Strong atheism is a faith based worldview

Strong atheism is a faith based worldview

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1293-strong-atheism-is-a-faith-based-worldview

There are various definitions about Atheism: Negative atheists, also called weak atheists,  positive atheism, also called strong atheists, agnostics, Skeptics, and free-thinkers.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2782-atheism-how-to-define-it

So you are telling me atheism is not a religion ?

They have their churches:

The godless church and the atheists taking the US by storm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1t-WEk0DOk&t=5s

Their Bible:

The Atheist's Bible
https://pt.3lib.net/book/5254681/2d567a

Atheology treatises and philosophy:

Systematic atheology : atheism’s reasoning with theology
https://pt.3lib.net/book/3606116/df84e8

Evangelical atheists ( Those atheists that proselitize for atheism):

Evangelical Atheism and Its Discontents
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/evangelical-atheism-and-its-discontents/10098184

And even a pope:

The Atheist Pope
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1932/10/08/the-atheist-pope



In the following, we deal with strong atheists:
Positive atheism, also called strong atheism and hard atheism is the form of atheism that additionally asserts that no deities exist

What atheists must believe:( even if many don't, or are not aware of it, so don't accuse me of straw-manning your position ),  that is what it entails to stick to a worldview without a creator:

Faith that design observed in nature needs no designer
Faith that the natural world needs no creator.
Faith that magical nothing can create the universe or
Faith that the cosmos is eternal despite the impossibility
Faith that the physical laws need no lawgiver.
Faith that fine-tuning requires no fine-tuner
Faith that non-living matter can produce life
Faith that codes can emerge randomly
Faith that instructional information can emerge by luck.
Faith that machines can self-assemble
Faith that factories can self-assemble
Faith that evolution explains biodiversity
Faith that matter can produce consciousness
Faith that matter can produce morality
Faith that we can give ourself meaning to our lives
Faith that there is no afterlife
Faith that there is no evidence of gods existence

1. The universe popped into existence out of literally nothing and with no cause and for no reason. That's magic.
2. Our universe is the result of a multiverse, which exists without beginning. We cannot reach the present moment from eternity. That's magic
3. The fine-tuning of the parameters of the universe was done by a multiverse. That would require 10^1500 universes to get a life-permitting universe. That's magic.
4. The first self-replicating Cell was formed by random events. The odds to get a minimal set of 560 proteins, averaging 400 amino acids, but unguided events is 10^378000. That's magic.
5. The genetic code was formed by random-chance. That's magic.
6. The genetic information stored in the first living cell emerged naturally. That's magic.
7. The translation system from digital genetic information to the analog amino acid alphabet emerged randomly. That's magic.
8. The assembly of raw products, molecules, molecular machines, production lines, and self-replicating cell factories occurred gradually, randomly, over a long period of time. That's magic.  
9. The over 20 epigenetic codes and signaling languages required to produce biocomplexity and diversity emerged naturally. That's magic.  
10. Atoms, matter and ultimately, brains, producing minds, consciousness, self-awareness, thoughts, intelligence, sensations, and free will:  two essentially different properties. That's magic.
11. Atoms, matter, and ultimately, brains, producing moral awareness, ought to be's. That's magic.


While theists hear the claim that inferring God is a gaps argument in almost every debate, are atheists not themselves actually guilty of using it? 

We don't know:
- if the universe is eternal, there might be multiverses
- how the Big bang started, maybe virtual particles
- why the universe is finely tuned - maybe bubble universes
- how life started, but the Urey Miller experiment showed that amino acids can emerge in the lab, and what science not yet knows, one day it will find out - and it won't be a God
- how exactly evolution works to produce biodiversity, but its a theory, and there is consensus in science, therefore it must be true.
- how the brain can produce thoughts and conscience, but we don't know of a mind being able to exist outside the brain, therefore, monism must be true. 

A federal district court in Oregon has declared Secular Humanism a religion, paving the way for the non-theistic community to obtain the same legal rights as groups such as Christianity.
https://thinkprogress.org/atheists-score-major-win-in-federal-court-153aec1662a6/?fbclid=IwAR0kOiBhcZqhO270kj2Z8Y65x5mHO4D2fii8x2KPKZx7anSzRk7JWRpdxnM

Claim: Atheism is the disbelief and rejection of religious claims
Response: This is only half of the story.... Wiki states about atheist in its first line:

Atheism is, in the broadest sense, the absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is the rejection of belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Positive atheism, also called strong atheism and hard atheism, is the form of atheism that additionally asserts that no deities exist.

At the site: Arguments for atheism, they explain:
Atheism (or non-theism, which is broadly synonymous) is the lack of belief in the existence of God or gods or, more strongly, the belief that there is no such thing as God or gods.
http://www.argumentsforatheism.com/what.html

A rock is theoretically an atheist because it does not possess a belief in anything based on the mere fact that it is consciousness, and as such, cannot believe in a deity of any kind either. When an intelligent, rational, conscious atheists says: "I don't believe in God", therefore I am an atheist, that's a different thing altogether. It is indeed a positive claim, based on a prior rationalization, which rocks lack of. The atheist admitting a series of things: He admits that the natural world exists,  that other minds are real, that the human mind can form beliefs, and that our cognitive faculties are broadly reliable. By expressing his non-belief, he suddenly implicitly admitted a series of other claims. He claims indirectly that his reasoning is trustworthy, but has no foundation to back up his claim.   If he is not willing/able to explain why his mind is rational based on an evolutionary, unguided process, well, then, he might just stop to ventilate anything he believes, nobody needs to know it. If atheism makes no claims, then it has no meaning.  But if the atheist wishes to make a No-God hypothesis, then he has to back up why he thinks so. If atheists ask to sit on the table and make a case for naturalism, then the believer has the right to expect that the unbeliever provides positive reasons that demonstrate why naturalism is more compelling than the theistic worldview.

Disbelieving in God creates a vacuum. And that vacuum has to be filled with something else. Non-belief in the sense as a rock does not cause anything. But the same atheist which confesses non-belief is the same that joins Apologetics groups on Facebook and actively opposes believers and posts anti-christian comments, posts on Twitter and other social media platforms. For a non-belief, a non-religion, atheism seems to be a quite busy enterprise with its stars propagators, atheist gurus like Lawrence Krauss or Richard Dawkins, philosophers like Dennett, temples and churches, meetings and street-parades, so if it was just an enterprise to claim non-belief, why should and would anyone do all this? in London, there is for example ‘The Sunday Service’ where every week, hundreds of people join together to sing secular songs.

Truth is, the dis-belief that atheists confess has consequences, which are not difficult to be recognized, and the self-confessing disbelievers know it. And that is in most cases the true reason why atheists endorse weak atheism. It gives them the illusion of some desirable freedom. If Christianity is wrong, what do they believe to gain?  A member from the Pure Anarchist Philosophies group of Facebook: control over our own self-determination, free thought, ability to define our own moral values, and the joy of whatever we would do that’s forbidden by the church.

Another point to consider: Atheists form their own tribes, gather together on groups on Facebook, exclusively for them. They identify themselves on their social media profile with a A symbol, which stands for atheist. So, atheists that join debate groups certainly don't do it just to communicate what they don't believe, but have a defined worldview where God has no place, and try actively to endorse that view and find people to convince. They would do well not to hide behind their pseudo claim, and actually engage, and rather than claim of not knowing, and that there is not enough evidence to draw a sound conclusion, if they want to make a case, they should do their homework, scrutinize the implications of a worldview without God, and if they believe, there is enough evidence to back up multiverses, eternal universes, accretion of gas-forming stars, abiogenesis, common ancestry and macroevolution that explains biodiversity at large, provide good reasons that can be evaluated on a debate table with fairness and honesty. .


The World's Newest Major Religion: No Religion
The religiously unaffiliated, called "nones," are growing significantly. They’re the second largest religious group in North America and most of Europe. In the United States, nones make up almost a quarter of the population. In the past decade, U.S. nones have overtaken Catholics, mainline protestants, and all followers of non-Christian faiths.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160422-atheism-agnostic-secular-nones-rising-religion/?fbclid=IwAR0Mj32lr0eqjYIU7EVO4zsLAwchnNCsbi5rulXA9dcRrBwKcpQ2WYGCjTg

Atheists Are Sometimes More Religious Than Christians
A new study shows how poorly we understand the beliefs of people who identify as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular. the researchers found that American “nones”—those who identify as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular—are more religious than European nones. The notion that religiously unaffiliated people can be religious at all may seem contradictory, but if you disaffiliate from organized religion it does not necessarily mean you’ve sworn off belief in God, say, or prayer.  Consider the rise of “atheist churches,” which cater to Americans who have lost faith in supernatural deities but still crave community, enjoy singing with others, and want to think deeply about morality. It’s religion, minus all the God stuff. This is a phenomenon spreading across the country, from the Seattle Atheist Church to the North Texas Church of Freethought. The Oasis Network, which brings together non-believers to sing and learn every Sunday morning, has affiliates in nine U.S. cities.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/05/american-atheists-religious-european-christians/560936/


Although many atheists deny that atheism is a worldview, atheists commonly share a number of beliefs such as naturalism, belief in evolution and abiogenesis
https://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_is_a_religion

The "I don't knower"'s philosophical framework:

Start with the presupposition that there is no evidence nor proof of Gods existence
Argue that all arguments and inferences provided by theists are not sound, not based on scientific evidence, and as such, not worthy of being accepted.
Claim that  current human knowledge does not justify to make secure, highly probable conclusions of origins, based on logic and evidence
Argue that the current scientific research does not yet have all answers, but the bits we have, tend to point to the fact that no God is required.
Start with the convincement that moral truths based on Christian morality exist, even if in reality only based on social common sense
Remove the few bits of the Christian moral code you don't like
Ignore the fact that if you are the byproduct of an evolutionary accident. As Darwin said: How can convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, be of any value or at all trustworthy? Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? As such, try to convince others of your viewpoint, even if you have no foundation nor justification for that.
Argue that we can self-invent and create meaning for our existence.
Do poke holes in the believer's faith, find inconsistencies in the Bible, and ridicule that it was written by primitive sheepherders, claiming that snakes and donkeys talked, and virgins birth.
Deny that abiogenesis is impossible ( science is working on it), outline that evolution is a fact, based on wide consensus amongst professional biologists, and that the Dover trial demonstrated, that there is no irreducible complexity in biological systems, nor that the DNA stores literally codified information ( its just an analogy).
Do not grant the same skepticism to a worldview without God.  
Claim that all religions, with their gods, their demi-gods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the prejudiced fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties.
Claim that there is no evidence of Christ's historicity, and even less his resurrection
Claim that faith-based claims are always blind.
Second Dawkins, and portray the God of the Bible, in special the old testament, as jealous, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, capriciously malevolent bully.
Argue about how many wars have been conducted in the name of Christianity.


A Strong Atheist Faith Statement might be as follows:

As an organised movement, atheism is never non-committal in this way. It always goes with an alternative belief-system – typically, a set of ideas that serves to show the modern west is the high point of human development.

Faith that the supreme intelligence in the universe is me, embodied in my mind.
Faith that the appearances of design are false.
Faith that the first life self-assembled from warm chemicals in goo.
Faith that the universe is a self-induced, random occurrence.
Faith that a “multiverse” that we can’t see is a rationale for a random universe producing life (Anthropic principle is false).
Faith that my mind is an assembly of random mutations, with no actual purpose beyond survival of the fittest. (A Meat Machine).  Even so, it is the supreme intelligence in the universe.
Faith that the brain and the mind are one thing, inseparable.
Faith that there is no intelligence in DNA.
Faith that if I can’t sense it, it does not exist. (No metaphysical existence).
Faith that empiricism is the one and only true path to all-encompassing Truth and Enlightenment.
Faith in Evolution, which is unquestionable; it is non-negotiable truth. See         “Heresy”, below.
Faith that, because Evolution is non-negotiable truth, life has no meaning.
Faith that after death there are only worms.


A federal court of appeals ruled yesterday Wisconsin prison officials violated an inmate’s rights because they did not treat atheism as a religion. 1 “Atheism is [the inmate’s] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being,” the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said.
The court decided the inmate’s First Amendment rights were violated because the prison refused to allow him to create a study group for atheists. Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, called the court’s ruling “a sort of Alice in Wonderland jurisprudence.” “Up is down, and atheism, the antithesis of religion, is religion,” said Fahling.“Atheism is [the inmate’s] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being,” the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said.

Atheism is the belief that there is no god. According to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “Atheism is the position that affirms the non-existence of God. It proposes positive disbelief rather than mere suspension of belief.”2



Even atheists have a faith. The suffix '-ist' in this context denotes a believer in something that requires faith. "...one that adheres to or advocates a (specified) doctrine or system." Merriam-Webster

This is an academic and technical esoteric use of the word, but everyone has a religion. The etymology of "religion" shares a root with ligament, ligature and ligand, denoting a binding. Everyone is religious, even atheists, and bound to their worldview. Atheism has fundamentalist dogmas of its religion, too. (E.g., "Disbelieve or do not permit any evidence that suggests that anything outside of space-time may exist.")

"[Geertz's definition] suggests that every group--and every individual--may have a religion, even if no one in that group believes in a god or an afterlife or any of the more familiar trappings of organized religion. Every group has a religion because every group has some overall framework that all its members share in common, to make sense out of life and guide behavior."

They have their own worldview. Materialism (the view that the material world is all there is) is the lens through which atheists view the world. Far from being the open-minded, follow-the-evidence-wherever thinkers they claim to be, they interpret all data ONLY within the very narrow worldview of materialism. They are like a guy wearing dark sunglasses who chides all others for thinking the sun is out.

