A tired, old trope that undermines true faith and blocks the path to common ground.
Some Atheists ... assert that Atheism is not a religion but instead is the total absence of religion.... But this is like saying that "black," (which physicists define as the total absence of color) is not a color.... In common practice throughout the world, "black" is understood to be a color, despite the technical definition of the physicists. Likewise, "Atheism" is a religion, despite any technical definitions to the contrary. If black is a color, then Atheism is a religion. —Rev. Bill McGinnis, The Religion of Atheism…
Article comments
— go to most recent comments26 - Bobby Sprinkle
To #24 ...
Explain to me how atheism is NOT a belief system?
Then, explain to me how particle physics is NOT a belief system? Quantum mechanics? The fact that Brit and K-Fed were doomed to fail?
Science in general is based on beliefs. You might argue that these are proven beliefs, verifiable beliefs, but then we are arguing about evidence and not the belief itself.
If the word "system" makes you uncomfortable, I gladly remove it from our discussion.
That way you can just prove to me how quantum mechanics is not based on beliefs.
And how does that set the standard for belief system low? What exactly is the standard and who is setting it? Does a belief system need more than one adherent to be a belief system? Does the belief system need to be judged valid by a committee or some group to be considered to meet the standard? If it just misses the standard can we call it a belief system in training?
27 - Bobby Sprinkle
To #25 ....
Ding, Ding, Ding ....
We have a winner. I belive you actully said that "Atheism is, necessarily, a negative belief". Essentailly, you are saying that atheism is the belief in no God.
How is that different than the spiritual believers belief in a God?
28 - Bobby Sprinkle
RE: # 22
Pete,
I think your grasp of the "religious" world is way to monochromatic. You seem to think that religions encompass these big blocks of everyone believing the same things. Even within similar faiths the "coherence" of groups is vague at best.
Let's take Christianity for the sake of argument, although you could apply this to ANY religion.
The major groups break down fast ... catholic, orthodox, protestant; you could even dive into Armenian if you wanted. Then take one of those groups. Protestant breaks down into a myriad of "denominations". Some are so different as to barely be recognizable as protestant. If you take one denominations, say Presbyterian, you can break that again into at least three and maybe as many as five national categories. The Baptists are worse than that. Even strong denominations like the Southern Baptists (largest protestant denomination in America) are loosely organized. Even though their Creed as it were says they are against women pastors, at least 150 churches with women pastors belong to the demolition. Going back to Presbyterians, even the individual church, can have incredible variety in belief. Presbyterians are known as big sovereignty of God types, some would be good old fashioned Calvinists. However, you can have committed faithful members of a Presbyterian church who don't believe in the sovereignty of God. How is that possible if these “denominations” have the coherence and definition you think they do?
I don't think that religions are defined as well as you think they are. I believe in fact they could be very similar to the atheist breakdowns that you use to illustrate atheism not being a religion. In fact, these breakdowns surface constantly as people alter their beliefs and swing from church to church to Temple.
If I can, I’ll look into the books you mentioned. I’m always up for a good read.
29 - Pete Blackwell
To answer 24 & 25 together, it is my contention that "atheism" as a whole is not a belief system because there's no system. It is a single belief about a single unknown. After that, atheists believe any number of things that may or may not agree with what other atheists beleive.
The difference between that and the "spiritual believers' belief in a God" is what is at the heart of this thing we call religion. It's all those other things I list in the post. It's all these things that atheism lacks.
Furthermore, the belief in god posits all kinds of things (in most cases) about the existence of the spirit and the soul, in the afterlife, etc. This is not true of atheism.
Would you argue that there's no difference, to give an absurd example, between believing that all human souls are the remnants of aliens executed on earth volcanos by a bastard named Xenu and not believing this?
Do both positions require the same leap of faith? Of course not. If so, then the concept of belief is entirely relative and nothing means anything. And that's a position I don't think most people would be too eager to take.
30 - Pete Blackwell
I don't think that all religions are monochromatic and, having grown up in the church, I know well what you're talking about. But despite the differences between all the religions and sects and splinter groups, etc., they have certain things in common. Those are the things I list atheism as lacking. Not all religions have all these traits, but they're pretty consistently present in religious groups and congregations. This is just not true for atheism.
Do read Darkness at Noon. It's one of my favorite novels.
31 - Pete Blackwell
RE #21: I think the belief in god and the belief in the sturdiness of a chair are totally different things. The former belief is not expected to be confirmed by the scientific method. It doesn't need to be confirmed at all, hence the faith. The latter is a belief that must stand up to rational scrutiny and can easily be confirmed.
Now, if Jesus shows up on my doorstep and offers some scientifically verifiable proof of his existence and divinity, then and only then are these two beliefs similar. That hasn't happened yet.
32 - Bernie of FreeGoodNews.com
Great quote about the color black-- makes perfect sense- great analogy!
...Bernie
33 - zingzing
bernie needs to learn how to read.
34 - Dave Nalle
People can be religious about their atheism
Not just religious about it, but downright fanatical. Which IMO defeats the whole concept of atheism. If your atheism originates in a hatred of organized religion rather than a lack of belief in deities - which is often the case - then you're not so much an atheist as a disaffected religionist. Real atheists ought to have a more laissez faire attitude. People should have the right to believe whatever claptrap makes them happy and keeps them from killing each other.
Dave
35 - zingzing
"People should have the right to believe whatever claptrap makes them happy and keeps them from killing each other"
true. it's just too bad that people like to kill each other over religion.
36 - sr
Old-Time Religion the song was sung in 1941 at what accademy award winning movie and who wrote the song?
37 - Todd Sayre
"Aunicornism is, necessarily, a negative belief". Essentailly, you are saying that aunicornism is the belief in no Unicorns.
How is that different than the spiritual believers belief in a Unicorn?
38 - Pete Blackwell
People can be religious about their atheism
Again, this depends on what you mean by 'religious'. Does that mean to believe something strongly? Or is it a specific way of believing something? I would be careful with this.
Now, people can certainly be dogmatic about their beliefs (atheist or otherwise). I've already commented on the folly of that. But if 'dogma' and 'religion' mean the same thing, then haven't we lost something?
39 - Baronius
Pete - I'm not sure you can separate Soviet and Chinese communism so easily. The two countries often worked together. Mao was supported by Stalin, and certainly used similar methods. The Russians tinged communism with a Christian hierarchical structure, where the Chinese approach resembled an Emperor's court, but the systems themselves were deliberately and explicitly atheistic.
I could build on Bobby's groundwork of nationality-as-religion, but in the case of communism the similarities to religion are obvious. China has a "sacred" book and uniforms. The iconography of Marx, Lenin, Mao, Kim, and Che are well-known. Communism is more than a religion, as you note, but it definitely is a religion. You can't subtract points from it because it's all-encompassing.
By ignoring communism, you've eliminated something like 80% of atheism. If I talked about religion, leaving out Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, you'd be right to call foul. I notice that you skip Buddhism yourself. So we're talking about the non-Hegelian non-Buddhist atheists? I'll put out two bags of Doritos, but I won't open the second one unless all of the non-Hegelian non-Buddhist atheists come by.
40 - Pete Blackwell
I don't skip Buddhism. I mention it several times. It is an atheist religion. It's also not at all typical of non-religious atheism, which is the topic of my post and what is meant by O'Reilly, Coulter et. al. when they talk about atheism.
I do think that communism has many things in common with religion as I define it. But the mystical or 'supernatural' thing communists put their faith in was not atheism. It was dialectical materialism. It is quite easy to imagine communism without atheism, but it is entirely impossible (nonsensical, even) to imagine it without the dialectic. That, in my opinion, is the core belief of the communist 'religion'.
That said, neither Soviet nor Chinese communism is really pertinent to the debate at hand. Again, when fundamentalists talk about atheism as a religion, they're not talking about communism. They're talking about secular humanism and people who believe in evolution, etc.
41 - Clavos
Mr. Blackwell writes:
One of the biggest selling points for the "atheism is a religion" trope is the common misperception that atheists know that there is no god. Certainly there are some who would say so, just as there are Christians who have no religious doubt whatsoever, but these are not (I hope) majority views. Insistence on the absolute correctness of your position is not a sign of either faith or rationalist purity; it's a sign of hubris and epistemological immodesty. (Emphasis mine)
Are you listening, Christopher Rose?
