Uzique wrote:
please explain to me how atheism is a 'religion'. please formally define 'religion' in your terms first, though, to avoid any confusion.
John touched upon it in reply #99, but I'll proceed as well.
As far as a "definition" of the word, most of the dictionary definitions I found didn't really encompass all that I think the word implies, but this one was the closest: a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices. --- It's quite poor that they use the word "religious" in defining "religion", but if you cut out that word, it still seems to work nicely. The very nature of atheism simply implies that the person does not believe in a deity, and that leaves a hell of a lot of wiggle room (as evidenced by all the different theistic belief systems, there must be another side to that coin). A ban upon religion would only leave the areligious folk unaffected, but to become areligious seems nigh impossible to me (using the aforementioned definition, mind you) unless one by some extraordinary means avoids thought about the nature of life/the universe/creation, etc. Atheism or theism alone just makes up a small part of what the entity known as "religion"
is. One can spend his time arguing that there is or is not a god, but that's pointless and doesn't matter in the end, since you're living your life with what you believe anyway.
Organized religions are quite strange as well, since no two people believe the exact same thing to the exact extent, so there's really just a shit-ton of personalized religions and these people group together based on similar beliefs (i.e. existence of a deity). However, atheism really has no center (and why should it? there's no deity/founder from whom the system is based around/was created) and it's just like the others in that it is really an unorganized mass of humanity sharing a few beliefs.
Thought Train derailed right about here...