They are performed as part of a struggle for recognition, as an autonomous political community.

CNN: The politics of Tibetan self-immolations

In an interview published in this month's Wired magazine, Dawkins estimated the number of non-religious people in the U.S. to be around 30 million and compared atheists' struggle for recognition as equivalent to previous campaigns by other minority groups.

CNN: The rise of the 'New Atheists'

Computers can recognise a well-folded protein when presented with one, but actually finding it calls for the sort of pattern recognition and lateral thinking that they struggle with.

ECONOMIST: What video-game technology can do in the real world