42 - Christopher Rose
Of course I'm listening, Clavos, but I'm certainly not persuaded.
As you appear NOT to be listening, let me reiterate: I wish there were a god or gods, it would make a lot of things both easier and more satisfying on a spiritual level. However, with all the best will in the world, I can't find any plausible evidence for the existence of any deities at all.
I don't feel either "hubris or epistemological immodesty" in saying that, rather a sense of disappointment that the old time stories are nothing more than that.
I don't insist on the correctness of my position either, indeed, I find it a tad lamentable. However, the universe is what it is and no amount of naive, simplistic creation stories or appeals to faith could persuade me otherwise.
Atheism is absolutely not a religion, as has been shown above quite convincingly. It is an attempt by faithists to frame a discussion by defining non-believers thusly, to include them within an entirely unconvincing explanation of the miraculous universe that contains us.
The final nails in the coffin of religion are the amount of hatred it promotes and the way it allows mean hearted people to attack others, all in the name of championing deeply held but entirely superficial views that do nothing to explain our common reality or address the sense of awe and interconnectedness that never ceases to amaze and humble me.
43 - SHARK
Dear Pete,
Nice article. Thanks for writing it.
You're a brave man to enter the dangerous whirlpool of Semantics -- followed by a bunch of articulate morons who defend their flimsy, imaginary Raft of Faith by suggesting that --Atheists Who Prefer Science and Curiosity in THE QUEST for Empirical Data-- are made equally blind and dogmatic by their "beliefs".
And speaking of "If there is a God, will you please make him shut the fuck up"...
Bobby Sprinkle: "We have a winner. I belive you actully said that "Atheism is, necessarily, a negative belief". Essentailly, you are saying that atheism is the belief in no God. How is that different than the spiritual believers belief in a God?"
Atheism is not a "belief" in no god; it's a temporary working conclusion based on intellectual honesty coupled with a glaring Lack of Evidence.
Faith/Religion is wishful thinking based on intellectual dishonesty, a lack of curiosity, and a conclusion drawn DESPITE the Lack of Evidence.
PS: Yer ALL condemned to trace an eternal elliptical orbit in the lowest spiraled streets of Semantics Hell.
Have a nice day.
44 - S.T.M
Atheists rule, by God!
45 - Pete Blackwell
Atheism is not a "belief" in no god; it's a temporary working conclusion based on intellectual honesty coupled with a glaring Lack of Evidence.
For many, certainly. But this does not have to be the case. A person who doesn't believe in god because their dog told them not to is an athiest, too.
46 - A.L. Harper
It took me years to understand that I didn't believe in god. It wasn't an easy struggle but a necessary one. When I was in Church and others would talk about their feelings about god or that feeling of power that was so palpable as to be almost tangible, I would know that I had never felt that; more than hadn't felt it, I couldn't help but think that it was impossible to feel and believe they were lying to themselves. My "faith" place deep inside me was empty. When I was 8 years old and mother told me I was going to be baptised into my faith I ran away because I knew it was a lie and I couldn't say it out loud.
Not believing in God isn't something that I do one day a week. Where I go to some building and listen to some revered Atheist talk about why NOT to believe in god. I don't believe one set of dogma or another I only know what's right or wrong inside myself.
And accepting that there probably isn't a God isn't easy. Believing in a magic man who will make everything right and just in the end is easy. But believing that some very bad people will never be punished, that justice will never be served for some, is sometimes overwhelming. And it's not that I absolutely believe there is no god. I think that anything is possible. There might turn out to be a Big Foot or Loch Ness Monster but I think it's highly unlikely.
I don't "believe" in anything in a faith way. I just don't think there is anything out there. And no matter how hard I have tried in the past to believe, I know it's a lie and I couldn't live a lie.
47 - Pete Blackwell
Thanks for bumming us all out, A.L.
:-)
48 - SHARK
A.L. Harper -- I left the church the day I realized there wasn't a passage in the Bible that said something like, "And lo, Jesus saw a gigantic fucking *lizard in the road!"