Atheism has a creation myth, too

"Atheism has its own creation myth, writes Spencer, and it goes like this: non-belief is the love child of reason and science - a human advance arising from scientific and philosophical progress in Europe, particularly movements like the Copernican Revolution in the 16th Century, the scientific revolution in the 17th and the Darwinian in the 19th.

In an article for Politico Magazine Spencer describes this myth: "Gradually, wonderfully, the human race matured, with every confident scientific step forward pushing our infantile, crumbling ideas of the divine closer to oblivion," he writes. This myth is "true enough to be believable, (but) it is not true enough to be true."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-02/smart-atheism-has-a-creation-myth,-too/5712050


http://debunkingatheists.blogspot.com.br/2010/07/atheism-is-religion.html

   They have their own worldview. Materialism (the view that the material world is all there is) is the lens through which atheists view the world. Far from being the open-minded, follow-the-evidence-wherever thinkers they claim to be, they interpret all data ONLY within the very narrow worldview of materialism. They are like a guy wearing dark sunglasses who chides all others for thinking the sun is out.
   They have their own orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is a set of beliefs acceptable to a faith community. Just as there are orthodox Christian beliefs, there is an atheist orthodoxy as well. In brief, it is that EVERYTHING can be explained as the product of unintentional, undirected, purposeless evolution. No truth claim is acceptable if it cannot be subjected to scientific scrutiny.
   They have their own brand of apostasy. Apostasy is to abandon one’s former religious faith. Antony Flew was for many years one of the world’s most prominent atheists. And then he did the unthinkable: he changed his mind. You can imagine the response of the “open-minded, tolerant” New Atheist movement. Flew was vilified. Richard Dawkins accused Flew of “tergiversation.” It’s a fancy word for apostasy. By their own admission, then, Flew abandoned their “faith.”
   They have their own prophets: Nietzsche, Russell, Feuerbach, Lenin, Marx.
   They have their own messiah: He is, of course, Charles Darwin. Darwin – in their view – drove the definitive stake through the heart of theism by providing a comprehensive explanation of life that never needs God as a cause or explanation. Daniel Dennett has even written a book seeking to define religious faith itself as merely an evolutionary development.
   They have their own preachers and evangelists. And boy, are they “evangelistic.” Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens (Speaking of which, our prayers goes out to Christopher Hitchens in hopes of a speedy recovery for his cancer, we need more time with him Lord) are NOT out to ask that atheism be given respect. They are seeking converts. They are preaching a “gospel” calling for the end of theism.
   They have faith. That’s right, faith. They would have you believe the opposite. Their writings ridicule faith, condemn faith. Harris’s book is called The End of Faith. But theirs is a faith-based enterprise. The existence of God cannot be proven or disproven. To deny it takes faith. Evolution has no explanation for why our universe is orderly, predictable, measurable. In fact (atheistic) evolutionary theory has no rational explanation for why there is such a thing as rational explanation. There is no accounting for the things they hope you won’t ask: Why do we have self-awareness? What makes us conscious? From what source is there a universal sense of right and wrong? They just take such unexplained things by … faith.

It's sad to see over and over atheists and the like in debates with theists, and receiving amazing information and evidence that is crystal clear to any unbiased mind and easy to understand, which points unequivocally to the requirement of a creative intelligent agency to set up everything around us. Nonetheless, the vast majority remains untouched, and they do not change their minds. God gives them a privilege many others never had, and they throw it away. Our information is precious and true but receives not the consideration it deserves. God-deniers have no business in a rational discourse about origins. When they open their mouth, all they express is foolishness. One of the major reasons atheists do not want to acknowledge God is the idea of judgment. Pretty simple.  Science, peer review consensus = truth.  Religion, sheepherders, talking snakes, faith, superstition, sky daddy = fairy tale. In the same sense as drug-abuse craves a certain behavior and reward reaction in your brain, and makes you addicted, a world-view that someone is used to, or accustomed to it, and he feels fine with, is hard to change. Many see simply no need to obey an invisible being, giving their autonomy of decisions out of their hand. They do not want to trust a higher being, but proud makes them want to keep being in control of their lives. Many see no need to trust God. There is a dictum: an old tree is difficult to straighten. That might be the reason why most people come to God at a young age, mostly as teenagers. That was also my case. And many when going through difficult times, and searching for a solution.


1. http://www.wnd.com/2005/08/31895/#7oAEuuudRMklp9tA.99
2. http://creation.com/atheism-a-religion

The Religion of Atheism 1

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1293-strong-atheism-is-a-religion

Posted by Hitch on April 5, 2014
How many times per day do atheists, worldwide, deny that atheism is a religion?  My guess is millions. Why? Because wherever there is debate on the existence of God vs atheism, you are absolutely guaranteed that sooner or later in the discussion, the word religion will be brought in and the atheists present will be eschewing all religion.  But then some deist or theist will tell them that atheism itself is a religion, having all the telltale signs.  At that point the atheists will get angry, act insulted, and arrogantly state that atheism isn’t a religion and that if atheism is a religion, then not playing tennis is a sport – or some such similar analogy (which they copy/paste parrot from their masters, the high priests of atheism). They radically deny that atheism is a religion because they despise religion per se and cannot endure to have their own beliefs called religion.

