Why do NeoAtheists deny the practice of atheism is a religion?<<MOD WARNING>>

A Secular Funeral
Organized religion is losing its grip over society, but religious rituals are much harder to replace.


The European


Game over. We won’t be haunting heaven, limbo, or hell. We won’t be prey to little devils with pitchforks; nor will we sit at God’s right hand.

There is, then, something peculiarly repulsive about a sermon about the afterlife preached over an atheist’s body, though in the past that was the norm for non-believers.

Often improvised within a simple structure, drawing on favorite music, anecdotes and poetry, they celebrate the essence of a life. They offer consolation to the bereaved who know that they are doing what the dead person would have wanted.

Christian burials are about resurrection, salvation, and the presumed continuing conscious existence of the dead person. They are filled with consoling yet misguided hope expressed in prayers for a soul as it departs on a one-way journey.

These lines are at the heart of a ritual.

https://www.theeuropean-magazine.com/nigel-warburton--2/6796-atheist-rituals

 

There is no push, and nothing to gain but deeper understanding that transcends and goes beyond the landlocked materialist picture.

 

I really need an explanation why G/godless atheists reject the religion label when G/godless Buddists, G/godless Jainists, and G/godless Quakers etc have no problem with it? What makes G/godless atheists special that they seem to feel they should be excluded?

 

You should really ask yourself why all of these other godless people identify their religion as being their religion and not godlessness/atheism as their religion. You are are starting with flawed assumptions. Godless Buddhists don't consider godlessness/atheism their religion. They consider Buddhism their religion. You should be able to easily think of several reasons why that would be the case. Apply those reasons to "godless atheists" and you'll easily see why they aren't a religion.

 

Its fundamental, they recognize the fact that they have their bent of philosophy integrated with their 'ism', while atheists on the other hand seem to completely ignore the fact in pretense they have no philosophy or dogma attached to their version of G/godless'ism'.

 

Why don't any of the other atheists you mention, like godless Buddhists, identify atheism as their religion instead of Buddhism?

 

um because they are godless Buddhists with godless Buddhist philosophy, not godless atheists with godless atheist philosophy.

 

Godless Buddhists are atheists. So why do they identify their philosophy as Buddhist instead of identifying their philosophy as "atheism." This has a pretty obvious answer: atheism isn't a philosophy. It isn't an ideology. It is a position on one topic. There are are atheistic ideologieS (plural). There is no overarching atheistic ideology.

Take it from a godless Buddhist: your argument makes no sense.

 

This is a very good point, I am an Atheist with great appreciation of Buddhist teachings and in fact use much of it in place of what Christians get from the Bible(s). I simply do not accept ANY of the man made Godheads as real of worthy of using as a guidepost.

 

This point made on the first page (which koko ignored) should be revisited now that the thread has moved in that direction. "Theism" isn't a religion unto itself, but a banner under which many religions fall. And what of a person who believes that a god or gods exist, but whose beliefs are no further defined than that? Do we call that vague belief alone a "religion"?

The same is true of atheism. From godless Buddhists, to those whose vague disbelief doesn't qualify as a religion in most people's eyes, atheism is a banner containing many religions and also the irreligious.

 

You don't see the possibility of anything "supernatural" about our existence?

 

Try this one more time. Do "neo" atheists merely not believe in the modern gods and the atheists not believe in the old gods?


Serious question. How do you differentiate between the two? In your own words, for once, no time to look for someone else to quote.

 

Still can't explain yourself without the quote of someone else? That makes you a believer in those who agree with you, a theist.

 

No, you are in denial of everything told to you. You just don't want to believe it so you claim it is false or a miss-statement.

That show the intellectual dishonesty that you possess.

 

Would that not be a supposition that we already know everything? Flight used to be considered supernatural as did many of the modern medical procedures.

It is only considered supernatural until it is proven possible for man to produce it the action, then it is no longer supernatural.

 

In your opinion only, as with all your other claims.

 

Nonsense. We don't have to prove that any fictional creature doesn't exist. You want to pretend that is your problem. Till then we won't believe in god or the easter bunny or ghosts or the spaghetti monster or any other inventions of the imagination of man.

 

It is an obvious sign of insecurity that the god believers have to keep posting to try to shore up their own belief structures. If they really were secure in their beliefs they wouldn't need to keep attacking those that don't share their fantasies.

 

You don't have to disprove deity.

Because you don't believe in God, that is the essence of faith.

 

Agree totally. Faith is believing in something for which there is no evidence. That is certainly everyone's right as a human being. But it is not their right to expect others to share their faith.

 

Some weird definition of "faith" you have there. But okay, let's accept a common definition that "faith" is simply to believe something just to move the conversation forward.

I have faith that I have no reason to believe in God, and so I don't.

What next?

 

Why would I assume the possible of the impossible when the possible is possible.

 

Well, thanks for the like. I will take all the likes I can get. I don't actually see the evidence or merit for the idea that makes it a religion, it what the believer's view of the evidence or merit is. If the believers view their belief as faith or are more concerned with believing than objectively evaluating the evidence, then it is a religion. If they are honestly looking at the evidence, but are simply wrong, then its just a wrong intellectual idea.

 

Hmm...I disagree in the minute details of those terms.

 

Chance is VERY unlikely.