Science is inherently atheistic

[Jehanne]

Tyson looks like a funeral home director.

[Angrboda]

A quick note about the legal definition, ignoring other problems with it. The law is a crude instrument and it errs on the side of inclusion instead of aiming for accuracy because its goal is not accuracy but protecting people from abuses. Thus it is more inclusive than it needs to be, and for that reason alone the law does not qualify as a legitimate justification for viewing atheism as a religion, because the law is willing to err in order to accomplish other goals. A more serious attempt at defining religion would be to argue from paradigm cases as to what features things that we intuitively recognize as religions engage in and reasoning that any group which engages in similar things likely falls into the same class on that account. This is the approach noted religious scholar Ninian Smart takes in identifying what he calls the seven dimensions of religion. Examining atheism on Ninian Smart's seven dimensions of religion shows that atheism doesn't share those dimensions with paradigm examples of religion. It is at this point that we appeal to Liebniz' law that things which are identical share the same properties, that if two things possess different properties, they are not the same thing. Intuitively this suggests that atheism is not a religion because it doesn't share these properties with things that are paradigmatically religions. The only flaw here is that we are identifying things that are similar, rather than things that are identical, and so a failure to align on specific properties is not fatal as those properties may not be the relevant ones for establishing similarity and inclusion in a specific class. So this argument is persuasive, but not conclusive. We can see its persuasiveness by doing a thought experiment and removing those parts of a paradigmatic example of religion, such as Christianity, and subtracting all those elements which align with Smart's seven dimensions of religion. Once we remove those aspects which align with the seven dimensions, would we still recognize that thing as a religion? I think not. And that closes the circle. Things that do contain them are religions. Things that don't contain them aren't. Atheism doesn't contain those dimensions or only partially and incompletely contains them, and thus atheism is not a religion.

So, your legal argument be damned, atheism is not a religion in the United States, regardless of what the law says. The law doesn't establish usage and in this case it's inaccurate.

[polymath257]

In the USA, atheism is a religion in the same way that corporations are people: it is a legal fiction.

[Angrboda]

Wait until you have been listening to them throw out the same bullshit for 9 years and then show me how tolerant you are.

I'm too old to tolerate fools gladly.

I've been posting on forums like this for at least that long. 

When I started, I was repeating the usual atheist shibboleths. After an enormous amount of effort and study, I have learned about wonderfully valuable and beautiful things that come to us through the religious traditions of the world. If I had continued to mock, I would have missed out on a great deal. 

I am glad that all the simple-minded bullshit I posted at the beginning has been deleted. 

In Japanese, the same character is used for "divide" and "understand." 分ける means divide and 分かる means understand. Understanding comes in large part through learning to divide. Separating the dumb from the great, understanding why the former should be ignored, and the latter admired.

Well goody for you. As with mocking, your rationalizations here appear to have the same goal, to please yourself about your own behavior. So you're trying to accomplish the same thing, feeling good, you just differ on what you consider the best tactics for accomplishing that and related goals, such as behavior shaping. You are engaged in the same enterprise, just using different tactics. Your choice of said tactics are motivated by certain things, as are the tactics of those who behave differently. Not accusing you of such, but common objections to the tactics are that they are uncivil or are badly motivated. These are nonsense objections. The motivations aren't bad, even if they are different. That would be a value judgement which eventually leads to an ipse dixit justification. The other objection, which many people suggest, is that mocking is not effective at accomplishing the goal, which is presumptuously posited as changing minds. That's not the only goal, nor is it necessarily true that mocking is not effective in changing the behavior of belief and behaviors associated with belief, which, not coincidentally, include promoting such beliefs, something mocking is effective at curbing as anybody engaged in contemporary politics knows all too well. So this, too, leads to an ipse dixit assertion of values about what the goals of discourse are and how best to achieve them.

So, while these may not be your reasons, and I'm glad that you've found something valuable in religion, I don't see your story persuasive. Your inability to criticize and mock the negative aspects of religion while at the same time acquiring an understanding of the positive aspects of religion, if true, would simply be a failure on your part due to your lack of ability, not due to any faults with criticism and mocking. The things that you recognize as positive and beautiful about religion may not be such, or they may be outweighed by the negative. That someone chooses to address the negative and ignore the positive is not a fault, it is simply a choice that is based on their values. You have different values and you find the positive aspects of religion valuable and worthy of representation alongside the negative; that is simply a set of value judgements and choices you have made. That others have different values and have made different choices doesn't make them wrong for having those values and embracing those choices unless one assumes the narcissistic conclusion that your values and choices are the right and proper ones, and anyone who departs from them is therefore wrong and bad. I hope that is not what you're saying.