Britain’s Lord Toulson, Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom said recently,

“Religion should not be confined to religions which recognise a supreme deity…“.

Today its getting easier and easier to prove that atheism is religion as much as anything else is religion. One atheist leader from Australia told me that atheism cannot be a religion because it has no god(s).  Is that true?  Of course not. These guys do not think much, in spite of all their pretensions to reason, free thinking, logic and knowledge of this and that, they do not think well at all. Proof of this? Easy.  This guy, and he is far from the only one that gives this answer, seemed to ignore that many “officially recognized” religions do not have a god or gods.  How about Buddhism? There is no god in Buddhism. How about Confucianism, New Age, Scientology, and many more?

Thus we see that atheists ignorance is willful and inexcusable in this.

Now the proof that atheism is indeed a real religion is the fact that today we see more and more atheist “churches” rising.  Sprouting up around the country to serve their atheist disciples. They have meetings, “ministers” and various services to the faithful.  Generally on how to feel good about one’s atheism, how to prove there is no god – um oops, sorry leave that one out since it doesn’t exist and they know it too well – pastors giving them “faith” in their salvation from God and religion, hope that there is no life after death and of course no Hell, and on and on it goes.

For starters I will simply call as my first witness, the First Church of Atheism.  A “denomination” of atheism. The First Church of Atheism has many “ministers” and you can become an ordained minister very easily and for free, right on their web site.  At this date they claim to have “Ministers Ordained:9,097”. Wow. That’s a lot of preachers, a lot of evangelists, pastors and proselytizers for belief that nothing created everything!!  They have their own TV evangelists too, and ask for donations too!

Of course theists have been saying all along that atheism is a religion and often more fanatical, radical and fundamentalist than the most radical Islam even.  But atheists, all following the lies of people like Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris etc, simply follow, like poor blind lost sheep, their religious masters and refuse to believe they could be a religion themselves.  Clearly atheism IS a religion. One without god…um…except themselves.

Secular humanism is organized atheism, though in more recent years they are trying to hide this fact, due to law suits against them for preaching materialism – their religion of atheism – all through the Western public education system.  You see according to their own own spurious interpretations of the infamous “Establishment Clause”, teaching any religion in the public system (no longer just education) is illegal! But they’ve been teaching their own religion in the pub ed system for decades, all with almost no complaints against them at all, simply because people were too ignorant and blind to realize this heresy!

Now the secular humanists are pretending NOT to be a religion anymore. The first Humanist Manifesto certainly defined them as a religion, “the religion of humanity”, where man himself is “god”. They got away with this glaring hypocrisy for decades and only now are being challenged on it.

Amazingly, the secular humanist run legal system has declared Secular Humanism a religion for tax exemption purposes, but not for Establishment Clause purposes!!! In other words the religion of atheism is the most hypocritical, vile and sickening bit of treachery against the public within the whole record of Establishment Clause cases! THEY are the WORST offenders. And now they get away with it because their chief priests and disciples own the courts!

Well, that’s another story, a very tragic and disgusting one at that.  You can read a bit more about that here.

If you want more evidence of the atheist church, or that atheism is a religion, just look at this:



Or how about this?

Of course you could just google or bing it yourself to find thousands of links on the new atheist churches too. Be my guest, and don’t blame me for the fact that atheism is a religion, nor accuse me of bad logic, lying for Jesus and all the other inane asininities atheists usually copy/paste against theists trying to tell them the truth.

All this is very sad of course. These poor atheists, now attending their atheist “churches” should finally come to terms with their inherently spiritual nature, admit they have a need, an empty spot inside and discover the amazing True God of the bible.

Well to properly end this article I need a fitting image.

1) https://borne.wordpress.com/2014/04/05/the-religion-of-atheism/

Atheist Ernst Mayr ("One Long Argument" 1991:99): 

"There is indeed one belief that all true original Darwinians held in common, and that was their rejection of creationism, their rejection of special creation. This was the flag around which they assembled and under which they marched. When Hull claimed that 'the Darwinians did not totally agree with each other, even over essentials', he overlooked one essential on which all these Darwinians agreed. Nothing was more essential for them than to decide whether evolution is a natural phenomenon or something controlled by God. The conviction that the diversity of the natural world was the result of natural processes and not the work of God was the idea that brought all the so-called Darwinians together in spite of their disagreements on other of Darwin's theories."

