religion includes Christianity,Atheism ?

[Bombt]

It takes faith to believe in Atheism as much as it takes to believe in Christianity !(maybe one is harder than the other )
Does that make Atheism a religion ?

[Kylyssa]

How much faith does it take for you to not believe in Zeus?  How much faith does it take for you to not believe in evolution?  Think of something you don't believe in and then think about how much (or little) faith it takes for you to not believe in it.  

It takes as little faith for an Atheist to not believe in Yahweh as it takes for you to not believe in Thor.

[JillSwift]

It takes faith to believe in Atheism as much as it takes to believe in Christianity !(maybe one is harder than the other )
Does that make Atheism a religion ?

Atheism is not a belief. It is a lack of belief. Thus, no faith is required.

[Dretlin]

It takes faith to believe in Atheism as much as it takes to believe in Christianity !(maybe one is harder than the other )
Does that make Atheism a religion ?

Atheism has no faith. None.

Atheism is not a religion because it does not meet a single requirement for one. Thank goodness.

[elliebean]

Answer this question for me: why is it so important/interesting to you that atheism should be a religion or require faith?


(note the lowercase 'a' in 'atheism', we don't capitalize it because it isn't a religion)




(whereas I don't capitalize 'christianity' either because I don't recognize its alleged authority)

[Tank]

It takes faith to believe in Atheism as much as it takes to believe in Christianity !(maybe one is harder than the other )
Does that make Atheism a religion ?

Why do you care? Surly it's of no concern to you what atheists think as we're wrong from your perspective right?
I don't care what you believe, as long as you keep it to yourself.

[Davin]

It takes faith to believe in Atheism as much as it takes to believe in Christianity !(maybe one is harder than the other )
Does that make Atheism a religion ?

No, it takes faith to believe in something and it takes no faith to not believe in something.
No. Is theism a religion?

[Asmodean]

Atheism is not a belief. It is a lack of belief. Thus, no faith is required.

That right there is how I'd put it.

[Gawen]

When a person says they have faith in you that you will succeed in some sort of task, that "faith" is not the same type of faith as faith in some ancient person flying on a carpet or withering fig trees or rising from being dead for 3 days.
Having faith in a doctor curing you of some awful, but curable sickness is not the same as praying to some god to be cured.

Every one of us agnostics and atheists have been chided for "our faith" in things, for our hypocrisy for having faith in the universe and denying that we have a faith in the non-existence of God. That theistic argument is specious and it really pisses me off...*grinnin*. Religious faith is the adversary to rationalism. Most times there is an implication that it is in some way a good thing, but it isn't because belief is necessary for action. With no beliefs, man cannot function.

There is a difference between belief and faith, I think. If I were to say I believe there is no God, it is not a faith, it is a belief. I believe thousands of other things with varying degrees of resistance to changing my opinion. I believe that matter does not normally come into existence in my everyday life but I also believe that particle physicists observe pairs of particles appearing out of the vacuum.

The faith defines the cult.  Christianity and other faith based beliefs systems is not a belief, it is a faith in my opinion. It requires no proof (proof implies doubt, doubt is a sin, faith is a virtue). It needs no evidence to support it.

[hismikeness]

If atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair color.

Link

[SSY]

"Atheism is a religion, like not collecting stamps is a hobby"

I think Christians and the like want to prove atheism is faith based, so as to be able to turn arguments of the form "You don't use evidence to form your beliefs, your conclusions are not based on reality" against us, if atheism were based on faith, this would be valid, unfortunately for them, atheism is not.

[Bombt]

Im interested on what you guys think Im not against u but not for you. Most of you have read the Bible so you guys know what we believe so Im interested to try and see your point of view as a person and not as a Christian . How did things come to existence ?

[KDbeads]

No one really knows for sure how things got here.  There are many theories and ideas, some having more validity than others.
As for me personally, I'm more of a big bang kinda person.  The quantum physics used to explain the theory make sense to me.  But I'm also ok with not knowing for certain how it all began, it's just something us humans haven't figured out yet.

[elliebean]

How did things come to existence ?

I don't assume "things" ever did "come to existence"; maybe everything has always been around, in various forms, before taking on the form of what we see now. I don't presume to know, nor do I think I'm really intelligent enough to figure it out. Smarter people than I have come up with some very probable answers and that's fine with me, as it doesn't affect my life one way or the other.

I am intelligent enough to think about gods, though (as everyone must be; it isn't complicated), and I've found nothing to even suggest there might be any; not even a good enough reason to wonder if there could be. If I give it any thought at all, it's to wonder how other people become so convinced of it; mainly because I'm interested it how people think, but also because it's frustrating to see them repeatedly fail to fully comprehend non-belief or fail to examine their own belief as critically as they do others'. I mean, I can understand being comfortable with uncertainty, "I don't know, so I have no answer", but I don't get how one can be comfortable continually asserting something wrong, just because they didn't want to check to make sure - especially after it's been explicitly pointed out to them using the same solid, rational arguments they would have accepted for anything else.

[pinkocommie]

Im interested on what you guys think Im not against u but not for you. Most of you have read the Bible so you guys know what we believe so Im interested to try and see your point of view as a person and not as a Christian . How did things come to existence ?

I've read parts of the bible, but I was never religious so I don't have intimate knowledge of how a religious person thinks.  Honestly, I don't understand religious thinking at all sometimes, but I do try to understand it.  As someone who was never seriously told things came into existence via a creation story, I'm pretty comfortable with saying 'I don't know' when asked that question, because I don't.  I don't think anyone does, not yet, and it's possible that we never will know.  I know that the question is very complicated and that in order for me to be in a position to even feel comfortable supposing an answer, I would have to really dedicate my time to learning about the vast and ever changing complexity of space.  That's not to say that supposing an answer is bad, it's just not something I personally feel comfortable doing about this specific subject given my level of education about it.

The thing that always surprises me is that my response - I don't know - is often poorly received by religious people.  I don't know the specifics of how things came to existence, but I'm also not comfortable even assuming that 'things' even had a beginning.  There's no reason (that I know of) to assume that just because planets and people and stars and a lot of other things have a beginning and an end, that everything has a beginning and an end.