject the existence of a personal, creator deity.


title: Atheism

text: In recent years, certain religious denominations have accumulated a number of openly atheistic followers, such as atheistic or humanistic Judaism


title: Atheism

text: and Christian atheists. The strictest sense of positive atheism does not entail any specific beliefs outside of disbelief in any deity; as such, atheists can hold any number of spiritual beliefs. For the same reason, atheists can hold a wide variety of ethical beliefs, ranging from the moral universalism of humanism, which holds that a moral code should be applied consistently to all humans, to moral nihilism, which holds that morality is meaningless. Atheism is accepted as a valid philosophical position within some varieties of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. Philosophers such as Alain de Botton and Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist, have argued that atheists should reclaim useful components of religion in secular society.


title: Atheism

text: According to Plato's Euthyphro dilemma, the role of the gods in determining right from wrong is either unnecessary or arbitrary. The argument that morality must be derived from God, and cannot exist without a wise creator, has been a persistent feature of political if not so much philosophical debate.


title: Atheism

text: Moral precepts such as "murder is wrong" are seen as divine laws, requiring a divine lawmaker and judge. However, many atheists argue that treating morality legalistically involves a false analogy, and that morality does not depend on a lawmaker in the same way that laws do.


title: Atheism

text: Friedrich Nietzsche believed in a morality independent of theistic belief, and stated that morality based upon God "has truth only if God is truth—it stands or falls with faith in God".


title: Atheism

text: There exist normative ethical systems that do not require principles and rules to be given by a deity. Some include virtue ethics, social contract, Kantian ethics, utilitarianism, and Objectivism. Sam Harris has proposed that moral prescription (ethical rule making) is not just an issue to be explored by philosophy, but that we can meaningfully practice a science of morality. Any such scientific system must, nevertheless, respond to the criticism embodied in the naturalistic fallacy.


title: Atheism

text: (among others) assert that behaving ethically only because of a divine mandate is not true ethical behavior but merely blind obedience. Baggini argues that atheism is a superior basis for ethics, claiming that a moral basis external to religious imperatives is necessary to evaluate the morality of the imperatives themselves—to be able to discern, for example, that "thou shalt steal" is immoral even if one's religion instructs it—and that atheists, therefore, have the advantage of being more inclined to make such evaluations.


title: Atheism

text: The contemporary British political philosopher Martin Cohen has offered the more historically telling example of Biblical injunctions in favor of torture and slavery as evidence of how religious injunctions follow political and social customs, rather than vice versa, but also noted that the same tendency seems to be true of supposedly dispassionate and objective philosophers. Cohen extends this argument in more detail in "Political Philosophy from Plato to Mao", where he argues that the Qur'an played a role in perpetuating social codes from the early 7th century despite changes in secular society.


title: Atheism

text: Some prominent atheists—most recently Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins, and following such thinkers as Bertrand Russell, Robert G. Ingersoll, Voltaire, and novelist José Saramago—have criticized religions, citing harmful aspects of religious practices and doctrines.


title: Atheism

text: The 19th-century German political theorist and sociologist Karl Marx called religion "the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people". He goes on to say, "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo." Lenin said that "every religious idea and every idea of God is unutterable vileness ... of the most dangerous kind, 'contagion' of the most abominable kind. Millions of sins, filthy deeds, acts of violence and physical contagions ... are far less dangerous than the subtle, spiritual idea of God decked out in the smartest ideological costumes".


title: Atheism

text: Sam Harris criticizes Western religion's reliance on divine authority as lending itself to authoritarianism and dogmatism.


title: Atheism

text: There is a correlation between religious fundamentalism and extrinsic religion (when religion is held because it serves ulterior interests) and authoritarianism, dogmatism, and prejudice.


title: Atheism

text: These arguments—combined with historical events that are argued to demonstrate the dangers of religion, such as the Crusades, inquisitions, witch trials, and terrorist attacks—have been used in response to claims of beneficial effects of belief in religion.


title: Atheism

text: Believers counter-argue that some regimes that espouse atheism, such as the Soviet Union, have also been guilty of mass murder. In response to those claims, atheists such as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have stated that Stalin's atrocities were influenced not by atheism but by dogmatic Marxism, and that while Stalin and Mao happened to be atheists, they did not do their deeds in the name of atheism.


title: Atheism

text: While the earliest-found usage of the term "atheism" is in 16th-century France, ideas that would be recognized today as atheistic are documented from the Vedic period and the classical antiquity.


title: Atheism

text: Atheistic schools are found in early Indian thought and have existed from the times of the historical Vedic religion.


title: Atheism

text: Among the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy, Samkhya, the oldest philosophical school of thought, does not accept God, and the early Mimamsa also rejected the notion of God.