A prima facie or “at first glance” case for the claim that atheism can be seen as a religion can be found in the answer an atheist might give to the question “Are you a Christian?”
When presented with this question, an atheist may reply, “No, I’m an atheist.” On the other hand, if he was instead presented with the question, “Are you a Jew?” he might again reply, “No, I’m an atheist.” If he had been asked, “Are you a Buddhist?” or “Are you a Muslim?” or “Are you a Hindu?” he might well give the same answer: “No, I am an atheist.”
This suggests that being an atheist is analogous to being a Christian, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Muslim, or a Hindu. And that, in turn suggests that atheism is analogous to Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism. In other words, atheism, too, can be seen as a religion.
http://strangenotions.com/is-atheism-a-religion/

Is Atheism a Religion?
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P1. Religion: Atheism* has enough aspects** of religion (or features of historical religions) that it can validly be viewed as a religion.
Note-1: *Atheism is the metaphysical super-set; forms of atheism such as Secular Humanism are the metaphysical-subset. **See below.
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P2. Metaphysical Core: Atheism has a Metaphysical Core (the metaphysical belief that there is No God).
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P3. Metaphysical Core-Doctrine: Atheism subscribes to the Faith-Based Core Metaphysical-Doctrine that there is No God. There is NO positive case for atheism. Just the faith-based proposition that there is No God.
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P4. Metaphysical Secondary-Doctrines: Atheism includes metaphysical secondary-doctrines. Examples include Dogmatic-Naturalism, Evolution, Scientism, Dogmatic-Empiricism.
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P5. Metaphysical Creation-Myth (or Origin-Myth): Evolution* is the Metaphysical Creation-Myth (or Origin-Myth) of Atheism.
Note-2: *Evolution = Naturalistic-Atheistic Large-Scale Evolution.
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P6. Priesthood: Atheist scientists are viewed as a secular priesthood by atheists.
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P7. Prophets: Atheist Prophets are individuals like Dawkins (whose teachings and methods are implemented by thousands of atheists online). A prophet like Moses (in the OT) is an inspirational leader (not just a predictor of future events). Similarly thousands of internet atheists follow the teachings & instructions of the Atheist Prophet Dawkins to mock and ridicule Christians.
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P8. Cultic Behavior: Thousands of internet atheists follow the teachings of the Atheist Prophet Dawkins to mock and ridicule Christians.
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P9. Evangelical Behavior: Thousands of internet atheists follow the teachings of the Atheist Prophet Dawkins to SPREAD atheism by mocking and ridiculing Christians. Many atheists spend endless hours trying to argue Christians into converting to Atheism. This is Evangelical Behavior on the part of such atheists.
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P10. Gospel: Atheism presents the "good news" that we can be sexual hedonists because "there probably is no God". E.g., the Dawkins foundation has advertisements that state "There probably is no God. So Enjoy yourself." This is basically a call to sexual Hedonism.
Other Atheist leaders have been even more explicit about the call to sexual Hedonism. Example:
Quote (Atheist Aldous Huxley) “I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. ... For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning - the Christian meaning, they insisted - of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.” Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means
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P11. Myth: Evolution is the Biological Creation Myth of Atheism.
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P12. Myth: And now, the multiverse is being added as the Cosmological Creation Myth of Atheism.
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P13. Icons: There are a host of False Icons of Evolution that are held in high regard by Atheists, and that are used to (supposedly) validate their faith in the Atheist Creation Myth of Naturalistic-Atheistic Large-Scale Evolution.
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P14. Dogma: Evolution is Atheist Dogma. So is Naturalism and Scientism.
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P15. Saints: Darwin is an example of an Atheist Saint. He is held in the same high regard by atheists as many Catholics hold their saints in high regard.
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P16. Heresy: To challenge Naturalism or Scientism or Evolution is heresy to many (or most) atheists.
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P17. Persecution of Heretics: See the book "Slaughter of the Dissidents". Any scientist who disagrees with the Atheist Myth of Naturalistic-Atheistic Large-Scale Evolution, and who subscribes to the view that the Scientific Evidence points to Intelligent Design is being targeted for Persecution and Career Destruction by Atheist & Evolutionists.
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P18. Saint's Holy-Days: Darwin's Birthday is celebrated as a Holy Day by many Atheists and Evolutionists. Think Darwin Centennial Celebrations.
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P19. Church: Atheists now have church-equivalent gatherings on weekends due in part to the encouragement of Dawkins et al.
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P20. World-view Narrative: For many people, Religion provides an overarching big-picture narrative to help understand reality. Atheism does this for atheists.
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P21. Our Place in Reality: For many people, Religion provides an overarching big-picture narrative to help understand Our Place in Reality. Atheism does this for atheists.
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P22. Morality: Religion provides a narrative to define good and evil. Atheism does this for Atheists. E.g., the atheist prophet Dawkins defines Evil = Religion (in particular Christianity), Good = Atheism.
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P23. Atheistic Religion: There have been Atheistic World-views that are defined as Religions historically. E.g., some forms of Hinduism, and some forms of Buddhism. These are both commonly accepted as Religions even though those specific forms are fundamentally atheistic in nature. So you do NOT have to subscribe to a specific God to be a religion. An atheistic world-view has been historically been viewed as a religion (as in those atheistic forms of Hinduism and Buddhism above).
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P24. Religion: US courts HAVE agreed that forms of Atheism are a religion. E.g., Atheist Secular Humanists have argued that Atheist Secular Humanism is a Religion, and the US courts have agreed and defined Atheist Secular Humanism as a Religion.
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C1. It is a reasonable inference that Atheism functions as a Religion in the lives of Atheists.
C2. It is a reasonable inference that Atheism is indeed a religion.

Our worldview is something that we dearly love. In special, when have already built on it, and spent considerable time to solidify it, and become intellectually satisfied by holding to it. Atheists and theists look to new evidence in nature and ask: How can this evidence fit what I already want to be true, and believe? Theists can demonstrate to atheists as much evidence and logical inferences as they want. If an atheist sees no need, no wish, no will to change camp, he won't. No matter, if the dish is from Osteria Francescana, or McDonald's. This is the reason why rarely atheists are convincing themselves that their views are not rationally sound.

Strong atheism is a religion because it makes claims based on blind faith

A Strong Atheist Faith Statement might be as follows:

Faith that the supreme intelligence in the universe is me, embodied in my mind.
Faith that the appearances of design are false.
Faith that the first life self-assembled from warm chemicals in goo.
Faith that the universe is a self-induced, random occurrence.
Faith that a “multiverse” that we can’t see is a rationale for a random universe producing life (Anthropic principle is false).
Faith that my mind is an assembly of random mutations, with no actual purpose beyond survival of the fittest. (A Meat Machine).  Even so, it is the supreme
intelligence in the universe.
Faith that the brain and the mind are one thing, inseparable.
Faith that there is no intelligence in DNA.
Faith that if I can’t sense it, it does not exist. (No metaphysical existence).
Faith that empiricism is the one and only true path to all-encompassing Truth and Enlightenment.
Faith in Evolution, which is unquestionable; it is non-negotiable truth. See         “Heresy”, below.
Faith that, because Evolution is non-negotiable truth, life has no meaning.
Faith that after death there are only worms.

A federal court of appeals ruled yesterday Wisconsin prison officials violated an inmate’s rights because they did not treat atheism as a religion. 1 “Atheism is
[the inmate’s] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being,” the 7th
Circuit Court of Appeals said.
The court decided the inmate’s First Amendment rights were violated because the prison refused to allow him to create a study group for atheists. Brian Fahling,
senior trial attorney for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, called the court’s ruling “a sort of Alice in Wonderland jurisprudence.” “Up is
down, and atheism, the antithesis of religion, is religion,” said Fahling.“Atheism is [the inmate’s] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious
in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being,” the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said.

Atheism is the belief that there is no god. According to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “Atheism is the position that affirms the non-existence of God.
It proposes positive disbelief rather than mere suspension of belief.”

The Tribes of Atheism
https://www.canadianatheist.com/2014/07/the-tribes-of-atheism/
Intellectual Atheist/Agnostic
– ‘Academic’ types who like to argue about religion

“So, if someone like Richard Dawkins indignantly protests that his passion about these sorts of things -- the passion that drives the "God Delusion" -- should not be taken as a religious passion, I am happy to accept that. I do nevertheless think that often Dawkins and company show the sociological characteristics of the religious. This comes across particularly in what Freud calls the narcissism of small differences, the hatred of those who are close to them but not quite close enough. Just as evangelicals can differ bitterly over the true meaning of the host, so the New Atheists loathe people like me who (like them) have no religious belief but who think that science as such does not refute religion.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/17973.Michael_Ruse

Atheist: I personally have never observed a god.
Reply Positive or strong atheists, in order to reject the existence of God, and be consistent and faithful to their method of empiricism that in order for something to be accepted, it must be observed, must adopt following views:

The first life self-assembled from warm chemicals in goo.
The universe is a self-induced, random occurrence.
Gas can clump by gravitational forces and form stars
Chance can fine-tune things, even if the odds are astronomically high ( far beyond the threshold of Borel's law )
A “multiverse-generator” that we can’t see explains the origin of multiverses, and amongst these, a life-permitting universe, and that life-permitting universe actually producing life.
Their mind is an assembly of random mutations, with no actual purpose beyond survival of the fittest. (A Meat Machine). Even so, it is the supreme intelligence in the universe.
The brain and the mind are one thing, inseparable.
There is no intelligence required to form the biological information and code storage medium, the DNA molecule, nor genetic information
Evolution, the origin of all lifeforms by evolutionary means, mutations, natural selection, gene drift and flow, which is unquestionable; it is non-negotiable truth.
After death, there are only worms, no afterlife.

