(December 17, 2015 at 3:57 pm)Simon Moon Wrote:(December 17, 2015 at 2:26 pm)Reflex Wrote: I don't agree or disagree. But do not these "clubs" get together for the same reason persons of similar religious beliefs get together?
Not at all.
First of all, atheism is not a "religious belief". It is the lack of religious beliefs.
Atheism has no doctrine, dogma, common text, leader. It is not even a worldview. Which are all reasons why theists do congregate in churches, mosques and temples.
Personally, I think the idea of "atheists churches" is ridiculous, but I also understand some people, fresh from the mental shackles that is theism, may miss some of what their religion provided. A community of a bunch of like minded people congregating once a week.
There is also something called "Sunday Assembly"
Ridiculous or not, some atheists do emulate their religious brethren.
No doctrine? No dogma? No common text? No leader or worldview? We seem to be living in different worlds. It's special pleading if you don't count Darwin's Origin of Species as a common text. No leaders? What about Dawkins and his ilk? They don't count? They're the high priests of vocal atheism. To say atheism has no worldview is like a fish saying there is no water: it's so pervasive it's invisible. Society never tires of using and abusing the media as a weapon of propaganda to get its religiously anti-religion across. It teaches us that atheists are open-minded and reasonable people who believe in the scientific method and who reject superstition. They are writers, scholars and experts who never misrepresent the facts or misuse words, while religionists are retarded Neanderthals who refuse to be persuaded by the brilliance of atheistic arguments, which of course only reinforces how stupid those knuckle-dragging religious types are.
This narrative is repeated ad nauseam in our popular culture: atheists are smart, theists are stupid; atheists love science; theists hate science; atheism is clever, superstitious religion is foolish; atheism is open-minded and tolerant; religion is dogmatic and intolerant; atheism does not seek to impose its views on others; religion seeks to impose its views on others. Four legs good, two legs bad.
There is no technology atheists will not pervert to their cause. The lessons are pumped into our children in government classrooms (for that is what “public schools” are – government indoctrination camps where reading and math have been supplanted by cultural indoctrination to secular humanist ideology). Those lessons are repeated in our television programs. Those lessons are recited dutifully by our news anchors. The goal, apparently, is to bludgeon religionists, and Christians in particular, into silence with the supremacy of their “science” and “reason.”
Technically, one is quite correct to say atheism is not a religion, but it certainly has all the hallmarks of one.