Yes Dear! Of Course Atheism Is A Religion.

One of the more bizarre accusations Theists, and especially Creationists, level at Atheism and Atheists is that Atheism is a religion requiring faith.

It's almost as though they believe if only they can persuade people this is true it will somehow justify THEIR religious faith whilst simultaneously disproving the Atheist position that there is no evidence for any god and so no reason to believe in one.

One wonders if they've actually thought about this or if, as seems more likely, they are simply mindlessly parroting some charlatan or other who is obviously supplying them, probably for money, with the spurious rationalisations they crave to maintain their infantile belief in magic.  These people don't seem able to work out that if they could discredit Atheism by calling it a religion or saying you need faith to be one, they are also discrediting their own superstition.

They seem quite capable of holding two diametrically opposite views of religion and faith simultaneously: that religions and faith are false therefore Atheism must be because it's a religion, etc.,  and that religion and faith is the only way to determine ultimate truth and of acquiring unquestionable knowledge and understanding of the world.

And of course, they ARE capable of holding diametrically opposite views simultaneously.  Indeed, they pride themselves in their ability to do it.  This is an essential mechanism for self-delusion.  This is precisely why they are religious in the first place.

A whole industry has grown up supplying them with books and on-line articles (with the give-away 'donate' button conspicuously displayed) providing them with the arguments, lies, deceptions and mental techniques required to do so.  Many people earn a very good living supplying this industry and assiduously maintaining through fear and misinformation, the ignorance upon which it depends.

Quetalcoatl.

So, how much 'faith' does it take to NOT believe in Zeus or Ra, or the thousands of other gods which different people at different times have believed in with just the same level of evidence as exists for the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Shinto or Hindu god or gods?  How much of  a religion is not believing in Wotan, or not believing in Quetzalcoatl?

The answer, of course, is none at all.  It takes no more faith to not believe in Apollo or Horus than it takes to not believe in some god once believed in by Amazonian Indians or New Guinea Highlanders of whom no one alive now has ever heard.

It takes no more faith to not believe in those gods than to not believe in Yahweh, the god of an insignificant tribe of Bronze Age nomadic pastoralist  marauders whose god just happened to be taken up by the ruling class of a declining Iron Age Roman  Empire, who could equally well have adopted any other of the many mythical gods then on offer, leaving Yahweh to sink into the obscurity of myth, or maybe to be forgotten altogether, the way so may gods have done in the past.

Surely the charlatans who feed these unfortunate simpletons this pap can come up with something just a LITTLE more intelligent than "It takes too much faith to be an Atheist!", and "Atheism is a religion!" for them to trumpet under the sad delusion that it shows deep wisdom instead of revealing their shallow stupidity.  Surely they can think up some slogan which makes their victims look just a little more intelligent and just slightly less thick than two short planks.

Or can't they?  Maybe that would be asking the impossible.