Why atheism is not a religion.

[TÐöer]

Here are some ironies that I can think of.

- We pray to the nonexistent god
- We provide legitimate professions that earns a living from wellfare.
- We make sacrifices to the nonexistent god to be first in line into heaven.
- We give away money to shed sin.
- We convert followers with promise of salvation and end to life's problems.
- We burn non-believers on stakes because they offend our nonexistent god.
- To disagree with us is to be insensitive.
- We devout our lives waiting for the nonexistent god to manifest, rather than waste our time on mistakes he made.
- We feel the need to make sure our nonexistent god's commands are in the law.

[Kojiro]

The best most theists can do to argue atheism is religion is to claim 'it's what you believe'. This sort of childish mentalitiy presupposes a sort of 'Religion' slot that has to be filled, and whatever you put there = religion.

Atheism is the default. No one intrinsically believes in gods until someone tells them about them. No further proof of this is required than the fact that no ancient Arab ever discovered Nirvana, no native American ever felt the power of the Holy Spirit as surely as no Bible belt American today is likely to decide Thor is real. People only ever seem to discover the religion of the people around them. Pretty restricted for universal truth.

[The Irreverent Mr Black]

The best most theists can do to argue atheism is religion is to claim 'it's what you believe'. This sort of childish mentalitiy presupposes a sort of 'Religion' slot that has to be filled, and whatever you put there = religion.
I knew my little bit of Latin would come in handy some day! The very origin of the word lets us off that particular nasty, little, god-baited hook.

Plagiarsim from OpenSite.org (http://open-site.org/Society/Philosophy/Religion) follows:
Definitions of Religion and Philosophy

The derivation of the word religion has been a matter of dispute from ancient times. Not even today is it a closed question. Cicero, in his 'De natura deorum', II, xxviii, derives religion from relegere (to treat carefully):

Those who carefully took in hand all things pertaining to the gods were called religiosi, from relegere.(Cicero)

Another far more likely derivation, one that suits the idea of religion in its simple beginning, is that given by Lactantius, in his 'Divine Institutes', IV, xxviii. He derives religion from religare (to bind):

We are tied to God and bound to Him [religati] by the bond of piety, and it is from this, and not, as Cicero holds, from careful consideration [relegendo], that religion has received its name. (Lactantius)

The objection that religio could not be derived from religare, a verb of the first conjugation, is not of great weight, when we call to mind that opinio omes from opinari, and rebellio from rebellare. St. Augustine, in his 'City of God', X, iii, derives religio from religere in the sense of recovering:

having lost God through neglect [negligentes], we recover Him [religentes] and are drawn to Him. (St Augustine)

This explanation, implying the notion of the Redemption, is not suited to the primary idea of religion. St. Augustine himself was not satisfied with it, for in his 'Retractions', I, xiii, he abandoned it in favour of the derivation given by Lactantius. He employs the latter meaning in his treatise 'On the True Religion', where he says:

'Religion binds us [religat] to the one Almighty God.' (St Augustine)

St. Thomas, in his 'Summa', II-II, Q. lxxxi, a. 1, gives all three derivations without pronouncing in favour of any. The correct one seems to be that offered by Lactantius. Religion in its simplest form implies the notion of being bound to God; the same notion is uppermost in the word religion in its most specific sense, as applied to the life of poverty, chastity, and obedience to which individuals voluntarily bind themselves by vows more or less solemn. Hence those who are thus bound are known as religious.

According to its etymology, the word 'philosophy' (philosophia, from philein, to love, and sophia, wisdom) means 'the love of wisdom'. In its proper acceptation, philosophy does not mean the aggregate of the human sciences, but 'the general science of things in the universe by their ultimate determinations and reasons'; or again, 'the intimate knowledge of the causes and reasons of things', the profound knowledge of the universal order.
Plato defined philosophy as the acquisition of knowledge (Plato, Euthydemus, 288 d) and further defines the philosopher as one who apprehends the essence or reality of things in opposition to the man who dwells in appearances and the shows of sense.
The philosophers are those who are able to grasp the eternal and immutable; they are those who set their affections on that which in each case really exists. (Plato, Republic 480)
All men consider philosophy as concerned with first causes and principles. (Aristotle, Metaphysics, I, i).
These notions were perpetuated in the post-Aristotelean schools (Stoicism, Epicureanism, neo-Platonism), with the Stoics and Epicureans accentuating the moral bearing of philosophy and the neo-Platonists its mystical bearing. The Fathers of the Church and the first philosophers of the Middle Ages seem not to have had a very clear idea of philosophy, but its conception emerges once more in all its purity among the Arabic philosophers at the end of the twelfth century and the masters of Scholasticism in the thirteenth. St. Thomas, adopting the Aristotelean idea, writes:
'Wisdom [i.e. philosophy] is the science which considers first and universal causes; wisdom considers the first causes of all causes.' (St. Thomas, In Metaph., I, lect. ii).


Having nothing supernatural to respect or bind ourselves to, we are obviously philosophers, if anything.

I will steadfastly refuse to accept the "you must serve something" belief, which religionists push under a number of guises.

[TÐöer]

Impressive black. How did you become well verse in Latin?

[The Irreverent Mr Black]

Impressive black. How did you become well verse in Latin?
I have a natural gift for languages, it seems. A very nice Hungarian man down the road had me learning German and chess when I was three.

I did about 1.5 years of Latin and German in high school, and only discontinued because I moved to a school that did not offer these courses.

My wife's people are teachers on both sides, and we often use bits of other languages when speaking to each other.

I had a Dutch girlfriend whose parents didn't like me. When they spoke to each other about me in Dutch and I told them what they had just said, and that it wasn't true (Dutch is quite close to German in many ways), then they REALLY got nasty.

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Here are some ironies that I can think of.

- We pray to the nonexistent god
- We provide legitimate professions that earns a living from wellfare.
- We make sacrifices to the nonexistent god to be first in line into heaven.
- We give away money to shed sin.
- We convert followers with promise of salvation and end to life's problems.
- We burn non-believers on stakes because they offend our nonexistent god.
- To disagree with us is to be insensitive.
- We devout our lives waiting for the nonexistent god to manifest, rather than waste our time on mistakes he made.
- We feel the need to make sure our nonexistent god's commands are in the law.

we pray?
Athiesm should be acknowledged but not doctrined as a religious organisation.

[TÐöer]

Sorry, I was being sarcastic, all the above are not what we do, thus how can atheism be associated with religion?

Xtians insist that we are a religion.

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sorry thedoer. went right over my head :-)

[TÐöer]

That's alright. :D

I was trying to be funny.