Atheism is a Religion

Mr. Smith - You plagiarized the entirety of your arguments from the following website(s), as you did not cite them as sources: <http://patriot.net...; <http://creation.com...; Since you have just engaged in an act of theft, I'm inclined to simply discontinue this debate. But for discourses sake, I guess I will address the banter of these gentlemen. It bores me so to encounter such infantile attempts to discredit atheism. I am unfamiliar with this website, Mr. Smith, and was under the impression we would be debating the topic of the existence of God. All considered, I'll go with it. There are varying types of atheists, and they categorically defined in the following (broad) ways: 1. Strong Atheism- the assertion that a deity does not exist. 2. Weak Atheism- includes all of the other non theistic schools of thought. In your opening paragraph, you said that since "… both [theism and atheism] are positions on a fundamentally religious question that rest on faith…." atheism is a religion. This tells me that you view faith as prerequisite to an ideology's status as a religion. It also assumes that the strong atheist position, the assertion that there is not a God, rests fundamentally on faith. This is perniciously misleading and simply incorrect. We need to distinguish between 2 core beliefs – rationally justified beliefs (atheist position) and beliefs posited on certainty (theist position). While it's true I can't be 100% certain that a deity does not exist, I am perfectly justified in claiming one does not exist, without relying on faith. Take, for instance, my belief that the world will not end tomorrow. I think that we can both agree to a mutually held belief that the sun will not go supernova and turn our solar system to rubble tomorrow, but the key point is that we cannot be sure, or certain, of this proposal. It is a position that instead relies on empirical evidence, or evidence stemming from observation of the world, that we conclude such an event will not end the world. If one were so inclined, one would apply the same principle to the belief in a deity. While I can't prove an absolute negative, just as you can't prove there isn't an invisible unicorn that lives in Alpha Centauri and dictates our thoughts to us every waking second, I am inclined to believe the negative solely on the basis of evidence. This gets into the evidence that I would forward to support the claim a God does not exist, and I would like to take this time to formally challenge my opponent to a debate on this topic, at a later date, now, since it is directly applicable to this debate. You also say "atheism is a religion whose belief about God is there is no God." This would be true if the definition of religion were constrained merely to the belief in a God, but it isn't. Religion is also defined by a series of rituals, ceremonies, and dogma that a religion's followers universally adhere to. Atheism is no such mess. "Religion-a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs." In this definition we find that the only thing consistent with atheism is that atheism is concerned with the ‘superhuman agencies'. Every other characteristic covered is not addressed by atheism. This definition is so broad that almost every idea shares at least one of the characteristics addressed. Football, like atheism, shares a single trait with this definition: ‘ritual observance'. Is football also a religion? You then go on to steal a passage from a website regarding color, more specifically "black" as the absence of color. Whoever wrote this is correct, when black is found as a pigmentary agent of matter in the form of visible objects it is, indeed, a color. Physicists instead say that ‘black' is not a color when referring to light in a visible state. Black is not a color when one is speaking of a room that has no light in it. When the author says "black is understood to be a color, despite the technical definition" he is right in this theory. Your confusion results in your use of ambiguous language. To conclude, just as darkness is a word we assign to define the absence of light, and cold is a word meant to assert the absence of heat, atheism is a claim to the absence of religion. "If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby, and bald is a hair color." - Author escapes me.