title: Atheism

text: The thoroughly materialistic and anti-theistic philosophical Cārvāka (or "Lokāyata") school that originated in India around the 6th century BCE is probably the most explicitly atheistic school of philosophy in India, similar to the Greek Cyrenaic school. This branch of Indian philosophy is classified as heterodox due to its rejection of the authority of Vedas and hence is not considered part of the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy. It is noteworthy as evidence of a materialistic movement in ancient India.


title: Atheism

text: Chatterjee and Datta explain that our understanding of Cārvāka philosophy is fragmentary, based largely on criticism of the ideas by other schools, and that it is not a living tradition:


title: Atheism

text: Other Indian philosophies generally regarded as atheistic include Classical Samkhya and Purva Mimamsa. The rejection of a personal creator "God" is also seen in Jainism and Buddhism in India.


title: Atheism

text: Western atheism has its roots in pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, but atheism in the modern sense was extremely rare in ancient Greece. Pre-Socratic Atomists such as Democritus attempted to explain the world in a purely materialistic way and interpreted religion as a human reaction to natural phenomena, but did not explicitly deny the gods' existence, and some scholarship has recognised a rational theology in his thought. Anaxagoras, whom Irenaeus calls "the atheist", was accused of impiety and condemned for stating that "the sun is a type of incandescent stone", an affirmation with which he tried to deny the divinity of the celestial bodies. In the late fifth century BCE, the Greek lyric poet Diagoras of Melos was sentenced to death in Athens under the charge of being a "godless person" (ἄθεος) after he made fun of the Eleusinian Mysteries, but he fled the city to escape punishment. In post-classical antiquity, philosophers such as Cicero and Sextus Empiricus described Diagoras as an "atheist" who categorically denied the existence of the gods, but in modern scholarship Marek Winiarczyk has defended the view that Diagoras was not an atheist in the modern sense, in a view that has proved influential. On the other hand, the verdict has been challenged by Tim Whitmarsh, who argues that Diagoras rejected the gods on the basis of the problem of evil, and this argument was in turn alluded to in Euripides' fragmentary play "Bellerophon".


title: Atheism

text: A fragment from a lost Attic drama that featured Sisyphus, which has been attributed to both Critias and Euripides, claims that a clever man invented "the fear of the gods" in order to frighten people into behaving morally.


title: Atheism

text: Sceptical statements about popular religion have also been attributed to the philosopher Prodicus: Philodemus reports that Prodicus believed that "the gods of popular belief do not exist nor does he know them, but primitive man, [out of admiration, deified] the fruits of the earth and virtually everything that contributed to his existence". More recent scholarship has reappraised the evidence in Philodemus and concluded that Prodicus defended his own philosophical theology against popular religious belief, rather than radical atheism. Protagoras has sometimes been taken to be an atheist, but rather espoused agnostic views, commenting that "Concerning the gods I am unable to discover whether they exist or not, or what they are like in form; for there are many hindrances to knowledge, the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life." The Athenian public associated Socrates (–399 BCE) with the trends in pre-Socratic philosophy towards naturalistic inquiry and the rejection of divine explanations for phenomena. Aristophanes' comic play "The Clouds" (performed 423 BCE) portrays Socrates as teaching his students that the traditional Greek deities do not exist. Socrates was later tried and executed under the charge of not believing in the gods of the state and instead worshipping foreign gods. Socrates himself vehemently denied the charges of atheism at his trial and all the surviving sources about him indicate that he was a very devout man, who prayed to the rising sun and believed that the oracle at Delphi spoke the word of Apollo. From a survey of these 5th-century BCE philosophers, David Sedley has concluded that none of them openly defended radical atheism, but since Classical sources clearly attest to radical atheist ideas Athens probably had an "atheist underground".


title: Atheism

text: Religious scepticism continued into the Hellenistic period, and from this period the most important Greek thinker in the development of atheism was the philosopher Epicurus ( 300 BCE). Drawing on the ideas of Democritus and the Atomists, he espoused a materialistic philosophy according to which the universe was governed by the laws of chance without the need for divine intervention (see scientific determinism). Although Epicurus still maintained that the gods existed, he believed that they were uninterested in human affairs. The aim of the Epicureans was to attain "ataraxia" ("peace of mind") and one important way of doing this was by exposing fear of divine wrath as irrational. The Epicureans also denied the existence of an afterlife and the need to fear divine punishment after death. A slightly later contemporary to Epicurus, Euhemerus ( 300 BCE) published his view that the gods were only the deified rulers, conquerors and founders of the past, and that their cults and religions were in essence the continuation of vanished kingdoms and earlier political structures. Although not strictly an atheist, Euhemerus was later criticized for having "spread atheism over the whole inhabited earth by obliterating the gods". In the 3rd-century BCE, the Hellenistic philosophers Theodorus Cyrenaicus and Strato of Lampsacus were also reputed to deny the existence of the gods.


