The Religion of Atheism

I've never heard an atheist call theism a religion, generally they have better things to do than discuss religion.

You are desperately trying to make up excuses.

It is not working.

 

No they don't, and the second part does not follow from the first.

 

Say no to drugs.

 

Do you post in your sleep? Atheists refer to anyone who believes in a God [theists] as religion. Im shocked you would even post something so moronic.

Never neededd to, but clearly you should consider it for yourself.

 

Believing in a God, does not constitute a religion.
a religion takes a lot more than simply a belief.
A religion takes rituals, organized belief's, rules, etc.

 

Then why do atheists always call believers religious?

Yeh I'd agree there

Where does it say rituals are a requirement in the rule book?
Where does it say organized is a requirement in the rule book?
Where does it say rules are a requirement in the rule book, what rules are you talking about?

 

Webster does

Definition of religion
1 a : the state of a religious

• a nun in her 20th year of religion

b (1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural
(2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
2 : a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
3 archaic : scrupulous conformity : conscientiousness
4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith


of course you invent your own definitions.

 

BTW,

An Atheist has none of these

b (1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural
(2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
2 : a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
3 archaic : scrupulous conformity : conscientiousness
4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

 

Says who? You? You're right, I don't worship some supernatural sky genie. Which is not the same as saying I have no conscientiousness, or that I don't have a system of deeply held beliefs.

 

I was going to finish that but the phone rang, as I pointed out before, atheists are different as night and day, many have certain belief's that others don't.
That is not what makes them an atheist.
The disbelief in a god is the only requirement.

 

and you just happened to overlook #4

The belief there is no God is by definition a religious belief

Atheism is commonly understood as rejection of theism in the broadest sense of theism, i.e. the rejection of belief in God or gods.[5]

The claim that the existence of any deity is unknown or unknowable is agnosticism.[6][7]

Atheism is a religious belief there are no G/gods.

Right from your definition!



Definition of atheism

1 a : a lack of belief or a strong disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods

b : a philosophical or religious position characterized by disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism

it seems that according to webster it is a religion.

 

Please enjoy your fantasy,
And BTW, please read what you posted, slowly this time.

philosophical or religious position characterized by disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods

 

semantics

Understand what you read!

religion

noun

a. The belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers, regarded as creating and governing the universe: respect for religion.
b. A particular variety of such belief, especially when organized into a system of doctrine and practice: the world's many religions.
c. A set of beliefs, [there is no God] values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader. ]Hitchens, Dawkins]


THE AMERICAN HERITAGE® DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, FIFTH EDITION by the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries. Copyright © 2016, 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.


religion

belief in a divine or superhuman power or powers to be obeyed and worshiped as the creator(s) and ruler(s) of the universe
expression of such a belief in conduct and ritual
any specific system of belief and worship, often involving a code of ethics and a philosophy: the Christian religion, the Buddhist religion, etc.
any system of beliefs, practices, ethical values, etc. resembling, suggestive of, or likened to such a system: humanism as a religion
the state or way of life of a person in a monastery, convent, etc.
any object of conscientious regard and pursuit
http://www.yourdictionary.com/religion

Of course you may wish to claim you have no moral compass therefore these definition do not apply to you.

 

LOLOL

Everything you wrote proves you wrong, you need a better grasp on the English language.


You have been proven wrong over and over again, and still just don't get it.

 

religion

belief in a divine or superhuman power or powers to be obeyed and worshiped as the creator(s) and ruler(s) of the universe
expression of such a belief in conduct and ritual
any specific system of belief and worship, often involving a code of ethics and a philosophy: the Christian religion, the Buddhist religion, etc.
any system of beliefs, practices, ethical values, etc. resembling, suggestive of, or likened to such a system: humanism as a religion
the state or way of life of a person in a monastery, convent, etc.
any object of conscientious regard and pursuit
http://www.yourdictionary.com/religion

Of course you may wish to claim you have no moral compass what so ever therefore these definitions do not apply to you.

 

And atheism is none of that.

 

Sorry, but this definition fails to hold water when applied to Atheism. Your premise depends on an Atheistic system of order, which does not exist. I, as an Atheist, simply believe in one less god than you do, which means zero. No other criteria is necessary to identify as an Atheist. We have no secret handshake.

 

FALSE!
They are ALL OF THAT!
Right from your atheist evangelical spiritual leaders!

If you call yourself a humanist, a freethinker, a bright, or even a “cultural Catholic” and lack belief in a god, you are an atheist. Don’t shy away from the term. Embrace it.

Atheists are not a monolith. However, American Atheists supports public policy that protects the absolute separation of religion from government. We support evidenced-based public policy that uses science, reason, and our shared humanity as its guiding principles [government worship]

American Atheists envisions a world [world view] in which public policy is made using the best evidence we have rather than religious dogma and where religious beliefs are no longer seen as an excuse for bigotry or cause to receive special treatment from the government.

