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ORIGINAL: krosiema

Atheism is the belief that "no god exists".

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ORIGINAL: SL4V3M4YB3

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ORIGINAL: tazzygirl
you said in the previous post...

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I'll simply maintain people should avoid organised thought and doing things in it's name when there has been no realistic scrutiny of it.

Could not the same be said about atheism?

Yes exactly, I'm no great supporter of atheism. People should be a bit more imaginative about what is possible.

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So many i have spoken too honestly say they have no idea about religion.. just that they believe there is no god.. so they stop there. If they have no idea, have they really scrutinized religion?

I'd say most people are the other way around in that they look at the answers religion has offered and they have decided there is no god based on those now defunct religious truths. I don't need to disprove religion because it contradicts itself. I believe that if a god is capable of creating the universe it would easily be able to give a message to human beings so clear and concise that it can't be misinterpreted. If a god wants humans to live a certain way the instruction book to how they live is key to them being able to do this. God just does not care to present a clear message it seems so living as he says in a murky text is not my priority.

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ORIGINAL: Arpig
Wrong, capitalizing it only implies a monotheistic deity, not the cgristian one...his name is Yahweh (or latinized into Jehovah). And Hindus, despite their apparent polytheism actually have a very strong and ancient monotheistic belief inherent in their scriptures, so they aren't included simply by capitalising the word. Your cultural bias is showing.

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ORIGINAL: Arpig
No. It is not a religion by your definition. There is no requirement of faith in an atheist view. One simply accepts what one can confirm, one accepts reality as perceivable without the addition of any non-observable details that require faith.

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ORIGINAL: GotSteel

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ORIGINAL: Arpig
Wrong, capitalizing it only implies a monotheistic deity, not the cgristian one...his name is Yahweh (or latinized into Jehovah). And Hindus, despite their apparent polytheism actually have a very strong and ancient monotheistic belief inherent in their scriptures, so they aren't included simply by capitalising the word. Your cultural bias is showing.

The capitalizing of god comes from  translations of the bible where Yahweh and Elohim are translated as God and Lord. So the name of the deity may be Yahweh, YHWH or some such thing (which is still more of a description than a proper name) but God is used as a proper name in versions of the bible such as the KJV. I'm also under the impression that Hinduism is pantheistic with polytheistic elements not monotheistic.

However, the point I really wanted to make is that the wording is important. The wording that you used is effectively the same as one that certain Christian groups have been using to try and misrepresent atheism into being a religion and the reason I'm being picky with you on the wording. The "view is that there isn't a deity" can arguably be paraphrased to the belief that there isn't a deity, that definition excludes the segment of the atheist community sometimes referred to as weak atheism. A position that runs along these lines:

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ORIGINAL: Arpig
No. It is not a religion by your definition. There is no requirement of faith in an atheist view. One simply accepts what one can confirm, one accepts reality as perceivable without the addition of any non-observable details that require faith.

I decided to check wiki's definition and found it to be a good one: Atheism can be either the rejection of theism,[1] or the position that deities do not exist.[2] In the broadest sense, it is the absence of belief in the existence of deities.

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In any debate, the burden of proof is properly on the person making a claim, of course. You say something is true, so you are the one who must demonstrate its truth. A typical atheist makes no claim about God, and he has no obligation to prove the non-existence of a god

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ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

Excellent posts, Kirata,

Atheism is a specific belief system.

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ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY
However, when atheists act and believe that they have the one-true-way of beliefs, it makes no operational difference.

Firm

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ORIGINAL: DarkSteven

I always thought a Buddhist was one who considered Buddha to be a god?

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ORIGINAL: ThatDamnedPanda

The thing that always puzzles me is - why are so many religious people absolutely adamant that atheism is a religion?

Why do you guys insist that it's a religion? Why is this so important to you?

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ORIGINAL: luckydawg

Maybe stuff like tearing down 75 year old War Memorials put up by the VFW, is an example of "taking back" the country for atheism.

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ORIGINAL: luckydawg

No, since the religous argument is not based on logic, it is not attackable by it.

The characteristics of the "magical being" simply are, and are not subject to "logic". (note my concept of "God" doesn't exactly fit Magical being, but thats close enough to be functional in this discussion). The same sort of thing as the Wave particle duality of a photon. It makes no logical sense, but that's what the data shows.

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ORIGINAL: serviceforyou

I would say yes, atheism is a religion.

It is just as difficult to prove there is no god as it is to prove that there is one. A religion is a set of beliefs based upon faith. Faith is a belief in something that can not be proven. So atheism, a belief that there is no god, is a belief based on something that can not be proven. It follows then that atheism is a faith-based set of beliefs. That satisfies my definition of atheism.

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ORIGINAL: GotSteel

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ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY

Excellent posts, Kirata,

Atheism is a specific belief system.

No, the term atheism is a catch all that effectively includes a number of different belief systems, different philisophical views and the absence of a position.

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ORIGINAL: GotSteel

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ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY
However, when atheists act and believe that they have the one-true-way of beliefs, it makes no operational difference.

Firm

I've yet to meet an atheist who thinks he knows the one true way though they probably exist, you're probably referring to the atheists who are confident that you're wrong.

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ORIGINAL: luckydawg
The logic that something came from nothing, for no reason?

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ORIGINAL: luckydawg

Yes, Got Steel, Data. Testing shows that photons exhibit characteristics of both Waves and Particles. Logically it makes no sense, but thats what we see. They call it a duality and move on. Logically it makes no sense.