*no dinosaurs in that Cosmic History Book -- [quote courtesy the late, great Bill Hicks]
49 - Pete Blackwell
The fact that Bill Hicks died the way he did is proof that there's no god. Or that god doesn't have a sense of humor. The existence of Scientology strongly suggests that if there is a god, he has a very fine sense of humor, indeed. QED: no gee oh dee.
50 - Michael J. West
I would think that intellectual honesty would lead one to agnosticism at best. That's where it led me.
I find no epistemological proof of God or lack thereof, either way. I don't believe that God exists as depicted in the Bible, but I've no reason to think that there's not a creature of some kind in the universe whose relationship to life on Earth is NOT at least tangentially similar to a God's.
But then, it's entirely possible, even likely, that atheists have had experiences that have led them to conclude with certainty that there's no God. Experiences, that is, which I have not had. So intellectual honesty is a hard thing to gauge because even intellect is subjective.
51 - Michael J. West
Speaking of intellect-this thread is one of the most intellectual that I've ever had on Blogcritics. Aside from the silly potshots that pop up everywhere, most of the comments here are honest, thoughtful, and address the subject at hand.
Perhaps we should all take pictures of this page or save it to our PCs so that we have proof that such conversations CAN exist on this site.
52 - Pete Blackwell
Agnosticism is a position where you neither believe in the existence or nonexistence of god, usually because the truth is thought to be "unknowable".
Atheism is not believing in god. That doesn't meany you know there's no god. It just means you believe there is not.
By your definition, everyone on earth who hasn't met or seen god personally would have to be an agnostic.
53 - Michael J. West
Sorry, Pete. That definition was actually a response to the one posited in Comment #48 (i.e., Shark):
Atheism is not a "belief" in no god; it's a temporary working conclusion based on intellectual honesty coupled with a glaring Lack of Evidence.
I should have been more clear.
54 - Matthew T. Sussman
"... such conversations CAN exist on this site."
HERESY
55 - AntiFate
hahaha a redneck trailer trash must have wrote this,
religion is a set of believe based on super natural superstition. by that, atheism is NOT a religion because it does not believe in the super natural.
56 - Mark Saleski
The fact that Bill Hicks died the way he did is proof that there's no god.
i always thought that the fact that egg nog wasn't good for you was proof that there was no god.
57 - Bobby Sprinkle
Wow. I’ve been gone all night and most the next day. Where to begin?
First, although it probably doesn’t warrant an actual response, SHARK …
“Faith/Religion is wishful thinking based on intellectual dishonesty, a lack of curiosity, and a conclusion drawn DESPITE the Lack of Evidence.”
Not knowing all those of faith at all, I’m curious how you can draw these conclusions. You make blanket statements about millions of people with little or no backing. Just because you have seen one, two, or even a million dishonest, non-curious, wishful thinking believers doesn’t mean that I or the next guy are. I refute everything you said in this quote. I defy you to show otherwise.
Now onto more genial debaters …
Pete ….
In #30 you write that you don’t believe all religions are monochromatic. That may be but you are treating them that way. In fact you are rolling up all religions together. It isn’t fair to say all religions do such and such but you can’t say that atheism does because the forms of atheism are different and atheists believe so differently. According to you the only common theme among atheists is a belief in no God. You say religion is all the same. However you roll up all religions but leave forms of atheism separate. Let’s compare apples to apples, shall we ….
Let’s compare forms of religion with forms of atheism and see how it shakes out. I’ll just pick a couple of your first list to keep things short.
There Is No Founder
You say that no one founded atheism. Well no one founded all religion either. Each form of religion had its own founder just like each form of atheism had its founder. Christ could be compared to Marx, L. Ron Hubbard to Darwin, etc. I may not have the best examples but you get my point I hope.
There Is No Tradition
You say that religion has common traditions and history but religion doesn’t have one common tradition, it has many. So each form of religion may have a tradition but so does each form of atheism. Marxism, Communism, Nietzschism, etc. all have common traditions within themselves. It is true that there traditions aren’t common across forms but neither is the Hindu tradition common to the Orthodox. The point is that each form has its own traditions.
