A loaded word

When you hear the word atheist, what sort of image do you get?

Before you answer, I want you to know I am not asking to know your religious beliefs. I'm not interested in that. I am interested in how this word is 'loaded' - what sort of connotations it has for you, and what sort of connotations it had for you in the culture you grew up in; the culture of your family and the people around you.

I guess the best way to answer this question is to imagine that you are going to meet someone who you have been told is an atheist. This is the only thing you know about the person.

Will you have some image based on this label? What is it? The instant gut reaction, I mean, not the one you get after actually thinking about it.

I am very interested in the way words become loaded. The very closed culture I grew up in used ordinary words in different ways, so that after leaving it took me years to strip some perfectly innocent words of their additional loading. Daily language was a minefield. For example, the word meeting still calls up some very inappropriate images for me. There are many other words like this, for me. This is not a problem now, but for a long time it was disturbing how upon hearing some innocent remark I could suddenly lurch back in time and be overwhelmed with feelings of nostalgia, loss, guilt and fear.

So, like I said, I am not asking you to state your religious preferences. I don't want to know your reasoned reaction to the word, or your actual reaction to the actual, real atheists you know. I am just interested to know what feelings and implications you get from the word. What images has your culture loaded onto atheist?