The following was written by Austin Cline, in atheism.about.com, in response to the question, "Can atheists be religious?" There are probably atheist Mormons who fit this description.

"Atheism and religion are often portrayed and treated as polar opposites; although there is a strong correlation between being an atheist and being irreligious, there is no necessary and inherent connection between the two. Atheism is not the same as being irreligious; theism is not the same as being religious. Atheists in the West tend not to belong to any religion, but atheism is quite compatible with religion. Theists in the West tend to be religious, but theism is compatible with irreligion.

To understand why, it is necessary to keep in mind that atheism is nothing more than absence belief in the existence of gods. Atheism is not the absence of religion, the absence of belief in the supernatural, the absence of superstitions, the absence of irrational beliefs, etc. Because of this, there is no inherent barrier preventing atheism from being part of a religious belief system.

So why does the confusion exist? Quite simply, most religious belief systems (especially those dominant in the West) are theistic — they include belief in the existence of at least one god and this belief is often a central, defining characteristic of that religion. It would be very difficult for a person to combine atheism with adherence to such a religious faith because doing so would require redefining the religion to such an extent that most members might not recognize it anymore.

This is likely the reason why you will even see some atheists assuming that theism and religion are so deeply intertwined that they won't bother to distinguish between the two, using the labels almost interchangeably. However, just because most religions we encounter incorporate theism, that shouldn't lead us to assume that all religions necessarily include theism.



Defining Religion

It would be very ethnocentric if we allowed ourselves to define religion in general solely based upon our encounters with a couple of specific religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. There is a much wider and more varied religious universe out there than those three faiths represent. Religion is a human creation and, as such, it is just as varied and complex as human culture generally is.

For example, many forms of Buddhism are essentially atheistic. At most they regard the existence of gods as possible, but often they dismiss gods as simply irrelevant to the important task of overcoming suffering. As a consequence, many Buddhists not only dismiss the relevancy of gods, but also the existence of gods — they are atheists, even if they aren't atheists in the scientific, philosophical sense that many atheists in the West are.

So, yes, atheists can be religious. There are not only very old and traditional religions like Buddhism which are accessible to atheists, but there are modern organizations as well. Some humanists call themselves religious and many members of Unitarian-Universalism and Ethical Culture societies are also nonbelievers. Raelians are a relatively recent group which is recognized as a religion legally and socially, yet they explicitly deny the existence of gods.

There is some question as to whether such forms of humanism do qualify as religions, but what is important for the moment is the fact that atheist members themselves believe that they are part of a religion. Thus they do not see any conflict between disbelieving in the existence of gods and adopting a belief system which they consider a religion — and these are atheists in the Western sense of scientific, philosophical atheism.

The answer to the question is thus an unequivocal yes: atheists can be religious and atheism can occur in conjunction with, or even in the context of, religion."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/14/2014 01:53PM by behindcurtain.

Thanks for sharing, very good viewpoint.

I guess. But as for me, I'm a metaphysical naturalist. To me, supernatural=imaginary. The natural world is all there is, but it's a lot. In fact, it's everything, and we only know a little about it. It's all I need. I'd rather think that Atheists can be spiritual, having a sense of overpowering wonder about the universe. That could be defined as "religion," I suppose.

Interesting. Unexpected as well. My first question is why would it be important to anyone to prove this proposition that atheists can be religious? Is it to defang atheism? Is it to add a little bit of god back into the godless?

I looked up the definition of religion and found three that are basically common. The first, the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods, clearly points to an atheist not being religious in the traditional sense.

The second, a particular system of faith and worship. This one doesn't mention a god, but still hard to add worship to an atheist way of being. What would an atheist worship? What purpose would worship serve? What would an atheist have faith in besides himself? Who is the goat being sacrificed on the alter for?