By working with coalition partners within the atheist movement [preaching their religion] and across the political spectrum where can find common ground, American Atheists fights to improve public policy for all Americans, protect [their] real religious freedom by defending the wall of separation between religion and government, and promote the acceptance and understanding of atheists.

By using every tool available to us, including our nation’s legal system, political advocacy, and outreach campaigns, American Atheists works to advance atheism in the United States and abroad.

https://www.atheists.org/issues/




An "atheist church" in North London is proving a big hit with non-believers. Does it feel a bit like a new religion?

Not many sermons include the message that we are all going to die and there is no afterlife.

But the Sunday Assembly is no ordinary church service.

Launched last month, as a gathering for non-believers, it is, in the words of master of ceremonies Sanderson Jones, "part foot-stomping show, part atheist church, all celebration of life".

A congregation of more than 300 crowded into the shell of a deconsecrated church to join the celebration on Sunday morning.

Instead of hymns, the non-faithful get to their feet to sing along to Stevie Wonder and Queen songs.

It feels like a stand-up comedy show.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21319945

Looks pretty ****ing organized to me, complete with preachers, world view, strongly held religious beliefs, worship for a corrupt government, doesnt get much more religious that that now does it.

Atheists practice atheism. We have been through this all before, only a couple pages ago, might want to read before jumping in with titanic gang on here.

All it takes is one moral to be religious.

 

The explicit formulation of ‘religion for atheists’ is abhorrent to those who have made a religion out of their disbelief. But for all that, in all but name the New Atheism has transformed itself not only into a secular religion but into an intensely intolerant and dogmatic secular religion.

As a humanist, I am distressed by the corruption of the idea of atheism. Genuine humanists are critical of the influence of creationism and of religious fanaticism. Yet while attempts to reverse the separation of church and state are always a cause for concern, the real challenge facing humanists today does not emanate from organised religion. Rather, it is now often secular movements that promote the idea that human beings are powerless, vulnerable and victims of their circumstances. So instead of the religious belief in original sin, today we are confronted with the therapeutic claim that children are easily damaged and scarred for life. All the old religious sins have been recast in a secular, medical form. People are no longer condemned for lust but rather are treated for sex addiction. Gluttony has been reinvented as obesity. And envy and avarice have been rebranded as illnesses brought about by our ‘addictive consumer society’.

The real question confronting us is not the status of any god but the status that we assign to humanity. And the most powerful threat to the realisation of the human potential today comes, not from religion, but from the moral disorientation of Western secular culture.
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/12030#.W0GSzuO7phE

 

LOL,
Just because he makes a game show out of it, does not mean we all do. I wouldn't waste my time going there.

And, BTW, The Atheists I know have higher moral standards than most religious people I know..

And yes, we have been through this before, over and over, and you still don't understand.​

 

He called it the way people see it, a comedy show is spot on.

Nice try, and yet another nice fail.

No so called atheist here cat calling from the cheap seats hasnt even been able to scratch the surface of the issues, and short of a 'miracle' I am not going to hold my breath they every will.

New Atheism lends itself to and often overlaps with secular humanism and antitheism, particularly in its criticism of what many New Atheists regard as the indoctrination of children and the perpetuation of ideologies founded on belief in the supernatural. Some critics of the movement characterise it pejoratively as "militant atheism" or "fundamentalist atheism".[a][6][7][8][9]

Evolution and Religious Belief

The New Atheists observe that if there is no supernatural reality, then religion and religious belief must have purely natural explanations. They agree that these sociological and psychological phenomena are rooted in biology. Harris summarizes their view by saying that as a biological phenomenon, religion is the product of cognitive processes that have deep roots in our evolutionary past. Dawkins endorses the general hypothesis that religion and religious belief are byproducts (what some evolutionary biologists call “spandrels”) of something else that has survival value. His specific hypothesis is that human beings have acquired religious beliefs because there is a selective advantage to child brains that possess the rule of thumb to believe, without question, whatever familiar adults tell them.

Secular Morality

These moral objections to religion presuppose a moral standard. Since the New Atheists have denied the existence of any supernatural reality, this moral standard has to have a purely natural and secular basis. Many non-theists have located the natural basis for morality in human convention, a move that leads naturally to ethical relativism. But the New Atheists either explicitly reject ethical relativism, or affirm the existence of the “transcendent value” of justice, or assert that there is a consensus about what we consider right and wrong, or simply engage in a moral critique of religion that implicitly presupposes a universal moral standard.

There they go making moral value judgments! They do everything a religion does and a militantly aggressive religion at that, then try to sell us that they are not a religion! It gets even better!

