THen you are not an atheist, you are an agostic.
It's not because your are not theist that you are automatically an atheist or that you are not and atheist that you are a theist. There is an in between, it is not only black or white.

Quit trying to frame atheism like a religion or having religious traits.

Religion, out of my sociology textbook, is defined as a social institution involving beliefs and practices based on recognizing the sacred.

Atheism is not a social institution, nor does it consider anything supernatural as sacred.
Atheists don't have rituals, they don't have totems, and they don't have shaman, as all religions do.

Again stop saying the apple is like the orange. They're two different things.

A fence to straddle?

Thank for watching the video, though.

I said that the believe that God doesn't exist is religious, because it's a believe that can't be proven. I didn't say it's a religion.

When you guys are done hashing this out can you take a shot a figuring out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? That's been bugging me for a while...

There's a difference between a positive assertion of belief in the existence of a god and the dismissal of that assertion of belief. To say that "I do not believe in a god or gods" is not a religious statement. It's a statement of irreligion.

I love when people try to call atheism a religion to try to drag it down to the level of theists, because they know theism is an outrageous claim with no evidence to back it up.

Is the belief that there isn't a flying spaghetti monster on the moon a religion too? Or have traits of religiosity as you claim atheism has?

By your logic it is. I don't believe in Santa Claus either, is my lack of belief in Santa dogmatic too?

This conversation is retarded.

This post was edited by Skinned on Oct 12 2011 01:50pm

Claiming that there is no God is an outrageous claim with no evidence to back it up. What's your point? Everything atheists say about theists could be said to them as well. Hypocrisy much?
When you claim that God doesn't exist, it's on the same the same level that when a theist claim that God exists.
To say "I do not believe that there is a god" is agnostic, because you accept that your own truth might not be the universal truth. It is not atheist. Atheism is claiming that God doesn't exist, theism is claiming that God does exist. If you say that you THINK that God exists/does not exist, because you are not claiming to everyone that what you think is the truth is the real truth, because you are not 100% sure about your beleif, you are agnostic, not atheist. HOWEVER, when you say "there is no God", you claim what you think is truth as the universal truth, which is the same thing as when a theist says that "God exists" because he assumes that what he thinks is the truth is the absoluth truth.

Oh semantics. How you darken our door

The burden of proof is on the one making outrageous claims.
Do you want us to prove that virgins don't have children?
Do you want us to prove that the Earth is over 6000 years old?
Do you want us to prove that humans have evolved from something that wasn't human as we view it now?
Do you want us to prove that the Sun and planets don't revolve around the Earth?

Where are you trying to go with this?

Claiming not to believe in intelligent design isn't an outrageous claim that requires faith to believe.
Claiming that there is an intelligent being that created everything and that women are walking McRib sandwiches is what takes faith.