The third is getting into the loosest of definitions for a religion and is used more as a literary term: a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance. Which is like saying "shopping is your religion." Everyone understands what you mean by that, but I doubt anyone takes it literally and equates your worship of shoes with transubstantiation. Although, the current idolizing of high heels among some women is a little disturbing. :)

My point is, if religion must be given such a loose definition in order to say "atheists can be religious," then I don't see the point. It seems more like word game than anything else. The only way to make this work is to blur the lines between religion and humanism and spirituality which for me are very distinct one from the other.

I am atheist/agnotstic or whatever--don't think about it much. As such, I don't like the word faith. I like the word probability. I like likelihood. I don't have faith that the sun will come up tomorrow--I expect it to come up based on its track record so far.

I consider myself spiritual. I am addicted to flowers, so, are they my religion? My object of worship? And if they are, does that mean my religion is on par with Mormonism? With Christianity? With Judaism? I think until I can figure out how to collect money from my blooms and make them do exactly as I say, I will just consider my obsession with flowers to be a passion.

I do see the hybridization you refer to. But, I would not like to see religion become another word that is so chameleonesque and all inclusive in it's application that it loses all meaning. I want God right in there front and center when the word religion pops up.

I, for one, have no need to and see no value in, worshipping anything. I am appalled at anyone who needs to be worshipped. Faith is pointless as we only need faith for things that are out of our control, so the only reason for faith is to hope god fixes something for you. So if you don't believe in a god, then religion is useless to you as it seems to be defined most by faith and worship and whatever is going on in the universe is going to continue whether you have faith it will or not.

blueorchid Wrote:
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> I, for one, have no need to and see no value in,
> worshipping anything.

Can you not see any value at all in sacralizing 'human rights', the Bill Of Rights for example?

> Can you not see any value at all in sacralizing 'human rights', the Bill Of Rights for example?

Are you serious? Any "sacred" talk is always cracking open the door to the crazies pushing the new "sacred". Sacred is a shortcut instead of reason. Sacred has no need to justify itself or reevaluate.

The Bill of Rights are hardly perfect. The history of jurisprudence has proven that since its inception.

Sacralize human rights? I don't see how the word plays in.

Falling on my knees in front of the Bill of Rights, shedding tears on the column that holds it, whispering praise in hushed tones? Those things are not going to bring all of mankind brotherhood.

I find the Bill of Rights to be valuable. I do not hold it to be sacred. Valuable trumps sacred. Valuable means it is useful. It means it has wisdom. It means it can be utilized. Value means it has dignity.

Sacred goes right back to religion and worship and faith. I hold human rights to be of higher value than that.

blueorchid Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> I find the Bill of Rights to be valuable. I do not
> hold it to be sacred. Valuable trumps sacred.
> Valuable means it is useful. It means it has
> wisdom. It means it can be utilized. Value means
> it has dignity.


This is backwards.

A Picasso is valuable; human rights are sacred, --as in "set apart...regarded with or deserving veneration or respect; consecrated, hallowed...protected by sanction or reverence from violation, interference, incursion etc, sacrosanct, inviolable."

One need not allow fear or hatred or distaste for religion to cut-off from oneself useful concepts, meanings and the words that denote/connote them. The Sacred/Profane dichotomy is useful in itself, pre-dates Christianity and can have tremendous value going forward in a post-Christian world.

The idea of the sacred, actually, precedes religion itself (anthropology 101).

It sometimes seems that too much is ceded to religion when trying not to cede anything to religion.

Human

I'll stick with my opinion. I don't really have a good reason right now to adopt your definition of sacred. You may have ceded too much to your own interpretive powers.

I like what you said somewhere else today:

"We just can't keep putting words off limits or we won't have any left."

No reason to be fearful of the word "sacred", or even "faith" for that matter.

Good one. That made me laugh so hard. Thank you. Trust me. I relish the words sacred and faith. There are no endangered words in my world. I just like to think I found a few new angles to them that I did not know were there "way back when."

