Is no Religion a Religion.

[Mister Agenda]

Atheism ,another Religion?

Before you dismiss the question ; As recently reported in the New York Times, military personnel who identify themselves as "Atheists" have requested chaplains to tend to their spiritual needs.

So you regard requesting a chaplain as being the defining characteristic of religion? Have you considered that the desireability of having a chaplain may have to do with their entirely unique power to assist troops confidentially? Military psychologists will report your problems to the commander, only the chaplain has the right to confidentiality. Chaplains also have bureacratic powers and influence beyond those of mortal military counselors.

And I believe the request is for humanist chaplains, not all atheists are humanists and humanism is not a synonym for atheist, although most humanists are also atheists.

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Theism = religion. Atheism = without religion.
How hard is that to understand?

Sorry, that's not what those words mean. Neither theism nor atheism are relgions. Anthropologically speaking, a religion could be atheistic. Some arguably are, or at least border on it. A ton of Unitarians are also atheists, for instance.

Theism=believes in at least one God or god.
Atheism=does not believe in at least one God or god.

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It seems like their sitting on the fence, calling themselves atheist, but just in case they also want the chaplain, na, their not for real.

Most of the things a chaplain does for a troop have nothing to do with religion.

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Also, how exactly does a few people who call themselves atheists requesting a chaplain make atheism a religion?

Not all the SS were atheists ,less than half . But they had no chaplains.

What does THAT have to do with the price of tea in China?

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That's irrelevant, and doesn't answer my question. Also, how do you know what proportion of the SS were atheists? I'm pretty sure there weren't any publicly atheist SS going around at that time.

Surveys did not originate with Mr. Neilsen.

So you claim to have a survey? Let's see it.

As recently reported in the New York Times, military personnel who identify themselves as "Atheists" have requested chaplains to tend to their spiritual needs. As the Times article notes, "Defense Department statistics show that about 9,400 of the nation's 1.4 million active-duty military personnel identify themselves as atheists or agnostics, making them a larger subpopulation than Jews, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists in the military." Having their own chaplains, the article explains, would give Atheists a sense of legitimacy and help validate their own system of values and beliefs.

The U.S. Government reports that in 2008 those identifying themselves specifically as "Atheist" composed the 18th largest group of 43 possible categories of "self-described religious identification." The number of persons so identifying themselves almost doubled from seven years earlier. Admittedly, "Atheist" is one of the options listed under "no religion specified," but given that other options for respondents included checking "Agnostic" or "No Religion" or not answering the question at all, it appears that identifying oneself specifically as an Atheist, as opposed to simply "not religious," is growing in appeal. This points to the utility of a distinction made by Jonathan Lanman between "non-theists," those with no particular religious belief, and "strong atheists," those who view religion not only as irrelevant but as misguided and dangerous.

You'd think it would be relevant that what's actually been requested are fully-trained humanist chaplains, which can be supplied by Harvard.