The New Atheists’ appeal to a universal secular moral standard raises some interesting philosophical questions. First, what is the content of morality? Harris comes closest to providing an explicit answer to that question in stating that questions of right and wrong are really questions about the happiness and suffering of sentient creatures. Second, if the content of morality is not made accessible to human beings by means of a revelation of God’s will, then how do humans know what the one moral standard is? The New Atheists seem to be agreed that we have foundational moral knowledge. Harris calls the source of this basic moral knowledge “moral intuition.” Since the other New Atheists don’t argue for the moral principles to which they appeal, it seems reasonable to conclude that they would agree with Harris. Third, what is the ontological ground of the universal moral standard? Given the assumption that ethical relativism is false, the question arises concerning what the objective natural ground is that makes it the case that some people are virtuous and some are not and that some behaviors are morally right and some are not. Again, Harris’s view that our ethical intuitions have their roots in biology is representative. Dawkins provides “four good Darwinian reasons” that purport to explain why some animals (including, of course human beings) engage in moral behavior. And though Dennett’s focus is on the evolution of religion, he is likely to have a similar story about the evolution of morality. The fourth philosophical question raised by the New Atheists is one they address themselves: “Why should we be moral?” Harris’s answer is that being moral tends to contribute to one’s happiness. Dawkins replies to the critic who asks, “If there’s no God, why be good?” by questioning the necessity, desirability, and efficacy of a desire for divine approval as a motivator for moral behavior.

Finally, as regards ethics, critics argue that a problem with the New Atheists biological answer to the philosophical question concerning the ontological ground of the universal moral standard is that it could only explain what causes moral behavior; it can’t also account for what makes moral principles true. And critics contend that the New Atheists’ answer to the question, “Why be moral?” could only show that belief in God is not needed to motivate people to be moral; it doesn’t explain what does (or should) motivate atheists to be moral. https://www.iep.utm.edu/n-atheis/


Atheists have morals they adopted from various religions and have faith exactly as any other religion because they are not capable of proving anything in support of their theory that no G/gods exist which if course makes them non other than hypocrites.

and I will add why should anyone pay any attention to atheists evangelizing their morals when they cant figure out why they should be moral in the first place?

As thread after thread proves they have no answers for anything beyond the 'lack'.

 

There is no bottom to the pit atheists have invented.

The New Atheist Movement Should Care About Poverty

By Walker Bristol
When new atheism emerged at the beginning of the millennium, perhaps the quickest stereotypes to flank authors like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins were “elitist” and “self-satisfied.” Many in today’s atheist movement — the collection of organizations and activists working to build a culture safer for nonbelievers, combat dogmatism and in some cases eliminate religion itself — would dismiss these stereotypes as a baseless smear campaign by their adversaries. We value truth and think we’re right about something — which hardly seems different from the attitude of many believers. That itself doesn’t mean we consider ourselves “superior” to them.

There’s something toxic, though, that permeates this movement, something that may well inspire and support the stereotypes that have lingered for years. The atheist movement, in composition and purpose, has in the last decade failed to demonstrate a meaningful dedication to fighting economic inequality and building a safe space for nontheists regardless of their socioeconomic class. Despite all their talk of building a better world and upholding diversity, contemporary atheism and humanism’s most prominent authors and leaders have been suspiciously silent on the topic of poverty. This limits the movement’s ability achieve universal compassion, and renders it unattractive to those who don’t occupy a comfortable spot on the social hierarchy.

What’s even worse: the atheist movement’s implicit dismissal of class inequality greatly hinders its ability to build meaningful and sustainable partnerships with other moral communities, either as a function of or a result of this disregard. It creates distance between organized atheism and religious groups that are predominantly composed of the underprivileged. Without these partnerships, the idea of building “a better world” is not only unachievable, but incoherent.

The last decade is peppered with blatant examples of outright classist language and motivation that has directly distanced the atheist movement from peer religious communities. Richard Dawkins has an affinity for referring to the “educated elite” (as he does in The God Delusion) or to “elite scientists” in discussing atheist demographics—essentially, he appeals to the fact that because those in the overclass of academia share a particular view, those below them ought to strive towards it as well. In doing so, he implies that they might too achieve some sort of enlightened intellectual prosperity that these privileged elite scientists have been graced with. Atheists today allege that the stereotypes discussed earlier are leveled purely out of the insecurity of the religious position. Yet, it seems they are rather an indictment of the movement’s narrow, upper-class focus, which both ignores and marginalizes the underprivileged who haven’t access to the same educational opportunities.

Organizations have made the same transgressions. Last fall American Atheists sponsored a Twitter hashtag, intended to somehow fight Islamic censorship, declaring “#IslamIsBarbaric”. In doing so, they simultaneously made a bigoted and broad-brushing statement about one of the largest religions in the world. Was the campaign effective? Did certain Muslims feel so intimidated as to put a stop on calls for censorship? Nothing of the sort. It seems to have done little more than violently marginalize Western Muslims (likely the only Muslims who would actually see the hashtag), calling them “barbaric” to emphasize how economically and technologically inferior this religious demographic must be to these elite American atheists.