title: Atheism

text: Sceptical ideas concerning the gods continued into the Second Sophistic. The Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus (approx. 160-210 CE) compiled a large number of ancient arguments against the existence of gods, recommending that one should suspend judgment regarding the matter. His relatively large volume of surviving works had a lasting influence on later philosophers.


title: Atheism

text: The meaning of "atheist" changed over the course of classical antiquity. Early Christians were widely reviled as "atheists" because they did not believe in the existence of the Graeco-Roman deities. During the Roman Empire, Christians were executed for their rejection of the Roman gods in general and the Imperial cult of ancient Rome in particular. There was, however, a heavy struggle between Christians and pagans, in which each group accused the other of atheism, for not practicing the religion which they considered correct. When Christianity became the state religion of Rome under Theodosius I in 381, heresy became a punishable offense.


title: Atheism

text: During the Early Middle Ages, the Islamic world experienced a Golden Age. Along with advances in science and philosophy, Arab and Persian lands produced rationalists and freethinkers who were skeptical about prophecy and revealed religion, such as Muhammad al Warraq (fl. 9th century), Ibn al-Rawandi (827–911), and Abu Bakr al-Razi (–925), as well as outspoken atheists such as al-Maʿarri (973–1058). Al-Ma'arri wrote and taught that religion itself was a "fable invented by the ancients" and that humans were "of two sorts: those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains". Despite the fact that these authors were relatively prolific writers, little of their work survives, mainly being preserved through quotations and excerpts in later works by Muslim apologists attempting to refute them.


title: Atheism

text: In Europe, the espousal of atheistic views was rare during the Early Middle Ages and Middle Ages (see Medieval Inquisition); metaphysics and theology were the dominant interests pertaining to religion. There were, however, movements within this period that furthered heterodox conceptions of the Christian god, including differing views of the nature, transcendence, and knowability of God. Individuals and groups such as Johannes Scotus Eriugena, David of Dinant, Amalric of Bena, and the Brethren of the Free Spirit maintained Christian viewpoints with pantheistic tendencies. Nicholas of Cusa held to a form of fideism he called "docta ignorantia" ("learned ignorance"), asserting that God is beyond human categorization, and thus our knowledge of him is limited to conjecture. William of Ockham inspired anti-metaphysical tendencies with his nominalistic limitation of human knowledge to singular objects, and asserted that the divine essence could not be intuitively or rationally apprehended by human intellect. Followers of Ockham, such as John of Mirecourt and Nicholas of Autrecourt furthered this view. The resulting division between faith and reason influenced later radical and reformist theologians such as John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, and Martin Luther.


title: Atheism

text: The Renaissance did much to expand the scope of free thought and skeptical inquiry. Individuals such as Leonardo da Vinci sought experimentation as a means of explanation, and opposed arguments from religious authority. Other critics of religion and the Church during this time included Niccolò Machiavelli, Bonaventure des Périers, Michel de Montaigne, and François Rabelais.


title: Atheism

text: Historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote that the Reformation had paved the way for atheists by attacking the authority of the Catholic Church, which in turn "quietly inspired other thinkers to attack the authority of the new Protestant churches". Deism gained influence in France, Prussia, and England. In 1546, French scholar Etienne Dolet was executed upon accusation of being an atheist. The philosopher Baruch Spinoza was "probably the first well known 'semi-atheist' to announce himself in a Christian land in the modern era", according to Blainey. Spinoza believed that natural laws explained the workings of the universe. In 1661, he published his "Short Treatise on God".


title: Atheism

text: Criticism of Christianity became increasingly frequent in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in France and England, where there appears to have been a religious malaise, according to contemporary sources. Some Protestant thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbes, espoused a materialist philosophy and skepticism toward supernatural occurrences, while Spinoza rejected divine providence in favor of a panentheistic naturalism. By the late 17th century, deism came to be openly espoused by intellectuals such as John Toland who coined the term "pantheist".


title: Atheism

text: The first known explicit atheist was the German critic of religion Matthias Knutzen in his three writings of 1674. He was followed by two other explicit atheist writers, the Polish ex-Jesuit philosopher Kazimierz Łyszczyński and in the 1720s by the French priest Jean Meslier. In the course of the 18th century, other openly atheistic thinkers followed, such as Baron d'Holbach, Jacques-André Naigeon, and other French materialists. John Locke in contrast, though an advocate of tolerance, urged authorities not to tolerate atheism, believing that the denial of God's existence would undermine the social order and lead to chaos.