There Is No Scripture
Again, all religions may have scriptures but they aren’t the same. Every form of atheism also has its scriptures. A Marxist may not recognize the works of Huxley as divine scriptures but neither does a Muslim recognize Dianetics as divine either. (Note: This is a slight cheat on my part as Huxley really labeled himself an agnostic)
I could go on and on. The point is, as I stated before, that you are treating religion as a unified body but not atheism. They are both very clearly filled with widely differing views on a whole host of subjects.
Atheists actually may be more monochromatic than believers as you define them. At least atheists are unified in their belief in no God. According to your definition belief in God isn’t required to be a religion. Therefore you can’t even say that all religions are unified in their belief in God.
In #29 you claim that belief in God posits all sorts of things which atheism does not. I disagree. Why does belief in God posit afterlife or soul? You are picking a couple of religions and using their philosophies selectively to say something about all religion. I would argue that Buddhism is essentially atheist in that most Buddhists would deny the existence of a God. Yet, they certainly believe in something similar to the soul.
As for your absurd example, to make it even more absurd, in the absence of any evidence at all, I would posit both beliefs are the same. You can only make one sound ridiculous by using an assumed amount of foreknowledge and evidence that you have worked up over time, education, experience, etc. If you didn’t have those to back you, what would make either proposition more believable? Again, the belief is no different, the evidence is.
Finally, in # 31 you argue that “The former belief is not expected to be confirmed by the scientific method. It doesn't need to be confirmed at all, hence the faith. The latter is a belief that must stand up to rational scrutiny and can easily be confirmed.” A couple of things about this…
I think you are again letting your previous life, experience, knowledge, etc, interfere with the examples. You may think the chair should stand up to rational scrutiny but you don’t subject it to that. You just sit in it. You didn’t test the wood, use weights to tests its load limit, have several people sit in it to verify the results. You gave it a cursory examination and then sat based on “faith”. What you are saying is that the chair COULD stand up to the scientific method if the appropriate tests were done and the results were verified. Well I argue that God could do the same thing. You COULD subject God to the scientific method if he allowed it, the appropriate tests were applied and the results were verified.
I would further argue that a belief in God with no confirmation is ridiculous. All beliefs with no confirmation are not worth much. The point is that the confirmation is subjective, based on personal experience, past history and bias. For instance, I could argue that my belief in God is confirmed the same way your belief in the chair was. I have had people tell me about God and what he does. People have told you about chairs and what they do. You have used chairs in the past. I have experienced God in some manner (dream, visitation, feeling, support, lightning bolt, whatever … enough to confirm it for me). Nothing in your visual examination of the chair contradicts your “faith” that it will hold you. Nothing in my experience or knowledge of science contradicts the presence of a God. Thus your belief that the chair will hold you would be based on roughly the same categories of evidence that my belief in God is based on.
Clearly, this is not objective, scientific proof that can be reproduced in a lab for all to see. But it is proof nonetheless. I hold that rational people can believe in God. I do not hold that rational people can believe in something that has never been confirmed or proven to them. A rational person is also open to being proven wrong. Bias becomes huge here but as you say, if Jesus showed up at your door …
P.S. When Jesus does show up at your door, let me know. I’ll be curious to see what proof he provides for divinity.
# 36 ….
The movie was Sergeant York with Gray Cooper. I have no idea who wrote the song.
# 48 SHARK ….
I can’t believe I’m referring to him again … You are confusing religion with Christianity. Why didn’t you convert to Buddhism or Hinduism when you realized there were no lizards in the Bible? You can’t argue that all religions are wrong because one is. You can’t argue that there is no God because the Bible is wrong. What about the religions that believe in God but not the Bible? I guess as long as there were lizards its ok?
BTW, you are seriously screwed up in your timelines. Were such a quote to appear in the Bible it would read “And, lo, Cain saw a gigantic fucking lizard in the field!” There was probably no Jesus or roads during dinosaur days.
# 50 Michael West
I disagree slightly. Intellectual honesty doesn’t necessarily lead on to agnosticism. You leave out personal experience from the mix. Intellectual honesty should leave you open to being proven wrong but not necessarily into the “unknowable”.
I too have greatly enjoyed these conversations.
58 - Pete Blackwell
Briefly on your first point with more to come: It's actually the opposite. The O'Reilly/Coulter position is treating atheism like it's a unified whole and a religion. My argument is against that. It is not a religion. I don't believe it's a bunch of diverse religions either. More on that in a little while.
