Only a religious person could consider an atheist to be religious. While an atheist may indeed hold some religious beliefs (religion, religare, to bind (oneself to a creed)), the term itself comes from religious people. We just don't have a better label. Look at what the word actually means. a, without. theism, a belief in specific gods. Or literally, without gods. What an individual atheist believes regarding a great many things is not in any way associated with the label atheist. It tells you what we DON'T believe, not what we do. A christian, by that label, likely believes that Yeheshua Ben Jacob was a real person, conceived by a spirit creature to be an Avatar of Yahweh, that said person made a huge ruckus from about 1 to 33 AD, and was crucified by Jews, rather than Romans. My knowledge of Islam is far less than my knowledge of Christianity, but I can posit from a person identifying themselves as a Muslim that they believe that Mohammed was Allah's last prophet, and that the Q'uran is an inspired book (in the spiritual sense).
Since I self identify as an atheist, all you really know of me from that, prior to interaction, is that I believe in three less gods than you.
Since you self identify as an atheist, I know which god you believe in. You believe in yourself as god, and, perhaps you believe in others who self identify in the same way as you do to be gods as well.
How does that work? Like this. Since there isn't enough information around to say for a fact that God doesn't exist, and since there is a lot of information around that suggests that God DOES exist, and since science actually proves in some ways that God DOES exist, by being a self proclaimed atheist, you are setting yourself up as god by attempting to hide the facts of the probable existence of God from yourself.
This doesn't only make you wrong, but it makes you appear to be a hypocrite, since you are setting yourself up as the thing that you "want" to NOT exist.
If someone said, I believe in the God of the Bible, and then he went on his way, neither praying to God, nor joining a church, nor doing anything else that a believer in the God of the Bible would do, would he be a religious person? Perhaps, slightly, if he occasionally repeated that he believed in the God of the Bible. But he certainly would be a religious person if he prayed to God. And the more he studied the Bible, and the more he participated in a Christian church, the greater he would be into the religion of the God of the Bible.
If someone said, I don't believe God exists, and then he went on his way, never thinking about or participating in the atheism the idea again, would he be a religious person? Perhaps, slightly, if he occasionally repeated the point that he was an atheist. But he certainly would be a religious person if he built up all kinds of points about how his atheism kept him from being a religious person. Those points would be his religious doctrine, even though his religion would be built around a form of self inflicted ignorance, hypocrisy, and at times, downright lies because he knew better.
The stronger an atheist becomes in attempting to prove that his atheism isn't a religion, the greater his religion of non religion is becoming.
EDIT: If you don't respond at all to the things I have posted here, will it be because you are trying to become less religious by starting to ignore your atheism religion, thereby making it less of a religion for you?
For this to be true, you would have to know a number of things about me that you actually should have gleaned by now.
So, I'll have a brief stab at it.
From http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/atheist?s=t:
One, I never said that I believe there is no god, I said I don't believe in any particular god.
Your quote from way up top is in part:Since I self identify as an atheist...
If you had not expressed your self-identification, who would know? But you seem to contradict yourself.Your set calls my position "weak" atheism, while more secular people tend to refer to it as "negative" atheism.
I am not sure what a "set" is. All atheism is weak atheism. The more adamant an atheist becomes, the weaker his atheism becomes. But his religion regarding atheism becomes stronger.Since you self identified as an atheist (one who believes there is no God, from the definition above), and then you stated, above, "... I never said that I believe there is no god," perhaps your weakness is NOT atheism or religious weakness. Perhaps it is a weakness of mind.
Now, the so called "strong" or "positive" atheists, yes, I believe you could classify that as a religion, as they strongly believe that there is not, was not, and cannot be a god.
Yes, I can go along with that. Strong atheism is strong hypocrisy, since a strong atheist has to work much harder to convince himself that he believes in atheism. The harder he has to work at it, the more of a religion it becomes. Yet his belief in atheism falls apart more as well.Despite the labels, theirs is the weaker position as opposed to mine, as mine is simply based on what can be proven, whereas they are doing exactly what theists are doing: Stating the unprovable as a categoric truth.
To my knowledge, I've never made that error, and if I have, it was poor wording as it's certainly not my position.
Here I must disagree. Factual science, not theoretical science, has proven that God exists, although such isn't often stated. But the attributes of God are entirely left to the religions.To my knowledge, I've never made that error, and if I have, it was poor wording as it's certainly not my position.
Proof for God lies in the combining of 3 things:
1. Action and reaction (cause and effect), Newton's 3rd Law;
2. The fact of a complex universe, including all things therein;
3. Standard, simple entropy, which doesn't include all the latest theoretical stuff about entropy.
Two. That I "want" there to be no god. This is one of the biggest and most used strawmen in Theistic Apologetics. In my experience, it is true perhaps one time out of a million, and I'm being generous. I think that most of us would LIKE to believe that there's some all-powerful being looking after us. It would be very nice.
In the face of atheism being proven wrong, and basic theism being proven correct, why would an atheist NOT be a person who "wanted" no God to exist? If he wanted God to exist, all he has to do is accept the fact.It seems that your case is different. You don't seem to know if you are an atheist or not. Perhaps it has to do with the definitions of "atheism" and other words.
In my own case, I spent well over a decade trying very hard to prove Christianity, as losing one's lifelong faith is painful. Unfortunately, and you too will experience this if you can get past your will against thought, the deeper down that particular rabbit hole you go, the more you find the untruths.
This might be where your problem lies. Nobody can prove Christianity. Some of the aspects of Christianity might be provable. Some of the locations where Jesus lived and walked might be found archaeologically. But proving Christianity is something else.God is the only one Who can prove Christianity to you. You can't prove Christianity to yourself or to anyone else. The way that God proves Christianity to you is through your reading of the Bible, or hearing it read. That's it. There is no other way.
You might be able to prove points in the Bible. You might be able to see areas where the Bible makes a whole lot of sense even though some of the points haven't been proven. But it is only the Spirit of God Who proves the Bible to your heart.
I've never said that I can prove or disprove the God Concept itself. Disproving Christianity, and pretty much any other formal relgion, that is frankly a High School philosophy project. It's not even difficult. One cannot, of course, overcome willful cognitive dissonance, but it must make you uncomfortable, no?
As long as you think Bible religion can be easily disproven, you will probably have a difficult time accepting Christianity.Three. Yes, I'm god. When I close my eyes, I am King of All I survey. Seriously, dude? You actually expect anyone to buy that tripe? It's not even a particularly clever ad-hominem.
Jesus said that we are gods, if the Word of God comes to us. So who am I to believe that you are not a god, especially in the light of the residual of all that Christian training you received? But, remember one thing about this. The place in the Old Testament that Jesus took His quote from, goes on to say words to the effect of, "... but you will all die like the children of men."