title: Atheism

text: The philosopher David Hume developed a skeptical epistemology grounded in empiricism, and Immanuel Kant's philosophy has strongly questioned the very possibility of metaphysical knowledge. Both philosophers undermined the metaphysical basis of natural theology and criticized classical arguments for the existence of God.


title: Atheism

text: Blainey notes that, although Voltaire is widely considered to have strongly contributed to atheistic thinking during the Revolution, he also considered fear of God to have discouraged further disorder, having said "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." In "Reflections on the Revolution in France" (1790), the philosopher Edmund Burke denounced atheism, writing of a "literary cabal" who had "some years ago formed something like a regular plan for the destruction of the Christian religion. This object they pursued with a degree of zeal which hitherto had been discovered only in the propagators of some system of piety ... These atheistical fathers have a bigotry of their own". But, Burke asserted, "man is by his constitution a religious animal" and "atheism is against, not only our reason, but our instincts; and ... it cannot prevail long".


title: Atheism

text: Baron d'Holbach was a prominent figure in the French Enlightenment who is best known for his atheism and for his voluminous writings against religion, the most famous of them being "The System of Nature" (1770) but also "Christianity Unveiled". One goal of the French Revolution was a restructuring and subordination of the clergy with respect to the state through the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Attempts to enforce it led to anti-clerical violence and the expulsion of many clerics from France, lasting until the Thermidorian Reaction. The radical Jacobins seized power in 1793, ushering in the Reign of Terror. The Jacobins were deists and introduced the Cult of the Supreme Being as a new French state religion. Some atheists surrounding Jacques Hébert instead sought to establish a Cult of Reason, a form of atheistic pseudo-religion with a goddess personifying reason. The Napoleonic era further institutionalized the secularization of French society.


title: Atheism

text: In the latter half of the 19th century, atheism rose to prominence under the influence of rationalistic and freethinking philosophers. Many prominent German philosophers of this era denied the existence of deities and were critical of religion, including Ludwig Feuerbach, Arthur Schopenhauer, Max Stirner, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche.


title: Atheism

text: In 1842, George Holyoake was the last person imprisoned in Great Britain due to atheist beliefs. Stephen Law notes that he may have also been the first imprisoned on such a charge. Law states that Holyoake "first coined the term 'secularism'".


title: Atheism

text: Atheism, particularly in the form of practical atheism, advanced in many societies in the 20th century. Atheistic thought found recognition in a wide variety of other, broader philosophies, such as existentialism, Objectivism, secular humanism, nihilism, anarchism, logical positivism, Marxism, feminism, and the general scientific and rationalist movement.


title: Atheism

text: In addition, state atheism emerged in Eastern Europe and Asia during that period, particularly in the Soviet Union under Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, and in Communist China under Mao Zedong. Atheist and anti-religious policies in the Soviet Union included numerous legislative acts, the outlawing of religious instruction in the schools, and the emergence of the League of Militant Atheists. After Mao, the Chinese Communist Party remains an atheist organization, and regulates, but does not forbid, the practice of religion in mainland China.


title: Atheism

text: While Geoffrey Blainey has written that "the most ruthless leaders in the Second World War were atheists and secularists who were intensely hostile to both Judaism and Christianity", Richard Madsen has pointed out that Hitler and Stalin each opened and closed churches as a matter of political expedience, and Stalin softened his opposition to Christianity in order to improve public acceptance of his regime during the war. Blackford and Schüklenk have written that "the Soviet Union was undeniably an atheist state, and the same applies to Maoist China and Pol Pot's fanatical Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia in the 1970s. That does not, however, show that the atrocities committed by these totalitarian dictatorships were the result of atheist beliefs, carried out in the name of atheism, or caused primarily by the atheistic aspects of the relevant forms of communism."


title: Atheism

text: Logical positivism and scientism paved the way for neopositivism, analytical philosophy, structuralism, and naturalism. Neopositivism and analytical philosophy discarded classical rationalism and metaphysics in favor of strict empiricism and epistemological nominalism. Proponents such as Bertrand Russell emphatically rejected belief in God. In his early work, Ludwig Wittgenstein attempted to separate metaphysical and supernatural language from rational discourse. A.J. Ayer asserted the unverifiability and meaninglessness of religious statements, citing his adherence to the empirical sciences. Relatedly the applied structuralism of Lévi-Strauss sourced religious language to the human subconscious in denying its transcendental meaning. J.N. Findlay and J.J.C. Smart argued that the existence of God is not logically necessary. Naturalists and materialistic monists such as John Dewey considered the natural world to be the basis of everything, denying the existence of God or immortality.