David Hoelscher and Sikivu Hutchinson have already written considerably on atheism’s “class problem”, and Hutchinson particularly notes how it creates distance and brutal tension between the (predominantly white) atheist community and poorer black communities, which might have closeted nontheists in their midst. While the current movement limits itself to honing arguments and gleefully ridiculing the religious Others who don’t share their educational privilege, those in poor communities are often bound by a strong local church. The economically underprivileged remain simultaneously inspired and motivated by their religion, albeit potentially oppressed by its certainty and prejudice. Yet, in essence, we disregard these as lost causes. Hutchinson writes in her essay “Prayer Warriors and Freethinkers“ for The New Humanism: “If mainstream freethought and humanism continue to reflect the narrow cultural interests of white elites who have disposable income to go to conferences then the secular movement is destined to remain marginal and insular.”

In siphoning themselves off from lower-class church communities, humanists and other social justice-minded nonbelievers disregard key allies in the fight towards a world safer for diversity and freethought. In the South in the ‘50s and ‘60s, it was through the incredible network of black churches in African-American communities that activists were able to organize and share information, and ultimately achieve to the unprecedented successes of Civil Rights. These communities empowered their members, yet atheists construct a presumption that these communities must be in need of empowerment. It seems to be borne from a fear of all things associated with religion: a given atheist is often known to talk about fighting “religion” rather than “dogmatism” or “supernaturalism”, as if “religion” were a wholly poisonous monolith. Ostensibly, that empowerment would come from outsiders, from white elite atheists who by all accounts seem more interested in pointing fingers and laughing at believers rather than investing in improving the educational complex and broken welfare system that has destroyed these communities in the first place.

In working towards a socially just society, aligning oneself with communities and organizations that have already shown tremendous strength in fighting injustice would seem essential. For instance, intuitively, to fight racism, progressive groups composed largely of privileged whites have to work with racial minorities. Likewise, the economically privileged have to align with the impoverished. Yet all oppression is interconnected; and to simply ignore, or give no more than lip-service to, an issue as imminent and ubiquitous as poverty grossly limits a movement’s ability to fight social injustice in all forms. The atheist movement has in recent years been a megaphone in support of LGBT rights—but without considering the plights of LGBT individuals who might be struggling in low-income households, or who might not have access to the health coverage to afford Saquinavir in fighting HIV, how much good-without-god is really being accomplished?

The problem works both ways: while class ignorance inhibits the ability for atheists to coordinate and work together with their religious peers, religious discrimination on the part of atheists paints them with a classist brush. This is perhaps most evident in the case of atheistic Islamophobia, which author Chris Stedman thoroughly documented in his essay “Atheists Ignore Islamophobia at their Peril.” As atheist authors like Sam Harris were skyrocketed to fame on the heels of September 11th, writing that religion (not politics, nor poverty) was the primary motivating factor in the attacks, the question arose: is Islam (and therefore, are Muslims) especially violent, and deserving of unique disrespect? Through quote-mining the Quran and pointing to political groups like Hamas and Al Qaeda, who indeed profess religious motivations yet are blatantly driven in response to political oppression, Harris and his contemporaries suggest that the Middle East is wrought with such unmitigated dogmatic evil that they are perhaps beyond saving. Harris gives a surface level response to terroristic organizations: the Quran doesn’t have an epistemological basis, “there’s no reason to think it’s true”, therefore we just need to convince everyone of this fact, and what a safe world we’ll then be living in.

He does not, however, give ample time to sending economic aid and building up the educational institutions—as is being done by organizations like The Citizens Foundation in Pakistan, which has established over 800 schools nationwide. Certainly, Harris would agree that to improve education would naturally lead to more critical thinking, and less dogmatic action. Yet he, and many of today’s atheist authors, seem content to say that dogmatic thought will be liberated through spirited argument—a strategy which only seems effective between people who occupy the same economic class, namely one where they are comfortable enough that the philosophical question of whether or not god exists is worth pondering at all.More here: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/walker-bristol/the-new-atheist-movement-poverty_b_2606959.html

Seems your religion is having 'extreme' growning pains!

It looks like a religion and smells like a religion but ask them, and they will tell you, its not a religion!

 

I believe the definition has been posted many times on this thread, and it certainly does not apply.

Sure, an atheist can make a religion out of it, pursue it religiously, and can be many things.

However being an atheist has one qualification.
A disbelief in a god.

 

If you were a car, you would be a Rambler.

 

you are so smarting off to the wrong person, my rambler was the perfect sleeper, running 11's. I made some nice ching and a couple titles with that car LMAO Yeh thanks for the compliment, I will happily be a rambler, Edsel