In Japan, rice is sacred. In Germany, beer is sacred. In India, cows are sacred. To me, Scarlett Johansson's tits are sacred.

The inverse however is not true. Atheism is NOT a religion.

Whatever people stack on top of Atheism does not change that simple fact, despite rather rabid theists insisting on corrupting the term for their own agendas.

Crows can be yellow, if you add yellow to the definition of black.

Andrew Brown at The Guardian has garnered a lot of comments by calling Humanism a religion, "not entirely" flippantly (but a little flippant, yes):

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/12/religion-humanism-atheism

Snippet:

But there remains the question of whether humanism is in fact a religion, or something more like a religion than it is like any other sort of social movement. This is complicated because of the way in which “religion” has become a toxic brand. But if we go back to the science, I think the answer is clearly that it is. Emile Durkheim, who pretty much founded the scientific study of religion, defined it as “a unified set of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and surrounded by prohibitions – beliefs and practices that unite its adherents in a single moral community called a church”.

So, can you have religions without a church? Humanism almost qualifies. It sacralises humanity, claiming for us a significance that is not to be derived from either biology or physics. Organised humanism clearly has unified beliefs and practices. It even has the world’s most lugubrious and sentimental hymn: John Lennon’s Imagine. Like all modern religions it has universalist aspirations, claiming to explain the lives of non-believers better than they can do so themselves. It can inspire heroism and self-sacrifice, but also be used to legitimise intolerance – see Sam Harris and his friends.

People who are atheists only have that one thing in common. Not believing something is a pretty flimsy basis for a movement or organization, and to me that is what religion is- a movement. It would be like forming a club around not collecting stamps. Yes, atheists do have conferences and gatherings, but it's always like herding cats to find much commonality. They usually spend a lot of time celebrating and sharing their differences and independent ideas.

For me, to be defined as a religion it has to have a set of common beliefs, a dogma. It also has to be a group of people, not just one person. I don't think you can be defined as religious without a religion. You're simply "spiritual," and that's a squishy, ill-defined thing.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/14/2014 06:56PM by rationalist01.

As was mentioned here, many people have the understanding
that "religion" is an acceptance of theistic doctrines and
the practice of "mumbo jumbo" antithetical to atheism.

I suppose this mindset is so deeply engrained in modern
thinking that it is impossible to alter... So, I just live
with it as a "given" of the social environment.

My late father was an evangelical atheist -- by that, I mean
that he went out of his way to try and spread his version
of anti-theism as a sort of pseudo-science or politics.

But, for "religion" he resorted to the John Birch Society in
Southeastern Idaho -- not overtly Mormon and white supremacist,
but pretty close to being that in fact. We had our 4th of July
picnics, late night meetings, rites of passage, marriages and
funerals.

It was "religion" in the sense of trying to be a community of
family-oriented, like-minded people. It was a religion with a
Devil called Karl Marx and a common temporal enemy called
Ho Chi Minh, or Dwight Eisenhower, or Earl Warren.

We were taught hate and fear and class warfare. Somehow that
shell of a worldview "worked" for both the observant Mormons
and the scattering of fellow-traveller atheists, like my
father.

What is religion?

UD

Family oriented like minded people does not not equate to religion.

A mistake often done with western religion.

We must really have the theist scared if they have to redefine religion to try to show they are the same as atheists.

I don't believe atheists can be religious. But then I'm an atheist. Go figure.

Gee, I find it so interesting how people who are not Atheists

always assume they know how Atheists think. Yawn.

"Capitalizing Atheism - Why Atheism Shouldn't be Capitalized
Atheism & Atheist are Not Proper Nouns to Capitalize

By Austin Cline
Ads: Atheism What Is Religion Religion God God Belief


One of the earliest signs that a person doesn't really understand what atheism is comes when they spell "atheism" or "atheist" with a capital A in the middle of a sentence. In English, this is only grammatical with proper nouns and thus this signals that the person imagines atheism to a be a proper noun — in other words, some sort of ideology or religion like Christianity or Objectivism. When you see someone inappropriately capitalizing atheism, beware.