title: Atheism

text: Other leaders like Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, a prominent atheist leader of India, fought against Hinduism and Brahmins for discriminating and dividing people in the name of caste and religion. This was highlighted in 1956 when he arranged for the erection of a statue depicting a Hindu god in a humble representation and made antitheistic statements.


title: Atheism

text: Atheist Vashti McCollum was the plaintiff in a landmark 1948 Supreme Court case that struck down religious education in US public schools. Madalyn Murray O'Hair was one of the most influential American atheists; she brought forth the 1963 Supreme Court case "Murray v. Curlett" which banned compulsory prayer in public schools. In 1966, "Time" magazine asked "Is God Dead?" in response to the Death of God theological movement, citing the estimation that nearly half of all people in the world lived under an anti-religious power, and millions more in Africa, Asia, and South America seemed to lack knowledge of the Christian view of theology. The Freedom From Religion Foundation was co-founded by Anne Nicol Gaylor and her daughter, Annie Laurie Gaylor, in 1976 in the United States, and incorporated nationally in 1978. It promotes the separation of church and state.


title: Atheism

text: Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the number of actively anti-religious regimes has declined considerably. In 2006, Timothy Shah of the Pew Forum noted "a worldwide trend across all major religious groups, in which God-based and faith-based movements in general are experiencing increasing confidence and influence vis-à-vis secular movements and ideologies."


title: Atheism

text: However, Gregory S. Paul and Phil Zuckerman consider this a myth and suggest that the actual situation is much more complex and nuanced.


title: Atheism

text: A 2010 survey found that those identifying themselves as atheists or agnostics are on average more knowledgeable about religion than followers of major faiths. Nonbelievers scored better on questions about tenets central to Protestant and Catholic faiths. Only Mormon and Jewish faithful scored as well as atheists and agnostics.


title: Atheism

text: In 2012, the first "Women in Secularism" conference was held in Arlington, Virginia. Secular Woman was organized in 2012 as a national organization focused on nonreligious women. The atheist feminist movement has also become increasingly focused on fighting sexism and sexual harassment within the atheist movement itself.


title: Atheism

text: In August 2012, Jennifer McCreight (the organizer of Boobquake) founded a movement within atheism known as Atheism Plus, or A+, that "applies skepticism to everything, including social issues like sexism, racism, politics, poverty, and crime".


title: Atheism

text: In 2013 the first atheist monument on American government property was unveiled at the Bradford County Courthouse in Florida: a 1,500-pound granite bench and plinth inscribed with quotes by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Madalyn Murray O'Hair.


title: Atheism

text: "New Atheism" is a movement among some early-21st-century atheist writers who have advocated the view that "religion should not be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises."


title: Atheism

text: The movement is commonly associated with Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Victor J. Stenger, Christopher Hitchens, and to some extent Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Several best-selling books by these authors, published between 2004 and 2007, form the basis for much of the discussion of "New" Atheism. In best-selling books, the religiously-motivated terrorist events of 9/11 and the partially successful attempts of the Discovery Institute to change the American science curriculum to include creationist ideas, together with support for those ideas from George W. Bush in 2005, have been cited by authors such as Harris, Dennett, Dawkins, Stenger, and Hitchens as evidence of a need to move toward a more secular society.


title: Atheism

text: It is difficult to quantify the number of atheists in the world. Respondents to religious-belief polls may define "atheism" differently or draw different distinctions between "atheism", non-religious beliefs, and non-theistic religious and spiritual beliefs. A Hindu atheist would declare oneself as a Hindu, although also being an atheist at the same time. Most of the time this happens because atheism and irreligion are not officially recognised in India. Apostasy is allowed under the right to freedom of religion in the Constitution (but blasphemy is prohibited), there are no specific laws catering to atheists and they are considered as belonging to the religion of their birth for administrative purposes. A 2010 survey published in "Encyclopædia Britannica" found that the non-religious made up about 9.6% of the world's population, and atheists about 2.0%, with a very large majority based in Asia. This figure did not include those who follow atheistic religions, such as some Buddhists. The average annual change for atheism from 2000 to 2010 was −0.17%. Broad estimates of those who have an absence of belief in a god range from 500 million to 1.1 billion people worldwide. Scholars have indicated that global atheism may be in decline as a percentage of the global population due to irreligious countries having the lowest birth rates in the world and religious countries generally having higher birth rates.


