Atheistic religions

[mordant]

If a religion doesn't include a god belief, that doesn't automatically get it off the hook for me. On top of being an atheist, I am also a skeptic. Actually, my skepticism is far more important to me than my atheism, since it is the reason for it in the first place. Anyone who makes big claims about reality has to back them up to me all the same.

You're almost certainly an atheist BECAUSE your'e a skeptic.

Religion that lacks a central deity is a special sub-classification that causes us difficulty because we're so used to associating religion with the worship of a deity. But ... I'm not aware of a non-theistic religion that doesn't believe in some form of the supernatural, some form of discarnate spirits even if they aren't gods, and who don't have some kind of special priest class or monastic order to preserve the esoteric knowledge on which the religion is based. With all the attendant ritual, mysticism and ceremony. They are still trying to gin up belief in asserted capital-T Truth via ritual and tradition. That there's not a conventional overtly defined deity at the center of it, almost doesn't matter.

I guess if nothing else it demonstrates that god isn't as indispensable as god-worshippers want to make him -- even for religion.