Little Things Are Important

At first blush it might appear petty to worry about grammar, but it's not at all petty in this case. It's one thing to make minor mistakes — everyone does and a certain amount of tolerance of mistakes should be maintained. Consistently spelling atheism and atheist with a capital A in the middle of the sentence is not, however, a minor spelling issue.

This matters because it matters if a person falsely believes atheism is an ideology rather than simply the absence of belief in gods. This not only means that they don't even comprehend the basic definition of atheism, but are in fact working from a definition which will cause them to draw all sorts of incorrect conclusions about atheists. Most of the myths about atheism do, in fact, stem from thinking that atheism is a belief system.

So if you see a person capitalizing atheism and atheist in the middle of a sentence, you need to cut short the conversation and educate them about what atheism really is. You need to do this before the conversation starts winding down blind alleys that lead nowhere — a common occurrence with Christians trying to critique an idea about "atheism" which has no connection to reality.



A Sign of Respect?

The most creative excuse I've seen for misspelling atheism and atheist is that it's supposed to be a sign of "respect." I've been assured that the person really did understand that atheism is merely an absence of belief in gods, but was convinced that atheism deserved to be treated with the same respect as Christianity and thus should be capitalized just as Christianity is capitalized.

This excuse is so weak that I hardly know where to begin with it. Perhaps it's sufficient to point out that capitalization in English has nothing whatsoever to do with "respect" and everything to do with separating out proper nouns. If a person really does believe that capitalization is done out of "respect," then they don't even comprehend basic English grammar and you should beware of them even more than if they merely didn’t understand atheism.

If someone wants to "respect" atheism, they should simply make the effort to comprehend what it is and is not before presuming to make declarations about atheism or atheists. It's not that hard."

(http://atheism.about.com/od/definitionofatheism/a/CapitalizingAtheism.htm)

I notice you capitalize christinsanity.

Atheism shall always be capitalized.

copy and paste away.
original thoughts elude you.

Christianity is capitalized because Christ is a proper noun. Brighamites would also be capitalized, as would Nephites. Atheists aren't named after anyone. Theist is a common noun, and so is atheist. So those don't get capitalized, just like polygamist doesn't get capitalized. Mormons get capitalized, but their prophet doesn't.

It's not about who's better or more important. It's only about proper noun vs common noun.

Who died and made Austin Cline head atheist? I didn't get the memo. In fact I thought we weren't even organized, didn't have a leader, didn't have an appointed voice.

I am sure Mr. Cline appreciates that you are bringing his instruction to the masses. It's so nice to have a disciple.

Beats me. I only heard of him because he is quoted by the O.P. Also someone else quoted him today, I forget where.

Apparently he's our supreme leader. :0

I like proper grammar like anybody, but don't be an asshole, or Asshole. No one should ever expect a message board to be written in perfect grammar, nor assume so much meaning from whether a word is capped or not.

But thanks for being a copy-paste dick. True colors and all that.

That was very informative Mr. Foxe, thank you.

(I have a capitalizing tic that I guess comes from reading a lot of 18th century British writing.)

I really miss robertb. He seemed to draw you out into your proper depths. He drew the best out of a lot of us, actually.

Cheers

Human

A funny thing has happened to me. For 34 years I was content to let people tell me how I thought, what I believed in, and who I believed in. I subcontracted my conscious to my family and church. I still get stuck in that mode from time to time. There are some posters on this board that I tend to agree with without even reading their opinions. They have proven themselves in the past and I erroneously believe that they will deliver again. I will likely fight this till my death because it was so integral during my most formative years.

Nothing will ever be my religion again, not if I can help myself.

All one need do is consult the dictionary to answer this silliness.

I'll throw out a quote from an earlier post about atheists:

"If atheism is a religion, then abstinence is a sex position."

Don't recall the author.