Ok, this is the scenario: One day, you check the religion section of this forum, and it turns out, all atheists suddenly changed their minds, "saw their mistake" as it were, and agreed that atheism was a religion. Now what? Did that bring any argument closer to resolution or any line of thought closer to its end? Atheists are welcome to answer their mirroring of the question, all theists suddenly agree that atheism is not a religion after all. Again, this thread is not for discussing whether atheism is a religion or not, there are countless of other threads for that.
There's is a big psychological difference to say "There is no god and I'm his prophet" than to say "I believe god is only an illusion of the human mind" or something else in this quality. Atheists could start to communicate about their reilgion with members of other religions. Example: The way of the western world could change to a more spiritual way. I heard president Obama said in TV that everyone has a sick mind who is thinking it had been better for the world to arrest the terrorist Osama instead to kill him. In case someone had asked "¿Makes the death of Osama any spiritual sense?" - this would had been a completly different universe of thoughts. It's not anymore this self created universe of thoughts where "a man has to do what a man has to do" what is in lots of cases nothing else then "to be proud to be an idiot". http://youtu.be/aoNsLBMXSTI
The English language has many words. These words typically have multiple definitions. I recommend people look up the word dogma. Atheists do tend to display a dogma, and while it is directly related to religion, it is not a religious dogma, and extrapolating "a religion" is a twisting of the language to suit a strawman. It is really annoying. I "argue" online. This is a form of "fighting". This does not mean I hold rank in the military. I hate that kind of crap.
RELIGION -The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods. By definition, atheism is NOT a religion, since this is a fact, if atheists suddenly decided to claim it is one, then they are simply wrong.
I said huh, because I had no idea what the original post said or meant. to me, it was a confused juxtaposition of words with no meaning at all.
Its probably not going to happen. Atheism is as close to religion as not believing that a invisible pink, 93 eyed bigfoot octopus, with rubber stamps for claws, and rockets for feet, monster lives under your bed. Anyone who disagrees either does not know as much about the concept as they think they do, or flat out refuse to listen to any arguments that counter their bias against atheism.
You do, of course, realise that this thread was not meant to reiterate the same old tired arguments over and over but to try to figure out where the discussion is actually going, right? It's a very common debate which to me seems to have the same philosophical implications as sock colour yet people get heavily involved in the debate and spend endless hours on a fight that wouldn't change the state of the overall discussion if it was settled.
Maybe somebody could answer a question for me: what is this obsession with establishing atheism as a religion? I just don't get it. Thanks.
Religious belief cannot move anything in reality. For example, an existence of divinity has no impact on the physical world. It only has value within the realm of itself. Therefore, it must be asserted that any opposition (usually just being an absence of religiousity) is included within that realm, or else it has no impact at all. Which, though it cannot move anything in reality, is not an option as it moves tremendous amounts of things in the mind. I remember Kmisho having referred to it as a desire to say, "you're just as bad as I am". Which is the shorter version of the same phenomenon.
I understand the premise for the question, but being that atheism is not a religion, the question is somewhat irrelevant. Akin to asking "what if the sky was neon green...?".
I don't think anything would change whether we all decided to call it a religion or the theists all decided to stop calling it a religion.
What is the obsession with atheism taking on religion ALL the time? And the reason people do it, is to point out that atheism's focus is essentially hypocrisy. Well, nothing essentially about it, it is straight up hypocrisy. What is it atheists like to say? #1 - Religion is stupid because you believe in things without proof. Guess what atheists, you are utterly convinced in something without a shread of evidence. #2 - that there are just too many contradictions in religion. LIke this? http://www.atheists.org/religion Oh, religion causes anything and everything wrong - especially violence. http://www.atheists.org/military But, gosh darn it, we atheists are nit cowards and we have been there with you the whole time! No apparently contradiction averse atheist has ever voiced concern about that, or many other, contradictions in the statements of atheism. Worse, we routinely see atheists chastize religious people for violence, but, in a slightly differnt context, brave, brave atheists would have us believe they are all Delta Force Ranger Ninjas. Its the same contradiction that leads to the inclusion of Jefferson and Einstein, who both believed in God, as atheists, but the exclusion of prisoners who have no God but do not actively describe themselves as atheists. Buddhists = Good atheists, North Koreas = communists, not atheists. #3 religion has a doctrine and you don't. That is pure BS as well. How many atheists have explained what agnostic atheism is, as per the OP BTW, and done so by referring s to a doctrinal source - like Wikipedia - to explain it, often in derision like, "Geez, are you too stupid to read that (putting aside the apparent inability of atheists to read the Bible for a moment - ahem)". And yet, that means you are not a bunch of ruged bear eating individualists does it? It means the wikipedia definition of agnostic atheism defines your beliefs - and all other agnostic atheists who refer to it as well. So, what is it about religion that you hate? What is that you hate in religion that does not also apply to you? At some point, the more thoughful and intelligent atheists will see this and conclude that they are just being jerks for no reason - then they engage with their brains and .... can no longer be atheists. Its the reason I left atheism. Left it for something MUCH better mind you.
