For fucks sake.

Leauki is perfectly correct. You two are interpreting the word "athiesm" far too specifically to refer to a specific, naturalistic philosophy. Athiesm means exactly what it says it means: without god or gods. It does not mean "without religion". BUDDHISTS are athiests, for crying out loud. The (effectively) religious cults that center around many communist icons like Stalin, Lenin, Kim Jong Il, etc are all athiestic in nature. Athiesm is an EXCEEDINGLY BROAD TERM that in all honesty says basically NOTHING about the person it is applied to EXCEPT that they do not believe in a deity. That's IT.

YOU guys (Alderic and Infidel) seem to be assuming that "athiest" automatically correlates to a naturalistic, irreligious philosophy like secular humanism, which, as Leauki points out, is non sequiter. It doesn't follow. All secular humanists are athiests (ie, secular humanism implies athiesm) but not all athiests are secular humanists.

Use the terminology correctly, or at the very least don't act all offended when the inevitable confusion arises.

You don't know how beliefs can be reconciled with religions?

I'll try to explain:

1. Beliefs

An acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists. I assume you understand how this can include belief in a god, many gods, that no god or gods exist, spirits, aliens, and anything else that cannot be proven.

2. Religion

A system of faith and worship. This includes instructions on how to live, how to pray, possibly what to believe, how to follow rituals and which rituals etc..

3. Belief and religion

Since religions describe how to work with belief, religions usually include specific beliefs, for example a belief in a god or gods, or a belief that gods don't exist or are not necessary. Christianity is a religion with a god. Buddhism is a religion without a god. Hinduism is a religion with many gods (or possibly one god with many aspects).

I didn't think this would be difficult.

Again: Atheism is NOT a religion just like theism is not a religion. Both are beliefs, both are _parts_ of some religions. Theism is a part of theistic religions, atheism is a part of atheistic religions.

Much clearer now?

Exactly.

Ah, my bad.

Starstriker, you're failing to grasp this. Atheism has been, at least in my opinion, incorrectly applied to Buddhism by an ignorant western society. Atheism includes not just a rejection of God (theism), devotional, supernatural, etc...but also deities of any kind.

Buddhism has that, as such...how can a religion (if you will) that acknowledges deities and has theistic/devotional elements, be atheistic? So, in a sense, Buddhism is atheistic in that they deny a God like being, however...looking at the other aspects, it isn't atheistic.

Trust me, I used to be a practicing buddhist.

How can he be failing to grasp this when he just explained it perfectly?

He's failing to see the sublte intricacies.

Alright, my bad. Lemme rephrase: some Buddhist sects are atheistic, though they vary widely. Wikipedia also informs me that there were athiestic Hindu sects in the early history of the religion.

More to the point, there is nothing intrinsically incompatible with the idea of rejection of god or gods and organized spirituality. To imply that they are mutually exclusive simply doesn't hold water.

And no, you're wrong. Atheism CAN mean rejection of deities, though strictly speaking it does not necessarily have to. The only thing it is guaranteed to oppose is theism... hence the name.

Thanks for admitting to that.

Only if the spirituality is not supernatural, because that word supernatural is the key to it all. Buddhism as a whole still does have aspects that are supernatural and such. Atheists are 99% of the time skeptical or dismissive of such things.So then what?

I do agree though, that the word is one of many that are complex.

The discussion of whether Atheism qualifies as a religion means you would have to define "belief system" and religion. I think if that can be nailed down...then who knows.

for crying out loud......you guys need to go out for some fresh air! 

Sigh.

You aren't listening. Supernaturalism is NOT ruled out by athiesm. Naturalism and athiesm often coincide, it's true, but it's entirely possible to be athiest while simultaneously believing in things like, say, ghosts or psychics. And since you don't have any data to back up your claims save anecdotal evidence, please refrain from making up statistics.

@ KFC:

No way! It's over 30C out there, I'm staying the hell inside! So much for Canada being a frozen wasteland. Where's all that cool weather when you need it? :/

Like Starstriker1 says:

Gosh, Alderic, you are really fixated on this idea that everybody agrees that atheism is about not believing in the supernatural per se. You don't even recognise, even, though you were told several times, that not everybody sees it that way.

And as Starstriker1 also said, it is possible to be an atheist and believe in all sorts of supernatural things. That's what superstition is and what most theistic religions are trying to fight.

I believe in G-d, but I do not believe in psychics, ghosts, or wizards and witches. (And, incidentally, my belief in G-d and my refusal to believe in psychic powers and ghosts are very related indeed.)

