Yesterday, after a comment I made in a DKOS thread, I received a response stating the false equivalency that Atheism is just another religion. I have heard this so many times from the religious right that I fell that I have to respond.
Atheism is a religion -any statement about god, including "ain't no such critter", is religious.
The writer challenged me to
Go ahead, tell me why your unproven assumption that there is no god is somehow less a religion than various other unproven assumptions about the nature of god.
There was also something about the logical contortions of atheists.
First, I really have a problem with the notion that an "unproven assumption that there is no god" needs to be in any way proven. That’s like stating that my unproven assumption that toasters cannot fly or compose sonnets needs to be proven. Since when, in the annals of logical thought has it been necessary to prove the non-existence of something – the burden is, of course, on someone with an opposing view to prove it’s existence. There are vastly more non-existent things in the universe than existent things. We don’t believe in every non-existent thing until it is disproven- and neither do those Christians who like to argue that lack of proof of the non-existence of god is proof of the existence of god.
They too don’t believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the flying toasters mentioned above or the vast majority of gods posited by men over the ages. But they feel no need to prove that these and the infinite number of other things they don’t believe don’t exist. And they shouldn’t feel such a need. The burden is on those who do believe in such things to prove that they are not fantasies.
The argument that atheism is a religion is silly on its face. There is no dogma; there are no artifices, no high priests, no liturgy, no ritual, no offer of a special treatment at sometime in the future in exchange for practices performed today, no need for sacrifices or offerings, no large special class of individuals whose livelihood is supported by the lay people to explain the mysteries to them- the list goes on and on. Belief, or lack of belief in any particular myth does not constitute a religion. To say that it does is the same tactic used by Creation Scientists, to try to co-opt the word "science" to make it meaningless, and just another synonym for faith. Faith, on the other hand, is belief in the unbelievable. Amongst the religious, of any denomination or creed, the greater the belief in the unbelievable, the greater the stature of the individual, because the greater the faith.
Most people arguing that atheism is a religion conflate atheism with belief in evolution. Evolution is a tautology, of course- as defined it must occur.
If traits are heritable, and traits result in differential survival and reproduction of the individuals carrying them, then by definition, the incidence of those traits will increase in frequency over time. If a mechanism exists for altering traits ( ie mutation) then evolution will and must occur.
While many or most current atheists believe in evolution, regardless of their views of the import of various mechanisms (selection,drift, punctation, etc.), belief in evolution is by no means necessary or even particularly related to atheism, which only denotes that the individual has no belief in a god or gods. The logical fallacy of conflating the two can be seen if one remembers that in the history of mankind, the theory of natural selection leading to evolution has only been around for 150 years- yet anyone who did not believe in a god or gods in the preceding millennia was still an atheist. Likewise, many who do believe in some number of gods, even the more-or-less monotheistic Judeo-Christians, simultaneously believe in some measure of evolution. Given the jealous nature of their god, ("Thou shall have no other gods..) it is certainly awkward if they hold another religion simultaneously.
Last, the silliness of the argument that non-belief is just another kind of belief and that non-religion is just another religion can be seen in the infinite number of religions that I must share with believers in the particular religion that the poster to whom I am responding ascribes. We are both non-believers in the god of Mohammed, Zeus, Zoroaster, Isis, and on and on. We both do not believe in extrasensory perception, magical crystals and magic pyramids. We both do not believe that the sun goes around the earth, that the earth is flat, that water falls up, that the earth is less than 10,000 years
old ( oops, we might disagree on that). Is each of these disbeliefs a separate religion, or can we combine them into one big non-belief religion with sub religions for god disbeliefs, pseudo-science disbeliefs and science disbeliefs?
Even the belief in a deity is not a religion per se. Many here at DKOS have quoted Thomas Jefferson, who was a deist- but not a follower of a specific religion. If belief in a deity is not necessarily a religion, then how can non-belief be one?