You’re wrong. Atheism is a subset of aZeusism, however.
Anyhow, thanks to Shodan and kanicbird for driving home the OP’s point. This reflexive “atheists are bad, Stalin, Pol Pot, yadda yadda yadda” stuff is a substitute for thought. Even if atheism were a motivating factor for atrocities (which has only been asserted, not demonstrated) doesn’t make it a religion. Racism motivated the KKK to commit attrocities, but racism is not a religion. That the KKK considered themselves to be good Christians doesn’t mean Christianity is to blame for their crimes either.
I don’t see how denouncing atrocities of an opposing belief makes one a fundamentalist. If an atheist were to say that he know no gods existed (not just the Christian one - any god) then I think you might fairly call him a a fundamental or evangelical atheist. I don’t know of any such people here. I have run into maybe one or two such among hundreds of atheists in other venues. Most atheists thought they were nuts, by the way. Believing there are no gods is different from claiming knowledge of such.
Arguing for atheism on a message board is different from being evangelical. I would not call the many moderate Christians who defend Christianity here evangelical, at least not in their SDMB life.
It’s true that some atheists go overboard, but some theists make empty arguments.
Voyager’s Second Law - a theist bringing up Stalin or Pol Pot in an argument about atheism can be considered to have lost.
It’s possible for you to define the word “religion” in such a way that atheism is a religion. But it’s a pretty silly definition. In particular, look at all the things that I listed in the OP, culminating with how important religion is in that person’s life. If atheism is a religion, then believing in ghosts might as well be a religion, and NOT believing ghosts might as well be ANOTHER religion.
It’s perfectly relevant. For the most part, problems that I see with Christianity (and, for that matter, the good things that come from it) do not come because belief-in-Jesus-as-savior leads to X, Y, and Z, but because the culture and community of Christianity as practiced in American today lead to X, Y and Z. And that culture and community is what just about any real religion will have, which atheism does NOT have.
I wish I’d gotten back to this thread sooner (although I guess that’s what happens when posting OPs at 3:30 a.m.), because this was not at ALL what I was talking about. This is a basically silly side argument which proves nothing. Sure, lots of the evil people in the middle ages were Christian. That’s because most people in the middle ages (at least in the Western world) were Christian. And sure the evil people in the 20th century killed many more people, based simply on body count. That’s because they had more people to kill and better technology to kill them with. Whatever.
I was far more talking about, for instance, this thread about an anti-ID professor being beaten. That’s the kind of thing that is very unlikely to ever happen due to atheism or agnosticism, because atheists and agnostics are very rarely heavily invested enough in their belief system (or lack thereof) to be swayed to violence in its name. When a religious person’s beliefs are attacked, it’s a much more personal attack than when an atheist’s beliefs are attacked. To make an analogy, someone who is a fanatical Oakland Raiders fan might beat someone up in an argument about football. Someone who absolutely positively 100% does not care about the Oakland Raiders one whit is very unlikely to be motivated to violence in a similar situation.
Again, my point is not necessarily that one is better or worse than the other, just that there is a significant quantitative difference between the two.
Mony Python reference. If she weighs the same as a duck, she’s made of wood and therefore she’s a witch. tdn was just making a joke about a seeming non-sequitur.
I hate to sound dismissive, but this is just silly. The atheist of equivalent of “in God we trust” on coins is not REMOVING “in God we trust”, rather, it’s trying to add something like “there is no God”. Can you even IMAGINE a remotely serious attempt to do that?
And in which of those shows is someone charismatically talking about atheism, trying to actively spread the atheist message, wishing ill will on non-atheists, and blaming non-atheists for America’s misfortunes?
Sure, a show like 24 doesn’t mention God. But it also doesn’t DENY God. It just doesn’t address the topic at all.
My point is that to define atheism as a religion because it is* “a set of beliefs about God, based on an unproveable assertion”* then there are a multitide of things that would qualify as religion, all of which share absolutely nothing at all the characteristics commonly ascribed to religion. Let me ask you again
If you claim that Jupiter does not exist, then by your own words you are a fundamentalist, dogmatic atheist, for you are making a positive assertion about the non existence of a god.
