I'm mostly with you, but a little in the first part

I used to sort of feel like 'belief', and religion especially, was such an assault on reason and logic that I felt like some sort of modern day Galileo - "how can these people go through life denying that the world is round?" .... to me, its like people are trying to tell me things that I cannot comprehend ....nor comprehend that so many people believe them....as if maybe with just a few minutes I could get some rational thought to magically appear and give reality a chance...I don't want to save the world, but I like reason

And, I like to argue and hopefully challenge people to challenge their assumptions and consider rational thoughts that have been foreign to them...and I used to like to argue...now, I'm more of a 'whatever'....but it might be more that I've given up, than that I've gotten more accepting idk

I have considered many ideas about how the universe works, even came up with some of my own and searched to see if others have considered the same... Incidentally, many scientists have had similar thoughts to my own and have put significantly more thought into it than myself.

edit: (meant to put this, but forgot)

With that said, I'm sure both myself and the scientists mentioned have an infinitesimally small probability of being correct... though I would estimate the odds to be slightly higher than dogma created thousands of years ago (even if the probability was higher by a factor of a million, I think the probability would still be extremely close to zero).

end edit:

I would hardly call choosing to not adhere to anyone else's dogma as truth a religion... that doesn't even make sense.

Sure, there may be militant atheists just as there's militants for any form of thought... with that logic, you could consider being gay a religion because there's militants protesting for gay rights... where the former is just as absurd as the latter.

I personally don't seek out other atheists in some twisted biological need to be a part of some fascist group think... I don't really gaf about what other people think about something that is seemingly impossible to know for sure...

But I'll certainly discuss and debate the topic with people interested in such discussions.

Truth be told, most of my conversations over the past few years with anyone about religion and atheism are here on these boards, I don't really put a lot of thought into my non-belief unless the topic comes up.

If atheism is a religion, then...

Not playing golf is a sport...

Not collecting baseball cards is a hobby...

Not playing slot machines is form of gambling...

See where I'm going with this?

I stand by my statement, atheism is not a religion.

It shouldn't be but it is. A lot of Atheists wear their "non-beliefs" like a crown of thorns. They attack and mock those who have faith. They ACTIVELY deny the existence of God and make damn sure that they believe those of faith to be stupid. It is practiced as fervently as those guys who handle snakes and speak in tongues practice whatever the hell they are doing. It might not be a "religion", per se, but they sure do act like it is. I think religion sucks but as long as you leave me alone, I'll happily do the same for you.

No robes, waffers or yarmulkes no 'Amens!'. They'd be invisible but for organized religion's outrage.

The IRS won’t be granting religious tax exemptions to atheist groups any time soon, so, not a religion.

And anyway, what difference does it make?

I religiously brush my teeth at least twice a day, and consider any adult who doesn't do it to be a dumb ass, so by your logic, that makes dentistry a religion.

It took great courage to admit that. Congrats.

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today... Aha-ah...

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion, too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace... You...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world... You...

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one

Anyway, once religious people find out what you are, they tend not to trust you or want to associate with you.

So I can see why militants have surfaced from non-believers. Atheists face more discrimination than any other "group" of people in the world.

One study showed that atheists didn't fare much better than rapists when polled about trustworthiness.

Ok......I'm done. I believe Gene and I are both making the same point but you aren't seeing it.

Why be a prick? I didn't say this nor is this something I even care about. I will say that the world is perfectly capable of being good to each other without religion. Not a single one of these requires religion unless you are talking about holidays and I GARONTEE that if Christmas disappeared tomorrow that Amazon and Walmart would come up with a suitable alternative.

and as far as the US.....it was established to be FREE of a state sponsored religion. Religion has no place in Government. NONE. I do NOT trust in God, nor does putting my hand on a bible, Koran, Torah, or anything else mean a single thing to me. The Bible, to me, is no different than a comic book of today. Superman and Jesus are virtually the same character. Don't agree with me? I give no shits....believe what you believe and I will do the same. I just won't try to get you to believe what I believe because I don't really care what you believe..unless you are f*cking with me about it. THAT'S freedom.

I see your point just fine, you're saying because there exists a very small percentage of the overall population of atheists that you believe behave as anti-religious zealots implies that non-belief is a religion.

It's a logical fallacy, and I'm simply calling BS where I see it.

I don't know if you're familiar with P vs NP, but there are equivalent problems where if you can show that for one such problem that P = NP, then P = NP for all such problems. Similarly, however much more trivially, your proclamations are easily shown to be nonsensical with simple analogies.

Just a matter of semantics I think. Atheism is a belief system. Believing God doesn't exist probably does not a religion make. Atheism is like any other belief system, communism, Gnosticism, dualism etc etc. Just because they attract adherents doesn't necessarily mean they're religions.

Religion according to the dictionary is the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.

God is dead. Nietzsche.

Nietzsche is dead. God.

Atheism is a belief system?

I look at it more like this...

-- Start belief system --

I believe anyone who claims to know what happens to you when you die or claims to understand what some superior being that created us wants is full of sh*t...

-- End of belief system --

Dude, you sound as convinced as the religious fanatics.

Wtf knows what the truth is.

I keep an open mind. Gets messy when I clean my ears.

Imagine is one of my favorite tunes. It was a hymn in the supplemental hymnal at the San Juan Capistrano Presbyterian Church in San Juan Capistrano, CA. We sang it in church several times.

Hard to see how a church would be okay with that first verse.

Interesting..

You gotta read all the dictionary:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion