Obviously the answer is that Christianity is a religion and that atheism is not. However, I, yet again, must be difficult about this and take the opposite view. Referring to atheism as a religion is opening a can of worms. But it is a can that needs to be opened so that its contents may get some fresh air.
I once was told, “My dictionary still defines atheism as a non-belief in God. How can that be a religion??? Where’s the dogma???” There are some basic points to be made in response to such good questions. It is often not a good idea to bring a grammatical dictionary to a philosophic, or religious, discussion. We may define a religion as a philosophic concept with some elements of faith and a rallying around an idea and or person(s). Outside of a grammatical dictionary the term “religion” does encompass a quite a wide variety of views. There are Jewish people who say that Judaism is not a religion (it is a people-hood) and there are Christians who say that Christianity is not a religion (it is a relationship). In fact, in the early days of Christianity the pagan Romans referred to Christians as atheists (this is because Christians did not worship the various pagan/Roman gods/images).
We present four basic reasons for claiming that atheism is a religion:
1 – There are some atheists that claim that atheism is a religion.
2 – The US government has ruled that atheism is legally considered a religion.
3 – Buddhism has been considered a religion for some 2,500 years and it is atheistic.
4 – Atheism is purely based on faith (at least Sect 1 is).
For another excellent resource giving additional reasons why Atheism is a religion, please see: Is atheism a religion?
Let us take a moment to expound on each reason:
1 – Note that referring to atheism as a religion is neither a new nor an anti-atheistic idea. Michael Mewdow is an atheist who has argued before the Supreme Court in his attempts to have the phrase “one nation under God” removed from the “Pledge of Allegiance.” On the television show The Pulse (7-12-02) Mr. Newdow stated that he believes that atheism is a religion. Therefore, the bottom line is that he wants to remove “under God” and replace it with nothing. He wants to remove theism from the schools and replace it with atheism. “Nothing” is the god of atheism, why should our children be forced to praise this god? See our article One Nation Under Whom?!?!.
If some atheists deny that atheism is a religion they should first have an in-house argument amongst their own bretheren and only then claim that it is theists that are wrong in referring to atheism as a religion.
2 – In 1977 in the court cases Theriault v. Silber and Malnak v. Yogi ruled that atheism is a religion.
3 – Buddhism is sometimes referred to as an ethical system but it has certainly been considered a religion. Some Buddhist sects believe in gods, but traditional Buddhism believes that God is a concept that mankind created (see our essay Buddhist Missionaries Proselytize).
4 – Atheism is a faith based belief system. Let us begin with the first atheist dogma, which is that there is no God. This is believed by pure faith. The second is that since there is no God all of the religions of the world, regardless of chronology, geography or theology, have been absolutely wrong at the core of their beliefs. Therefore, more dogmas are: God did not create the universe, God has not given us a moral code, Darwinian-atheistic-macro-evolution is true, etc., etc. See our article Atheism’s Faith Based Dogmatic Beliefs for more examples.
An atheist who does not believe that atheism is a religion, and is in no way religious, may respond that they personally do not care what other atheists think, or say. Fine, but their argument is with those other atheists and not with theists.Likewise, with the US government rulings about atheism, an individual atheist may not agree with the government but their argument is with the government and not with theists.
Some atheists will state that Buddhism is a religion because they are ritualistic, but nonetheless Buddhism is still atheistic. One might even classify the meetings of atheistic groups are somewhat ritualistic-they have their leaders and their anthems and they come together to discuss their faith (and often to besmirch that of other’s).
We find atheistic intellectuals somewhat disappointing in that they seem to simply state, “We do not believe that God exists and you do, since we can’t prove a negative we don’t have to present any evidence at all, but since you believe in God you have to prove it.” Don’t misunderstand, we understand the logic of this argument and also understand that many atheistic intellectuals have done a lot to discredit the beliefs of others. We must say however that we can prove a negative. For example, I could prove to you that there is not a foot at the end of my arm. It seems as if atheists sort of paint with a broom and sweep all theology aside in one fowl swoop, based on their faith. We mean that the belief that there is no God is a dogma and therefore held in faith. In this regard atheism has found for itself a philosophy that requires no proof at all. Therefore, atheism in reality is the most faith-based religion of them all. Atheism has no proof and claims that non is needed in order to substantiate its claims, while at the same time, demanding that all religions prove all of their claims. Atheism has nested on a branch that is not connected to a tree and therefore, without root support. Some atheists have attempted to escape their traditionally logically fallacious position: we believe that God does not exist even though we have no proof. Since this is a faith based belief, they some have gone on to form Sect 2.
Consider what zealous faith some atheists have that they are becoming quite the activists. For instance, one public school has just banned the Declaration of Independence from a history class because it contains that “G**” word. They seem to be perfectly willing to re-write history to suit their world-view. We can tell you that when we were studying to take our citizenship test we could tell exactly why and how the US was founded. But we can understand the reason that atheists do not call atheism a religion, nor a dogma, nor a faith since this would allow their activists to push for America to become a country with an atheistic government. The reasoning perhaps being something to the likes of, “Since atheism is not a religion establishing an atheist government would not intrude upon the separation of church and state.” Incidentally, the term “separation of church and state” does not exist in the Constitution.
Consider also the zeal with which atheists hold on to their dogmas. For example, the downfall of a theory held by such scientists as recent as the late atheist Carl Sagan (who passed away in 1996). This theory, the Steady State Theory, basically stated that the universe is itself eternal. Remember Sagan’s show Cosmos? His motto was, “The cosmos is all there is or ever was or ever will be.” Now, it was at the time of Einstein that the proof for the universe having a beginning was discovered. Sagan was still around some eight decades later stubbornly holding on to his atheistic faith and refusing to accept fact (see our essays Cosmology, Part I and Cosmology, Part II).
Agnostic astronomer Robert Jastrow wrote:
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”1
Atheism not only claims that it does not have to produce any evidence but that what it believes cannot be proved. Theism claims that there are certain aspects of its beliefs that cannot be proven by such methods such as the scientific: observation and reproducible experimentation. But since this scientific method is meant to observe and experiment upon that which can, in fact, be observed and experimented upon, this method would not apply to the supernatural.Note what Richard Lewontin, Harvard University Professor of zoology and biology, has to say about scientific preconceived notions and the system that has been built in order to allow those notions to have the appearance of fact:
“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural_we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”2
We should expect to find theism’s proof in other methods such as philosophy. Keep in mind though that science itself does have a purely philosophic side to it. In the case of macro-Darwinism virtually the whole theory is purely philosophic in nature, or inferences. We state this because, for instance, science believes in subatomic particles that it cannot see.Professor Lewontin also made an interesting observation about scientific acceptance of unified pluralities but rejection of religious unified pluralities:
“Carl Sagan accepts, as I do, the duality of light, which is at the same time wave and particle, but he thinks that the consubstantiality of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost puts the mystery of the Holy Trinity ‘in deep trouble.’ Two’s company, but three’s a crowd.”3
In other words unified pluralities in nature are perfectly acceptable but not in the realm of the divine.
Note carefully the words of Thomas Nagel; (B.Phil., Oxford; Ph.D., Harvard), Professor of Philosophy and Law, University Professor, and Fiorello La Guardia Professor of Law. He specializes in Political Philosophy, Ethics, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Mind. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the British Academy, and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities:
“I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”4
This is neither a scientific, philosophical, rational nor intellectual statement. He does not believe in God because he does not want to do so.
Consider the following words of Isaac Asimov, one of the most prolific scientific writers of the last century:
“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I’ve been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn’t have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I’m a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.”5
Consider the following words of Harvard paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould, as he answers the question “why is your work so popular?” He states that certain subjects are “immensely intriguing to people”:
“Evolution is one of those subjects. It attempts, insofar as science can, to answer the questions of what our life means, and why we are here, and where we came from, and who we are related to, and what has happened through time, and what has been the history of this planet. These are questions that all thinking people have to ponder.”6
Is this really the purpose of science to function as a faith that answers the question of the ultimate meaning of life? Is this the function of a scientist to guide and shape our soul and life? Scientists ought to be like a reporter. Reporters are not supposed to use news stories in order to express their political or social bias. They are supposed to go to places that we did not, or could not, go to and simply tell us what happened there. A scientist is supposed to look into a telescope and a microscope and tell us that it there.
If you find a pre-human skeleton and claim that it is the mother of us all that is pure guess work (based on zeal to prove a theory to be true). We cannot see wind but we can see its effect, likewise, we cannot see God but we can see His effect. Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, saw this effect but chose to invent a new myth. He saw the unfathomable complexity of DNA and realized that quaint Victorian/Darwinian era notion about simple cells was a notion based on tragically outdated scientific instruments. He knew that DNA could not have come about by random chance and yet, he chose to believe that life had came to Earth from another planet. The problem, of course, is that this does not answer any questions but only moves the question to another sector of the universe-how did life get to that other planet? Some would build myth upon myth by stating that on this other planet conditions were just right so as to, in fact, produce life by random chance. This is not only unscientific and intellectually unsatisfactory but is clearly based upon the faulty premise that lack of proof is proof. In fact, atheism relies heavily on lack of proof being proof. In other words, atheism would state, “Can you show us God, or material proof of His existence? If not then we reject the very idea of God.” Theist may say, “Can you show us viable proof, even philosophic in nature, that God does not exist? If not then we accept His existence.” The difference between the two is that by citing concept such as intelligent design we can see that we are being pointed toward God (what Christians call “natural revelation”).
Atheism believes that belief in God came about gradually and as a result of a feeble search for answers by an early and ignorant humanity. However, the fact is that the exact opposite is true. The earliest evidences of history demonstrate that humans have always held to some concept of God (beginning with monotheism). The late comer, as far as philosophic concepts is concerned, is atheism. Atheism also claims that humans made up the idea of a God in order to acquire for ourselves some sort of comfort (this is a logical fallacy that claims that God cannot exist because human beings invented the idea of God’s existence). It is equally telling that this same psychological argument can be made regarding atheism since it is a concept that offers comfort form having to imagine that there is some price to be paid for sin. This system offers no ultimate personal responsibility. It offers no ultimate responsibility to aid others. This system was invented to offer comfort to those who, for whatever reason, felt the need to, at least intellectually (though in an ultimately unsatisfactory manner), escape what and who God is and what that means to us as individuals who must live amongst other individuals. Paul Vitz has made a fascinating study of the lives of some of the people who have been most influential to atheism. In his lecture The Psychology of Atheism (listen online) he has concluded that these persons rejected God because they rejected their own fathers.
The bottom line is that atheism is based upon a circular argument and therefore disqualified from being considered a viable philosophic concept. Atheists do not believe in any evidence for God’s existence because they don’t believe in God and they do not believe in God because they do not believe in the evidence for God’s existence (see Atheism’s Circular Logic).
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