title: Atheism

text: According to global Win-Gallup International studies, 13% of respondents were "convinced atheists" in 2012, 11% were "convinced atheists" in 2015, and in 2017, 9% were "convinced atheists". , the top 10 surveyed countries with people who viewed themselves as "convinced atheists" were China (47%), Japan (31%), the Czech Republic (30%), France (29%), South Korea (15%), Germany (15%), Netherlands (14%), Austria (10%), Iceland (10%), Australia (10%), and the Republic of Ireland (10%). A 2012 study by the NORC found that East Germany had the highest percentage of atheists while Czech Republic had the second highest amount.


title: Atheism

text: The number of atheists per country is strongly correlated with the level of security for both the individual and society, with some exceptions.


title: Atheism

text: According to the 2010 Eurobarometer Poll, the percentage of those polled who agreed with the statement "you don't believe there is any sort of spirit, God or life force" varied from a high percentage in France (40%), Czech Republic (37%), Sweden (34%), Netherlands (30%), and Estonia (29%); medium-high percentage in Germany (27%), Belgium (27%), UK (25%); to very low in Poland (5%), Greece (4%), Cyprus (3%), Malta (2%), and Romania (1%), with the European Union as a whole at 20%. In a 2012 Eurobarometer poll on discrimination in the European Union, 16% of those polled considered themselves non-believers/agnostics, and 7% considered themselves atheists.


title: Atheism

text: According to a Pew Research Center survey in 2012, about 18% of Europeans are religiously unaffiliated, including agnostics and atheists. According to the same survey, the religiously unaffiliated are the majority of the population only in two European countries: Czech Republic (75%) and Estonia (60%).


title: Atheism

text: There are another three countries, and one special administrative region of China or regions where the unaffiliated make up a majority of the population: North Korea (71%), Japan (57%), Hong Kong (56%), and China (52%).


title: Atheism

text: According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 30% of Australians have "no religion", a category that includes atheists.


title: Atheism

text: According to the World Values Survey, 4.4% of Americans self-identified as atheists in 2014. However, the same survey showed that 11.1% of all respondents stated "no" when asked if they believed in God. In 1984, these same figures were 1.1% and 2.2%, respectively. According to a 2014 report by the Pew Research Center, 3.1% of the US adult population identify as atheist, up from 1.6% in 2007; and within the religiously unaffiliated (or "no religion") demographic, atheists made up 13.6%. According to the 2015 General Sociological Survey the number of atheists and agnostics in the US has remained relatively flat in the past 23 years since in 1991 only 2% identified as atheist and 4% identified as agnostic and in 2014 only 3% identified as atheists and 5% identified as agnostics.


title: Atheism

text: According to the American Family Survey, 34% were found to be religiously unaffiliated in 2017 (23% 'nothing in particular', 6% agnostic, 5% atheist). According to the Pew Research Center, in 2014, 22.8% of the American population does not identify with a religion, including atheists (3.1%) and agnostics (4%). According to a PRRI survey, 24% of the population is unaffiliated. Atheists and agnostics combined make up about a quarter of this unaffiliated demographic.


title: Atheism

text: In recent years, the profile of atheism has risen substantially in the Arab world. In major cities across the region, such as Cairo, atheists have been organizing in cafés and social media, despite regular crackdowns from authoritarian governments. A 2012 poll by Gallup International revealed that 5% of Saudis considered themselves to be "convinced atheists". However, very few young people in the Arab world have atheists in their circle of friends or acquaintances. According to one study, less than 1% did in Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Jordan; only 3% to 7% in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Palestine. When asked whether they have "seen or heard traces of atheism in [their] locality, community, and society" only about 3% to 8% responded yes in all the countries surveyed. The only exception was the UAE, with a percentage of 51%.


title: Atheism

text: Various studies have reported positive correlations between levels of education, wealth and IQ with atheism. In a 2008 study, researchers found intelligence to be negatively related to religious belief in Europe and the United States. In a sample of 137 countries, the correlation between national IQ and disbelief in God was found to be 0.60. According to evolutionary psychologist Nigel Barber, atheism blossoms in places where most people feel economically secure, particularly in the social democracies of Europe, as there is less uncertainty about the future with extensive social safety nets and better health care resulting in a greater quality of life and higher life expectancy. By contrast, in underdeveloped countries, there are far fewer atheists.


title: Atheism

text: The relationship between atheism and IQ, while statistically significant, is not a large one, and the reason for the relationship is not well understood. One hypothesis is that the negative relationship between IQ and religiosity is mediated by individual differences in nonconformity; in many countries, religious belief is a conformist choice, and there is evidence that more intelligent people are less likely to conform. Another theory is that people of higher IQ are more likely to engage in analytical reasoning, and that disbelief in religion results from the application of higher-level analytical reasoning to the assessment of religious claims.