59 - Clavos
Mr. Rose,
You have said repeatedly that you know there is no god. In fact, you imply it once again in your #42 when you say:
However, the universe is what it is and no amount of naive, simplistic creation stories or appeals to faith could persuade me otherwise.
And you say:
I don't feel either "hubris or epistemological immodesty" in saying that...
I didn't mean to imply you FELT hubris; rather I'm saying you're guilty of it in the way you present your beliefs.
I'd like to remind you once again that I'm not arguing with your position of nonbelief. I don't believe myself. In fact, if anything, you seem to have a more spirtual position than I, judging from what you write about the "interconnectedness" you feel, which I can't even understand, much less contemplate.
You describe the universe as "miraculous," and I suppose that's true if one believes in miracles. I think it just "is" (as you essentially also point out in #42, as quoted above).
Finally, I think we agree more than we disagree, except that I think I'm more nihilistic about matters religious than you.
60 - Michael J. West
Bobby (re 57):
You have misread, I believe: I'm not the one who used the word "unknowable" to describe my agnosticism. Pete Blackwell used it (#52), and even then he qualified it as being "often" the reason given for agnosticism.
From my point of view, agnosticism simply means, "I don't know." And the reason I don't know is not that it's unknowable, it's because there is currently not enough evidence to determine either way. (Nor is there evidence that it's "unknowable," for that matter.) If I saw evidence that there was a God, or that there wasn't, I would probably change my thinking. But there isn't, so I can't.
61 - A.L. Harper
#47 Pete - I'm sorry I bummed you out. I think people think it's easy not to be religious or spiritual that there are no morals involved. I just go out and shag anyone I want to and treat people bad and covet my neighbour's arse (Ok I do that, but he has a very nice arse) but that isn't how it works. I'm a good person. But I'm a good person because I am socially responsible NOT because I'm afraid I'm going to go to hell.
62 - frank
hey y'all
here's a comment from holland(europe, that is)
seems like everybody around here is really focussed on describing what and what not atheism really is.
Am I right? Definitions, semantics, all that.
I don't want to say it's not important to define what one's talking about, but here's my point:
I watch the news, only two groups around in the world, muslims and christians.
I happen to disagree. Many people, way more than you might think, don't fit in either category.
Time we bundle our voices and let the religious guys and girls know there's a lot of people that don't dig their backward shit anymore. They want to do their thing, fine. They want to tell me what to do or not do, not fine.
And hey, semantic fans, I think it's perfectly OK to obey the law, just keep in mind, different countries, different laws. Some US people have problems grasping that concept seems.
63 - Pete Blackwell
OK, back to number 57.
If belief in a supreme being who created the universe and the worship of that being in a community of fellow believers is the same thing to you as believing that a chair will hold your weight, then atheism is a religion. So is assuming a glass will hold water or believing that you won't melt if you go out in the rain. Every time you go outside assuming you won't simply float off into the stratosphere, it's a supreme act of faith.
The only problem is that you've defined 'religion' out of existence. It then becomes an incredibly banal and even worthless thing. I can't bring myself to think that you"or anyone who genuinely believes in god"would (or could) think such a thing. It is most definitely not the point the atheism-is-a-religion crowd is trying to make. Quite the contrary.
I stand by my post and my comments thus far. While I agree that there is a great deal of variety in religious practice (and say so in my original post), all religions conform to the majority of the categories I laid out. Atheism as a whole doesn't, but neither do any of the discrete atheist niches. (Putting Marxism aside, which is a faith primarily in the proposition that history is governed by dialectical materialism, not because of its atheism.)
There's really no such thing as Nietzscheism, per se. There are people who read his philosophy and admire his thinking, but no coherent congregation has sprung up in the name of it. There are no churches of Nietzscheism, etc.
The same goes for Darwin, although he is far more well known (but probably not more widely read). There is a good reason why he looms larger: he is a scientist. Not only is he a scientist; he was the first one to pull at the biological thread that led to the hypothesis of evolution. He provided a rational explanation for the way life develops. That's a pretty big deal. Still, while I've met plenty of people who admire Darwin, I've never met anyone who worships him or believes that his works on evolution are the first and last word on the subject.
