Arguing with friend on whether we're cult-like

[Anomalocaris]

I was arguing with a friend (implicit atheist, but simply labels herself "agnostic" or "don't care") over email who said that people such as myself (explicit atheist who tends to be quite vocal about it) are being cult-like.

She wasn't suggesting atheism itself is a religion or cult, but simply that people who spend a lot of time talking about it, hanging out with other atheists, watching atheist YouTube videos, reading atheist books, donating to secular charities, and getting all riled up about religion are acting like we're in a cult. And places like TAM are our holy pilgrimages (I've never been to TAM - that was what started the argument, I was talking about wanting to go).

Also she said we "talk funny" because we use terms like "logical fallacy" and "god of the gaps" which normal people (I don't know what 'normal people' are) don't use in conversation, and that we just parrot arguments by Richard Dawkins instead of thinking for ourselves, and we should just be quiet and act like "normal" atheists and agnostics and be nice. She also said that if I had kids (I don't yet) I'd probably be reading them Dawkins as bedtime stories to indoctrinate them.

Are there any atheists like me here who get this? Does she have any valid points about us, or some of us? I know I enjoy listening to podcasts and following what's going on in the atheist visibility movement or atheist community or whatever you want to call it that doesn't sound pretentious. And I am aware of the standard kind of fallacies theists make in their repeated, unoriginal arguments but I don't think I'm incapable of thinking for myself.

I said we're not a cult because there's no dogma, and she said that we have things we dogmatically believe, even though they might be correct we don't think them up for ourselves, just learn them from other atheists and go around repeating them. I want to think I'm a free thinker who is capable of understanding the world without just parroting high-profile atheists. She hurt my feelings, but I don't know what to say now, and I don't like fighting with friends it's upsetting.

No, she does not. Because we are examinig the same underlying phenomenon with its own causes and mechanism, (Theism, it's fundamental baselessness, and it appearent shaping by common human behavioral and perceptive quirks), one should expect that a good proportion of observant people will detect this mechanism and perceive these cause, and thus arrive at similar overall conclusions about the nature of this mechanisms. The fact that many agree does not mean we parrot each other or Richard Dawkins. Independent minded people with a respect for rigorous observation need not read Dawkins or Menkin or Harris to observe the origin of belief in god has much to do in plastering over the need to studiously attack ignorance (God of gaps) and the mechansim of continued belief in god has much to do with its permissiveness towards decadant pleasures of wish thinking (believe him cuz he loves you).

Any particular god, on the other hand, is the end product of a long string of parroting. No amount of observation and analysis, only brainless parroting, would lead one to believe a apocolyptic preacher nailed like a bug to a cross by the romans infact is the one and the same as a being, supposedly intelligent, all knowing, capable of doing anything, who impreganated the preacher's mother so the virgin can give birth to himself. Even less could we conclude with parroting that we must debase our own will, personality, or independence of intellect so as to seek his forgiveness for a crime which could hardly be a crime in any reasonable society, which we have no evidence was ever committed, and we ourselves most absolutely certainly did not commit.