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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

I understand religion as an individual's faith-based way of looking at the world, the universe, and our place in all of it.  Not by having "God," in the mix, not the practice of worship, but based on faith.  By that standard, I think atheism must be considered a religion.  When you start looking at the hoops they jump through to maintain the position, it even becomes a pretty wacky religion.  It also seems to attract a lot of angry people.

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ORIGINAL: dcnovice

quote:

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?

I've been wondering that too.

quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

I understand religion as an individual's faith-based way of looking at the world, the universe, and our place in all of it.  Not by having "God," in the mix, not the practice of worship, but based on faith.  By that standard, I think atheism must be considered a religion.  When you start looking at the hoops they jump through to maintain the position, it even becomes a pretty wacky religion.  It also seems to attract a lot of angry people.

Thoughts?

quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

I understand religion as an individual's faith-based way of looking at the world, the universe, and our place in all of it.  Not by having "God," in the mix, not the practice of worship, but based on faith.  By that standard, I think atheism must be considered a religion.  When you start looking at the hoops they jump through to maintain the position, it even becomes a pretty wacky religion.  It also seems to attract a lot of angry people.

Thoughts?

quote:

ORIGINAL: MarcEsadrian


In my observations, atheism is a stage one goes through when divorcing from a theistic belief system, and for this reason it is often rife with feelings of revolt or irreverence; an exercising of the demons, so to speak. This is particularly so when one was raised in a religious system, where every sunrise and sunset was framed in chapter or verse. When one living under such conditions changes direction, it often comes with conflict, not only with others, but with some part of the self, too.

The eventual evolution of freeing oneself from religious dogma is neither believing nor disbelieving, but abandoning the folly of that game altogether. This is why I don't refer to myself as an atheist. Where I was originally raised Catholic and rejected the faith in my youth, I have grown since then far beyond the limited scope of the word "atheist", knowing that I will not be defined by what I don't believe in; I will instead be defined by far more relevant things.

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ORIGINAL: LanceHughes

The original post was:

quote:

ORIGINAL: TheHeretic

I understand religion as an individual's faith-based way of looking at the world, the universe, and our place in all of it.  Not by having "God," in the mix, not the practice of worship, but based on faith.  By that standard, I think atheism must be considered a religion.  When you start looking at the hoops they jump through to maintain the position, it even becomes a pretty wacky religion.  It also seems to attract a lot of angry people.

Thoughts?

You "understand religion as an individual's faith-based way of looking at the world..."  Then you re-state your premise as "[religion] is based on faith."
You then state your conclusion as "atheism must be considered a religion."

The middle (a technical term in this context) is missing, but can be derived.  To put  it in a tight, logical form, your argument is:  If faith, then religious.  If atheism, then faith.  Conclusion: If atheism, then religious.

Simply, the middle falls and so does the conclusion.  The strongest thing I can say about my faith/belief system (being an atheist) is that I have faith/belief that the sun will rise tomorrow.  Atheist have no gods.  See my post #124 (page 7) about having one less God than Christians.

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ORIGINAL: LanceHughes

Kirata: nope, we (miltant atheists) don't try to convert. We provide a warm, welcome to others who have the same life-style as we do.. (Once again the parallels to BDSM run deep, very, very deep.)

Do we "preach"? Nope. We provide study groups so that new-bies don't have to re-invent the wheel. Example: We provide counter-arguments for when they might be challenged with some of the same-old, same-old arguments FOR the existence of god. We can provide links to helpful, appropriate web-sites and dead-tree versions of early writings. (Once again the parallels to BDSM run deep, very, very deep.)

I like to believe that these are some of the ways that I am " vigorously active and aggressive about [my] Atheism."

LOVED the song title. As a matter of fact many (if not most) Christmas Carols have been re-lyric-sized (if I may.) That way, one can go to the Mall without being driven totally insane. Usually, the lyrics are in terms of the Winter Solitice and/or the cycle of life, looking forward to a new year and EASTER, er..... maybe the Spring equinox. Yes, that's it, renawal of life as evidenced by the coming of Spring, FAITH in the path of the planet around the Sun as evidenced by SCIENCE.