Religion of the Week: Atheism

What religion claims to be no religion at all? The answer is atheism, the positive disbelief in God. Without God, atheists turn to other deities: Man, or the great Nothing.

What is a religion?

Religion is an organized system of dogmatic "un-provable" beliefs. It is based upon a system of beliefs we take for granted, but cannot prove or disprove.

Atheists on the other hand hold the belief that God does not exist. But you can't disprove the existence of a something; how can you find evidence that something does not exist: a Unicorn for example. In the same way that other religions cannot prove that God exists, atheists cannot prove God does not exist. And thus the foundations of atheism, like any other religion, rest upon on unproved beliefs.

Right and Wrong

Without God, can atheists tell the difference between right and wrong? If they can, where does this "new" morality originate? Some atheists do not believe in right or wrong, and propose that all that matters is power. Other atheists claim that right and wrong are derived from Man himself, and are relative to his point of view. Whatever the belief, atheist ethical systems all appeal to appearances rather than religious dogma to determine how things ought to be.

So what do they worship?

Everybody worships something: what do atheists worship? Some worship themselves and their pleasure. Others worship the State. Still others worship the mechanical universe. A few atheists even worship Nothing: that is, they worship the thing that is Nothing, and embrace destruction. Ultimately, when one person says that he or she is an atheist, it is not very informative: nowadays atheism represents more a political rejection of the Judeo-Christian God than the corresponding religious system.

Quotes:
"So Hitler and Stalin were atheists: does that make it bad?"
{ed. Hitler and Stalin were Christians, not Atheists.}

"I have several friends who say atheism isn't a religion. But they model their whole lives after their one belief that God does not exist."


"I've known plenty of good people who said they were atheists. Does this mean they weren't atheists, or weren't consistent atheists, or something else?"