title: Atheism

text: In a 2017 study, it was shown that compared to religious individuals, atheists have higher reasoning capacities and this difference seemed to be unrelated to sociodemographic factors such as age, education and country of origin. In a 2015 study, researchers found that atheists score higher on cognitive reflection tests than theists, the authors wrote that "The fact that atheists score higher agrees with the literature showing that belief is an automatic manifestation of the mind and its default mode. Disbelieving seems to require deliberative cognitive ability." A 2016 study, in which 4 new studies were reported and a meta-analysis of all previous research on the topic was performed, found that self-identified atheists scored 18.7% higher than theists on the cognitive reflection test and there is a negative correlation between religiosity and analytical thinking. The authors note that recently "it has been argued that analytic thinkers are not actually less religious; rather, the putative association may be a result of religiosity typically being measured after analytic thinking (an order effect)," however, they state "Our results indicate that the association between analytical thinking and religious disbelief is not caused by a simple order effect. There is good evidence that atheists and agnostics are more reflective than religious believers." This "analytic atheist" effect has also been found among academic philosophers, even when controlling for about a dozen potential confounds such as education.


title: Atheism

text: However, some studies do not detect this correlation between atheism and analytic thinking in all of the countries that they study, suggesting that the relationship between analytic thinking and atheism may depend on culture. There is also evidence that gender may be involved in the so-called analytic atheist effect: because men have been found more likely to endorse atheism, and men often perform slightly better on tests of analytic thinking when not controlling for variables such as math anxiety, the correlation between atheism and analytic reasoning may be partly explained by whatever explains observed gender differences in analytic thinking.


title: Atheism

text: Statistically, atheists are held in poor regard across the globe. Non-atheists, and possibly even fellow atheists, seem to implicitly view atheists as prone to exhibit immoral behaviors ranging from mass murder to not paying at a restaurant. In addition, according to a 2016 Pew Research Center publication, 15% of French people, 45% of Americans, and 99% of Indonesians explicitly believe that a person must believe in God to be moral. Pew furthermore noted that, in a U.S. poll, atheists and Muslims tied for the lowest rating among the major religious demographics on a "feeling thermometer". Also, a study of religious college students found that they were more likely to perceive and interact with atheists negatively after considering their mortality, suggesting that these attitudes may be the result of death anxiety.


title: The B-52's

text: The B-52's are an American new wave band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1976. The original lineup consisted of Fred Schneider (vocals, percussion), Kate Pierson (vocals, keyboards, synth bass), Cindy Wilson (vocals, percussion), Ricky Wilson (guitar), and Keith Strickland (drums, guitar, keyboards). Ricky Wilson died of AIDS-related illness in 1985, and Strickland switched from drums to lead guitar. The band also added various members for albums and live performances.


title: The B-52's

text: The group evoked a "thrift shop aesthetic", in Bernard Gendron's words, by drawing from 1950s and 1960s pop sources, trash culture, and rock and roll. Schneider, Pierson, and Wilson sometimes use call-and-response-style vocals (Schneider's often humorous sprechgesang contrasting with Wilson's and Pierson's melodic harmonies), and their guitar- and keyboard-driven instrumentation is their trademark sound, which was also set apart from their contemporaries by the unusual guitar tunings Ricky Wilson used on their earlier albums. The band has had many hits, including "Rock Lobster", "Planet Claire", "Party Out of Bounds", "Private Idaho", "Whammy Kiss", "Summer of Love", "Wig", "Love Shack", "Roam" and "(Meet) The Flintstones". They have been nominated for Grammy awards three times: in 1989, 1990 for 'Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal' and in 1992 for 'Best Alternative Music Album'.


title: The B-52's

text: The B-52's formed in 1976 when Cindy Wilson, Ricky Wilson (her elder brother), Pierson, Strickland, and cowbell player, poet and lead vocalist Schneider held an impromptu jam session after sharing a flaming volcano drink at a Chinese restaurant in Athens, Georgia. When they first jammed, Strickland played guitar and Ricky Wilson played congas. They later played their first concert (with Wilson on guitar) in 1977 at a Valentine's Day party for their friends.


title: The B-52's

text: The name "B-52's" comes from a particular beehive hairdo resembling the nose cone of the aircraft, which Pierson and Cindy Wilson wore in performances during the band's first decade. Other names the band considered were the Tina-Trons and Fellini's Children. Strickland suggested the name after a dream he had had of a band performing in a hotel lounge. In the dream, he heard someone whisper in his ear that the band's name was the B-52's.


title: The B-52's

text: The band's quirky take on the new wave sound of its era was a combination of dance and surf music set apart from their contemporaries by the unusual guitar tunings Ricky Wilson used and thrift-store chic.


title: The B-52's

text: The band's first single, "Rock Lobster", recorded for DB Records in 1978, was an underground success, selling over 2,000 copies, that led to gigs at CBGB and Max's Kansas City. Both this version of "Rock Lobster" and its B-side, "52 Girls", are different recordings from those that appear on the band's 1979 debut album, and the early version of "52 Girls" is in a different key.


title: The B-52's

text: The rerecorded version of "Rock Lobster" was also released as a single and in the UK and Germany was backed with an instrumental version of "Running Around", a non-album track at the time. (A vocal rerecording of this appears on the band's second album, 1980's "Wild Planet".) The buzz the record created in the UK meant their first show in London at the Electric Ballroom was packed and attended by UK pop stars, including Sandie Shaw, Green Gartside from Scritti Politti, and Joe Jackson. In Canada, released on the Warner Bros. label, the single went from cult hit to No. 1 on the "RPM"-compiled national chart on May 24, 1980.


title: The B-52's

text: In 1979, The B-52's signed contracts as they flew over to Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, to record their debut studio album, with Island founder Chris Blackwell producing. The band was surprised by Blackwell's recording methods; he wanted to keep the sound as close as possible to its live sound, so he used almost no overdubs or additional effects.


title: The B-52's

text: Released on July 6, 1979, "The B-52's" contained rerecorded versions of "Rock Lobster" and "52 Girls", six originals recorded solely for the album, and a cover of the Petula Clark hit "Downtown". The album was a major success, especially in Australia, where it reached No. 3 on the charts alongside its three singles: "Planet Claire", "Rock Lobster", and "Dance This Mess Around". In the U.S., the single "Rock Lobster" reached the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart, while the album was certified platinum by the RIAA. In 1980, John Lennon called the B-52's his favorite band and specifically cited "Rock Lobster" as an inspiration for his "Double Fantasy".


title: The B-52's

text: In April 1980, The B-52's returned to Compass Point Studios to record their next album. Several of the songs on the new album had been concert staples since 1978; the band consciously did not record them for its first album since it already had too many tracks and wanted a strong second album, knowing that its live performances would make fans look forward to it. Rhett Davies co-produced the album, which had a more polished production sound than the debut.


title: The B-52's

text: Released on August 27, 1980, "Wild Planet" was well received by critics; many fans consider it the band's best album. It reached No. 18 on the "Billboard" 200 chart in 1980 and was certified gold; "Private Idaho" became the band's second Hot 100 entry. The B-52's performed on "Saturday Night Live" on January 26, 1980, and at the Heatwave festival (promoted as the "New Wave Woodstock") in Toronto, Canada, in August 1980. The band also appeared in the Paul Simon film "One Trick Pony". In July 1981, "Party Mix!" was released, a six-song collection containing songs from the first two albums remixed and sequenced to form two long tracks, one on each side.


title: The B-52's

text: In 1981, the band collaborated with Talking Heads' David Byrne to produce a third full-length studio album. Reportedly due to differences with Byrne over the album's musical direction, recording sessions for the album were aborted, prompting the band to release "Mesopotamia" in 1982 as an EP. (In 1991, "Party Mix!" and "Mesopotamia", the latter of which had been remixed, were combined and released together on a single compact disc.) Also in 1982, the band appeared at the inaugural US Festival, performing on the first day.


title: The B-52's

text: In December 1982, the band began recording their third album, "Whammy!". According to Pierson, Strickland no longer wanted to play the drums, so the band switched to drum machines for this album, with Strickland and Ricky Wilson playing all the music on the album, and the rest of the band providing vocals only. Having originally played guitars, organ, bass guitar and synthesizers, Pierson switched to a mainly vocal role in the studio, but remained behind the keyboards on tour. The band also began experimenting heavily with synthesizers during this period.


title: The B-52's

text: Released on April 27, 1983, "Whammy!" reached No. 29 on the "Billboard" 200 chart. "Legal Tender" reached the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart, as well as the "Billboard" Hot Dance Club Play Singles chart alongside "Whammy Kiss" and "Song for a Future Generation". For the "Whammy!" tour, some tracks featured Strickland on the drums while others used a backing track so Strickland could come forward and play other parts. This also freed up the vocalists (now sometimes not playing instruments) to perform some simple choreography. Copyright issues with Yoko Ono led to the cover song "Don't Worry" being removed from the album and replaced by "Moon 83"—a rearranged version of "There's a Moon in the Sky (Called the Moon)" from their debut album—on future pressings of "Whammy!".


title: The B-52's

text: Before the work on the next album the band took a one-year break during which Fred Schneider released his debut solo album "Fred Schneider and the Shake Society".