http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/atheismreligion.html

http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/ath/blathm_rel_religion.htm

Some helpful links provided by your friendly, hell bound, neighborhood Atheist.

Be well, ~Alderic

Right.

@ The People's Party

Sigh.

Athiesm as RELIGION? Please. If it's a religion, it's a religion of one reinvented for each individual. Ask ten athiests a question and you'll probably get eleven different answers. Theres no creed, no dogma, and absolutely ZERO organization. The only common thread is that athiests do not believe in a god or gods. Everything else, ANYTHING else, varies widely. Many athiests are heavily religious (see Buddhism). Many athiests believe in supernatural phenomena. You can't put athiests neatly into a box like you can adherents of a religion because by nature they pretty much can't be made to agree on ANYTHING. I seem to recall Richard Dawkins describing organizing athiests as a group (say, for political action) as equivalent to herding cats, which lines up with my own observations.

And yes, LACK of belief IS a sound basis for excluding athiesm from the label of "religion". Do you believe in the tooth fairy? No? Does that make you a member of the religion of atoothfairyists? No? Good, we're done here.

The mention of communism as some sort of example is assinine. Communism is a totalitarian ideology that tolerates no rival. Of course they're going to condemn and attack religion, just like they attack capitalism and other rival ideologies. It's not athiesm that's causing the issue there, it's Communism's unrealistic and unbending dogma.

As for athiesm being intolerant... that doesn't hold water. Are some individual athiests intolerant? Sure. But there's nothing in the concept of "not accepting the existence of a deity" that has any bearing on tolerance or lack thereof. Even being more specific about what type of athiest you're talking about doesn't really help that argument. Secular Humanists (which again is still casting a rather wide net) are generally pretty happy to let people think whatever they want to think, and certainly the common themes among Secular Humanists have more to do with freethinking than limiting free thought!

And now, the lovely mention of social darwinism and attempting to pin it on evolutionary thinking. That's utterly ridiculous. Social Darwinism is based off, at best, a poor understanding of evolutionary principles, and at worse just used evolution as a cover for preexisting racism. Eugenics, again, has NOTHING to do with evolution by natural selection, and is instead a form of artificial selection like what we do with domesticated animals. In fact, Darwin was opposed to that sort of interpretation.

Finally, the off-handed jab at evolution. Pseudo-science? REALLY?

Lets see what wikipedia has to say about pseudo science:

Lets see. The theory of evolution by natural selection is:

• Logically sound
• Based off 150 years of accumulated data and experimentation
• Has survived several competing theories, like Lemarkian evolution
• Adequately explains most of the data we have accumulated
• Has been observed in a lab
• Is applied practically in many different fields, including computing science and microbiology

I dunno. Sounds pretty fucking scientific to me.

Presuming that you're talking about folk like Richard Dawkins, the position they promote is that religion is harmful and that it shouldn't be allowed to influence other people's lives. Is that tolerant? Hell no, and they don't even pretend it is. But that's a far stride from "wanting to destroy any one that's not like them" as the religious extremists of the world are happy to do on a daily basis. From what I can tell of Dawkin's position, he's a huge advocate of free speech and thinks his beliefs stand up well enough on their own that there's no need to silence those who would criticise them.

Mmkay. Rant over.

Now, Leauki, it's sad to see a good post like this get utterly derailed like this, so I'd kind of like to get back to the original topic. I'm sorry for contributing to that derailment.

The events you're describing make me sad. It's really quite pathetic... any belief that requires violence to support it in lieu of standing on its own merits isn't worth the breath taken to express it.

Excellent. Thank you.

But they're both fruits.  Good analogy Lucas...because in my mind to say there is no God like the Atheist claim, they must be a "fruit" factor involved.   

You can be religious about anything...including atheism.  You can be a religious beer drinker or religious about cleanliness.  You can make anything a religion.  Like Peoples said atheism can be considered a religion.  I know the atheists don't want to hear that because they pride themselves as being non religious but they're fooling themselves.  They are just as religious about having no God as I am about God being alive and well.  They are just not God centered. 

Those are just word games. You're extending the word religion well beyond its typical usage to win a semantic argument, and devaluing the word in the process.

When one says that one is a "religious beer drinker" you are using religion as a METAPHOR, not as a declaration that your booze guzzling habits are in fact religious in nature.

No one prays to beer.

hmmm so does that mean I win?    JK

not everyone prays.  You don't have to pray to be religous about something. 

All religions involve prayer.

Hey, 'scuse me? i pray five times a day to Bud! (Not really...lol)

The one i like is "I shower religiously." Nope, I do not bathe in any ritualistic fashion.

Mmm, they may be fruits, but they're still different. An apple is not an orange.I do admit that i could've waited like thirty seconds to think of a better analogy.

You can be "religious" about anything, in a sense. The catch though is that Atheism is the absence of religion. So how can you be religious with something that is essentially non-religious? It's like saying you're a non kosher jewish pig farmer or something.

Anyways, since you're getting into semantics...lets take a look at the term religous, and it's definitions:

–noun

*** Nothing here could be attributed to atheism. They all lead to the supernatural in some way or link.

Lets go to wikipedia:

A religion is an organized approach to human spirituality which usually encompasses a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural or transcendent quality, that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power, God or gods, or ultimate truth.

Key word, supernatural. Nope, no atheism.

I'll concede that, metaphorically, it may seem like Atheists are like that, but believe you me...I, nor any of my atheist friends/acquaintances/connections are religious atheists. Can you say Hebrew National hot dogs?

Are they kosher?

Non sequitur, the paragraph you quote doesn't say anything about religion and atheism being irreconcilable.

In fact there exist many atheistic religions, just like there exist many monotheistic and polytheistic religions. Buddhism and animist religions do not suddenly disappear just because you want atheism to be the opposite of an approach to human spirituality.

Communist personality cults are religions, even though there is no (supernatural) god.

Nor does a religion with a god necessarily demand any belief in anything. It is perfectly possible to be a religious Jew and follow all the commandments without even believing in G-d or His prophets. (This doesn't work in Christianity.)

It was tongue in cheek, a joke.

Whatever Leauki, don't take the word of an Athiest, merely that of a religious person who claims they know more.

So was mine.

How does that reconcile with this?