Churches are tax exempt. Ministers can perform marriages. Traffic is halted to allow funerals to proceed.
It’s a hypotghetical, Shodan. I am merely wondering how seriously you take your definition of religion. Do you seriously believe that if I deny Zeus I am practicing a religion in the same way that you practice religion, or an Orthodox Jew does, or Southern Baptist? Are these manifestations of religion equivalent in your eyes?
Except that it doesn’t make any sense as a phrase for several reasons:
(1) Those posters aren’t really “more extreme” atheists than other atheists. They don’t believe in God any less (at least, not necessarily, although they may be hard atheists compared to soft atheists). Rather, they’re just less polite and accepting than other atheists. If there was a tenet of the Faith of Atheism that said “you should be rude to Christians”, and they were ruder than anyone else, then it might make sense to call them “extreme”, but as it is, they’re just jerks
(2) Calling them “extreme atheists” carries with it, to me, an implication of there being an extreme atheist movement of some sort, that they’re a part of, or something like that, particularly when the terminology is being used as something compared to or opposed to fundamentalist Christians. Fundamentalist Christians are part of several organized movements. “Extreme atheists”, whatever they are, are not.
It might be better to call some people anti-religionists or even “anti-theists” if they go beyond a simple lack of theistic belief and express open hostility towards religion or theistic belief. I don’t know if it’s quite right to call the more atheist since one can be a very strong atheist yet bear no antipathy towards theists. That antipathy is something which should be distinguished from mere atheism.
Sorry. That won’t wash. Each of them have interrupted threads discussing religious issues or threads where some aspect of religion, however remote, is mentioned, for the purpose of pointing out the evil and futility of belief. They are, in my view, no different than the (now rare in these parts) extreme Christian Fundamentalist who interrupts discussions of biology or cosmology or politics to claim that science is a lie (or is being taught by liars or fools with an atheistic agenda) or that Christianity is being persecuted in the U.S.
While there may be no level of “atheistic belief” that is more extreme than any other, (no “extreme atheism” in other words), a person whose actions are extreme who happens to be an atheist is legitimately identified as an “extreme atheist.”
OK, the existence of Jupiter has not been proven. Is that what you are after?
Well, non-believers in Zeus can perform marriages, too, and there is no requirement that a funeral be religious before they halt traffic. So Zeus-atheism is already afforded currency before the law.
I have no idea if you could get the Church of the Empty Thunderbolt tax-exempt status. I believe other secular groups have been granted that status.
I didn’t say anything about practicing it or manifestations. I said that atheists are like believers in that they share a common belief about God. Atheists say there is no God: theists say there is. A lot of theists don’t go to church, but I wouldn’t say that therefore theism isn’t a religion.
I know some people who are deeply disdainful of religion who DO believe in God. The atheists I know are generally more neutral on the subject. Der Trihs in particular, and Scott Plaid in his first couple of months on this board, are exceptions.
This thread just reinforced my viewpoint that if you are on one side of an issue you can very easially see someone on the other side, but when when you have some issus coming from your side it is very hard for you to detect it’s bias and you see it as ‘objective’.
Shodan, I think what Contrapuntal is after (and certainly what I am after) is a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ or ‘I don’t know’ answer to this question:
“Shodan, do you believe in Jupiter, Roman God of light and sky?”
Saying his existence has not been proven doesn’t tell us if you personally believe in him. After all, you’re a Christian but you’d probably be the first to admit that the existence of the Christian God has not been proven. If you do not personally believe in Jupiter, do you think that your lack of belief constitutes a religion. The word religion, in this context, is defined as “A set of beliefs about God, based on an unproveable assertion”.
If you feel your lack of belief in Jupiter is not a religion, why do you think that a lack of belief in the Christian God is a religion?
But if NO ONE believed in God, atheism wouldn’t exist. We don’t have a special word for “people who don’t believe in lobsters that live on the Moon” because no one does. It’s the same with “people who don’t believe in God”.
It’s a mighty odd religion that ceases to exist the moment it’s universally accepted … .