Neil Degrasse Tyson

[Dystopia]

Unless you want to seriously argue that NDT knowingly believes in a god? Because anything otherwise, even saying "I don't know" to the question, is basically, for all intents and purposes == to not believing. And that is the only requirement for being called an atheist.

This is true however like he said he just thinks there shouldn't be a word for atheism - It's not that I agree with him, but it's his position, he doesn't call himself an atheist just like he doesn't call himself an agolfist.

As for him being rather ignorant of what atheism is or isn't or how he might be connecting it to things it's not inherently connected to... yeah, that's also annoying, since it makes it harder for the actual atheist activists (of whom I am not a part of) to fight misconceptions about atheists. NDT linking it to a philosophy or saying that it comes with baggage gives theists a person in a position of "authority" to point to and say, "he says its a philosophy and he's really smart an stuff, so he's right and you're wrong!" and it just makes it harder to explain how *I* see atheism to anyone who talks to me about it. (Which is hardly ever.)

I don't think he called atheism a philosophy - Though being an atheist can cause people to have a lot of philosophical questions that religions often answer - He just said that associating with any label, whether it is an idea, a philosophy, a position of belief, etc, brings baggage and that's true for any category of people. In this case, the baggage is probably being associated with people like Richard Dawkins who he once said disagrees with when it comes to the methodology.