So atheists reject the God hypothesis based on empiricism but do not apply the same burden of proof to the No-God hypothesis. How inconsistent is that, to say the least?

Design by nondesign?

We have discovered insects with mechanical gears, bacteria with a flagellum, that looks like an outboard motor and a gearbox, DNA, the smallest data storage mechanism known, dozens and dozens of languages using code to instruct how to make things for specific purposes.

Metabolic pathways that are like production lines with tiny robots lined up manufacturing intermediate products that are used as parts in complex molecular machines, proteins. We have encountered ribosomes, which are translation machines, which are made by other machines, that themselves are assembled by other machines, and the assembly of ribosomes is controlled, errors are detected, non-functional subunits are discarded and recycled, and these ribosomes operate based on sophisticated internal signaling, and have 13 different error check and repair mechanisms.

Ribosomes make ribosomes. Each cell is a sophisticated chemical factory that makes more of itself, with small variations, to permit the making of other cells that are incorporated to make tissues and organs for different purposes. A neuron has completely different functions than a red blood cell, but both are made from the same stem cell. That requires sophisticated programming. Humans with all their intelligence make a lot analogously to what we see in nature. But we don't come even close to achieving the same sophistication, on a microscopic level. In fact, all around us in nature is high-tech, which goes down to the atomic level. Each atom on every single nucleobase that makes up our RNA and DNA is at its right place. And if it were not so, you and I, would not be here.

In fact, science has discovered that the isomeric arrangement in nucleobases is optimal among millions of different possible arrangements. It is just right. That arrangement permits the just right hydrogen bond forces to join one DNA nucleotide to the other in the Watson Crick base-pairing, permitting the famous DNA ladder, our stable information storage molecule. All this is evidence of a sublime, super-intelligent intellect, a designer with foresight, the ability of planning, foresight, will, and goals. So proponents of naturalism, claiming that the appearance of design in nature needs no design, must come up with really good explanations of how non-intelligence is a more case-adequate explanation for all these things that are awe-inspiring, and literally scream out of design. We see a universe, that had a beginning, that operates based on laws that permit a stable, orderly universe, finely adjusted on many levels to permit the existence of stable atoms, molecules, elements, stars, a life-permitting planet.

We see chemical cell factories operating and made based on instructional information encoded through various languages using code. We are conscious, able to use and communicate through language, using the laws of logic. We are moral agents. We observe and appreciate beauty like a mandarin duck, or a red-lipped batfish. It has never been observed, that evolution can produce any of this. I am not credulous enough to be an atheist. Why are atheists? Maybe not, because all that I just wrote is in disagreement based on logic and reason, but because atheists have decided that they think, living autonomously, is better, than seeking God, knowing Him, and living upon the way God has given us to walk. Man in his arrogance thinks he needs nobody above him. That he can tackle his life without depending on anyone. That autonomy is the best way to go.

Jeremiah 17:9-10 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? But those that seek: Jeremiah 29:13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

Working Gears in Plant-Hopping Insect - by evolution, or design?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t3012-working-gears-in-plant-hopping-insect-by-evolution-or-design

Flagellum, Behe's prime example of irreducible complexity
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1528-the-flagellum-behe-s-prime-example-of-irreducible-complexity

The amazing DNA information storage capacity
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2052-the-amazing-dna-information-storage-capacity

The various codes in the cell
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2213-the-various-codes-in-the-cell

How Cellular Enzymatic and Metabolic networks  point to design
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2371-how-cellular-enzymatic-and-metabolic-networks-point-to-design

Ribosomes amazing nano machines
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1661-translation-through-ribosomes-amazing-nano-machines

Error detection and repair during the biogenesis & maturation of the ribosome, tRNA's, Aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, and translation: by chance, or design?
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2984-error-check-and-repair-during-messengerrna-translation-in-the-ribosome-by-chance-or-design

Cell fate determination and differentiation ( phenotype, or what cell type each one will become )
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2990-how-does-biological-multicellular-complexity-and-a-spatially-organized-body-plan-emerge#7801

Biochemical fine-tuning - essential for life
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2591-biochemical-fine-tuning-essential-for-life