When it comes to belief in god, you're playing a bit of a semantic game with the words 'confirmation' and 'proof'. You say, Clearly, this is not objective, scientific proof that can be reproduced in a lab for all to see. But it is proof nonetheless. I would have to say that's not proof at all, unless, as with 'religion', 'proof' has no meaning. It is 'evidence', and very subjective evidence at that, but it neither proves nor confirms anything.
Except to yourself, which is the key.
Proof is what you use to convince other people of the validity of a hypothesis. This word has no meaning if each person must experience the proof themselves in a subjective, and thus unconfirmable, manner.
Religion, whether it's man made or divine, has always been a palliative against fear of the unknown. Because they exists partly to serve this purpose, a great number of religions actually embrace the unknown. Fear becomes mystery, the void becomes spirit. Religious belief in the face of ambiguity and paradox"in the absence of proof"is praised as a sign of true faith.
I'm not here to argue with that notion. My point is that this is something qualitatively different from atheism, however you want to break it down.
64 - RedTard
If gays can marry, why can't atheism be a religion? It depends what the meaning of the word is is.
65 - Pete Blackwell
If atheism is a religion, is bald a hair color?
66 - RedTard
No, but could it be considered a hairstyle?
67 - Dew
I feel the same way about non-denominational being called a denomination?
68 - Michael J. West
If gays can marry, why can't atheism be a religion?
Is that comparison supposed to make sense?
69 - RedTard
No.
70 - Michael J. West
Just checking.
71 - Sean Aqui
Pete: My compliments on one of the best religious posts I've seen, and the excellent discussion that followed.
A few months ago I tried my hand at an explanation of agnosticism, and why it is not atheism and not antireligion. It's not as well done as your piece, but I think it complements it quite well, similarly undermining the simplistic portrayals put out by certain commentators for whom religion is a cudgel to be wielded with abandon.
Both are also evidence that mainstream believers have more in common with mainstream atheists and agnostics than they do with extreme elements of their own faith.
72 - Mark Saleski
one other thing that the "atheisim is a religion" crowd seems to miss is that their is a large group of people like me who are not only atheistic in their beliefs but...hmm, how do i put this?....religion plays no part in our daily lives.
i hate to even use the word "group" because it comes close to conferring some sort of organization. there is non. religion exists, completely outside of my world.
73 - Duh
the question is not whether or not Atheism is a religion.
Atheism, pure and simple, is reactionary philosophy. It's irrational at it's very core. There is no issue, concept, or scientific proof that a thinking person with Faith cannot agree on with an Atheist. I like how Atheists perch comfortably in this thread because they have a new premise that basically states this brilliant come back "chya right."
The quote "Atheism is a religion" is meant to galvanize emotions and thought, not to be taken literally. My retarded cousin knows that atheists don't go to church. Cmon.
It's clear that "atheists" (whatever and whoever you are) just have personal issues that cloud their ability to think rationally. They think that Faith = irrationalism because it's a convenient face-value answer for all da religious "haters" out there. It's so much more complicated than this thread.
No matter what happens in our lifetime. You 'tards will keep arguing these points, and nothing will come of it. No greater truth will be reached. Until you learn to smile and love the blue collar baptist that lives down the street, your opinion carries little weight. Moreover, you KNOW you believe in God, you just hate that big all-encompassing thing called accountability. Everything else is a rationalization of why you shouldn't feel guilty for the shit you make everyone else clean up. C'est la vie. (sp?)
74 - duane
Jesus Christ, can't you believers get ONE thing through your thick skulls? See SHARK #43, and I quote,
"Atheism is not a "belief" in no god." NOT. Read it again.
75 - Duh
it's reactionary philo whether belief is involved or not. It is an inferiority complex to a supposed threat. Typical. Its origins and discussions derive from an active and irrational distrust of people who claim publicly to have Faith. No matter how you slice it, it's just another way for folks to point the finger at other "hypocrites." The sad thing is that there is no such thing as Atheism.
Atheism is simply a "side." Cmon guys. You rail against other idiots that are outspoken about Faith. Neither side seeks truth, only justification FOR said truth. The actual truth is much more buried and mysterious than you baffoons would like to reveal in this thread.