But an atheist who believes in psychics and magic is not somehow (mystically?) free from belief in the supernatural just because none of the many supernatural things he believes in is a god.

I am an "apsychist", if you want to use such a word, as I don't believe in psychic powers. But that wouldn't necessarily mean that I also reject every other belief in the supernatural (and neither does it mean that I believe in the equally un-provable idea that G-d doesn't exist).

"Supernatural" is not a useful word anyway, because the god I believe in is actually extra-natural, not super-natural, and interacts with the world solely in ways that appear to us in ways that science can understand and explain.

Thats... an interesting distinction to make. What's the different between supernatural and extranatural? Wouldn't both mean that whatever is being described is beyond the purview of naturalistic explanations?

The bold is what I meant not the italics.  What the italics should say is that atheism can be a religion (meaning not athetism as a whole but different branches of religion can be athestic, which would be a better way to put it).  No need to be such a lepton.

First, I was going by Webster's dictionary of the definition of religion, so go please some one else.  Also your statement here isn't valid. The same could be said of Hindiusm.  For Hinduism, I'm sure you'll have over a half a million different responses as well.  This is fallacy of division. 

Creed isn't nessecary as well as dogma as you can see by the defition of Webster's:

Webster's defines a religion as this Religion is according to websters dictionary: 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 observance2: a personal set or institutionalized system of attitudes, beliefs, and practices3archaic : scrupulous conformity : conscientiousness4: a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

A religion can BE A PERSONAL SET OR instituationalized system of ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND PRACTICES.  If you have a problem with the deifinition take it up with Webster instead of picking up your ass into nine.  Onto backing up your ass into nine.  Communism my be an ideology yet it can also be an atheistic ideology.  Just like Islam can be a Theocracy.  Things can be in more than one category for example: the term Jew can classify a person and a religion.  A Jew does not have to be religious in order for them to be classified as being Jewish (although the Israelie government will agrue this point)

The whole point of the current discourse is that point that you made.  People will continually point out 'wars are always started due to religion' or 'most wars are started due to religion (or those religious zealouts)'.  Your point intended here was EXACTLY what was being discussed that its all those religious fanactics and if we didn't have those religious fanactics the world would be such a more halcyon place.

As if the non-religious extremists of the world don't "want to destroy any one that's not like them" its obviously isolated to those religious fanatics.

Bulllllshiiiit. You might have said one thing in the first line, but you ended up saying quite another for the entire rest of the paragraph.

Lepton? My first thought is to take it in context and be insulted somehow, but I can't for the world of me figure out what you were trying to call me. The dictionary definition appears to say many things about leptons, but none that could be applied to a person.

My statement about atheism often being a "religion of one" is perfectly fucking valid.

Now, there's a joke out there that I rather like that illustrates my point pretty nicely. You know how you call a group of sheep a flock, and a group of crows a murder, etc? You know what you'd call a group of atheists?

An argument.

There are no sets of agreed upon principles or traditions among atheists, no system of attitudes or beliefs, and CERTAINLY no institutions of ANY sort. Organizing atheiststo do anything, let alone form a coherent religion, is an exercise in futility.

This is MUCH different than applying that same argument to hinduism. Yeah, there are a bazillion and one variations, but they're all ultimately variations on the same belief system, and are all organized institutions, with predefined sets of attitudes, beliefs, and practises that all members adhere to. Its a large number of very tiny religions, but it's a hell of a stretch to say the unique beliefs of a single person constitutes a "religion".

Ultimately, it comes to that same thing I told KFC. You're playing at a word game, and defining the term "religion" far more broadly than it's used in common discourse and in doing so devalue the word until it doesn't mean anything. Seriously, "a personal set of attitudes, beliefs, and practises"? When you define "religion" like that it ceases to have meaning, since EVERYONE then has their own religion. The distinction then becomes completely useless.

Yeah, it's in Webster, but Webster covers all the bases, and that isn't the usage that the word "religion" usually recieves in regular discourse, meaning that when applied to atheistic philosophies it's carrying rhetorical baggage that no longer applies with such a broad definition.

Now am I saying that athiesm is mutually exclusive with religion? Fuck no, that's what I was just giving Alderic a hard time about.

Now, while I'm being a nitpicky, pedantic, ranting twit, communism is ALWAYS an atheistic ideology (at least if it's based of Marx's teachings), and Islam cannot "be a Theocracy", a theocracy is a system of government that puts clergy in charge, not a religion. You can have Islamic theocracies, but Islam itself is not the theocracy, it's merely the basis for it. Also, as I understand it, Jews are a special case in that the same word refers to both ancestry and religion (please correct me if I'm wrong, Leauki).