Did you just now ignore the actual question (including the one you quoted) and just randomly off-topiced to your favourite area? Is there anything in this post that even touches on why the discussion on whether atheism is a religion or not is discussed? I can't stop you but it'd be nice to have some order around here.
Agh, so atheists, who like to pride themselves on their skepticism of religion, don't seem to like it much when it is applied to their precious atheism. The question was: What the obsession with people attempting make atheism a religion? Are you daft? The answer: Because all the faults atheists find in religion are present in atheism - and by applying the standards and faults atheist find in religion ... hmmm, they are all present in atheism. Go figure. Oh, YOU don't want to hear that? Well, we get a little tired of atheists romping through various religions and accusing people of being murders and rapists as well. Once again, go figure.
I believe that I have addressed such questions several times in the past, however, I have done so in appropriate threads. It is not that I don't want to answer your questions (since I already have), but that I do want answers to the questions that the thread is actually about, which is why I created it to begin with. If your logic is that the person who can spam their questions to the largest number of threads is most entitled to an answer, then I guess you have a point. Anyway, your answer. And how exactly does labelling atheism a religion deal with this issue? If, as you say, atheism has the certain flaws that also belong to other concepts, including religions, then why not just discuss those issues instead of going into an unsolvable, infected, semantic argument which only complicates things? This is why I worded the thread the way I did, I wanted to know what logical conclusions would be drawn from the decision that would be arguments in the actual debate, whether there is a god or not.
Thank you for clarifying that. You're probably going to want to go gargle with lye at this point, because I agree with you.
"If religion is bad, then since atheism is bad, it must be a religion" The above is a quote to me from a neighbor who goes to something called a "rock church", is a religious nut (cannot complete one sentence without a reference to the KJV of the bible) and leader of a local tea party congregation.
Because things, ideas, that grow into larger things are called organizations. And the larger an organization is - the more challenges it finds. And these organziational things are not specific to religion. Atheism as a growing ideological organiztion - is now facing tha same challenges and hurdles as ther established organizations. Unfortunately, atheist defines itself by not being an organization, and thus it, as an organziation, has all the problems that come from unguided organizational drift. The fact that it is, at its center, an organziation that is centered around God - and his denial - means it is a religious organization. What OTHER organization could it be?
I don't think atheism is an organization on it's own, and I don't believe that ideas turn into organizations by growing. To me, an organization has to at least be organized. Sure, there are organizations built around atheism, as you often mention, but they are not representing all of atheism. Just as WBC don't represent all of Christianity, American atheists or positive atheism do not represent all of atheism. Actually, they both state through their names that they are specific types of atheism, American and positive (which only includes certain versions of atheism), and to be fair, they are being quite obnoxious atheists as well. They do definitely meet challenges that have been met by other organizations, including religious, but that does not make them a religious organization. I have no problem with this, social movements, world views and so on change about. Here is the interesting part. There are several steps here. The first step is that the organization (I'm just gonna go with organization for simplicity) is centred around the non-existence of God. No arguments there. Then come a few semantic steps. An organization centred around the non-existence of God is a religious organization. I'm not really sure whether I'd go that far, it'd depend on how you define "religious organization". And then, A religious organization is a religion. Here I don't agree with you. If you, as previously, have defined an organization with any statement about God to be a religious organization, then you cannot randomly redefine religious organization to be a religion. That's a reasonable question. There is definitely a slight shortage of words here. For reasons above, I would not call it an organization, world view, philosophy, ideology, metaphysical statement, I'm not really sure. I'm fine with using any of them as long as we don't use the words to give atheism meanings that we're not sure that they have. If we call it an organization, I'm also fine with calling it a religious organization unless we then redefine religious organization to mean religion. I answered you question, again, in an unrelated thread. Now will you answer my correctly placed one?