Beyond that, I haven't seen where you've provided a legitimate defense of your opinions about mocking, but then, it's early morning, I'm tired, and I composed this on the fly without really an intent to engage these subjects. I haven't really been following the arguments in this thread closely, so I may have missed some context or simply misread your post and misinterpreted your points. If I have, please straighten me out. Failing that, from where I stand you haven't delivered a legitimate criticism of mocking the religious.

[The Grand Nudger]

1. Intellectual commencements that have nothing to do with atheism 

*commitments

Yes, they certainly do.

Have you heard claims made by religious people? Have you rejected these claims? 

When you rejected them, did you do so based on reasons, or based on no reasons? If you had reasons to reject the claims made by religious people, then it means you did so according to certain standards. I don't know what they are in your case, but typically such standards include "revelation is not a reliable source of information," or "only repeatable empirical evidence tells us about the world." These are intellectual commitments.

They may very well be good intellectual commitments, but they are nonetheless commitments. 

I suppose it would be convenient to tell you that I had reasons™ for my atheism, but that would be a lie...the truth of the matter is that I'm an atheist for only one reason..because I don't believe.  I now command arguments ranging across the board in defense of the rationality of that state of belief...but I did not command them as a kindergartner..and I was already an atheist, then.

This stands in stark contrast to those who were once religious and then, in effect, argued themselves out of it. I did no such thing, there was no need to do so. Yet another example of a thing that is not shared by atheists as a whole.

[tackattack]

I actually agree min with your first statement. However, reason can be a common ground.

[T0 Th3 M4X]

You're pretty much on point. The simple answer is they are not bound by natural law.  Ghosts may not have been the best example, but I didn't want to pull anybody's strong personal beliefs into it so they didn't feel like I was picking on them.  If you could establish natural laws, then you could study them based on those laws, assuming you could set parameters that they couldn't violate.

But, as always, you can start out with observed behavior and *hypothesize* the laws they operate under, test those laws, etc.

There is simply no reason the scientific method could not be applied to ghosts, goblins, or gods, in theory.

In practice, of course, it fails to study them because of the utter non-existence of them all.

I agree, you could, but you can guarantee "control."  If something is not bound by natural laws, we can't measure it with assumptions of natural  laws. When anything is measured scientifically, it is a measure of relationship.  The starting point is always "null" or "no relationship", and then we try to determine the probability of relationship by controlling things that would skew those results, that way we are only testing the specific relationship in the research between two or more subjects.  If we find nothing, we conclude the null was correct, but we also give a numerical value on the probability that "null" was the right result.  If we see a relationship, we reject the null, and determine the extent of that relationship within those parameters.  That's the beauty of the scientific method.  Once we finish a study, we now the basis for more study by bringing what we know and resetting parameters to advance knowledge of those subjects.  This is also why peer-review is important.  You may (or may not) have done garbage research by not controlling the parameters and someone else can call you on it.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because we all make mistakes and learn.  Next time you can go back and do it with the necessary corrections.

Now if you say a vampire exists that can magically turn into a bat, and you believe you saw him in a cave in a mountain, how the heck are you going to set up parameters to test such a thing?  You could try, but I can just imagine there would be at least a few dozen difficulties, and even more so if such a creature actually existed (safety issues, making sure it doesn't walk through a wall, etc...)  Even finding in could potentially be a pain, and cooperation even more so.

[The Grand Nudger]

I actually agree min with your first statement. However, reason can be a common ground.

Can it......though? 

[Angrboda]

The starting point is always "null" or "no relationship", and then we try to determine the probability of relationship by controlling things that would skew those results, that way we are only testing the specific relationship in the research between two or more subjects.  If we find nothing, we conclude the null was correct, but we also give a numerical value on the probability that "null" was the right result. 

Just a minor point, no, we do not conclude that the null is correct, only that the null is not necessarily incorrect. Those are not the same thing, though they are often confused.

[Minimalist]

I actually agree min with your first statement. However, reason can be a common ground.

Can it......though? 

Depends on who is doing the reasoning, I suppose.  A "scientist" who starts from the presumption that "goddidit" is not likely to get very far.  Then again I would hesitate to call anyone who asserts "goddidit" a "scientist."

Remember the primary difference between science and religion.