Is Atheism a Religion? Why or why not?

[Nishant Xavier]

If your nation is America, as I think it is, a certain historical figure disagrees. Oh yeah, his name also happens to be Abraham Lincoln, lol. Like the Holy Bible had said long ago, that Blessed is the Nation whose God is the Lord, Lincoln, quoting that passage and reflecting on it, affirming it to be proven by all history, said:

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"Whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord;

And, insomuch as we know that by His divine law nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us (!)

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Taken from: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/document...and-prayer

Now, let's get back to the issue. One of the absurd things I heard Mr. Hitchens say in his debate where he got badly defeated by Dr. Craig, even according to Atheistic Websites, was: "There's no claim I know to make that Atheism is True, because Atheism is the Proposition that a Certain Proposition isn't True". This is an elementary/textbook logical fallacy, a classic Hitchensism. Who told you this, Hitchens? Granted that for a Proposition P, Q is the negation of P, the affirmation that P is not True, it in no way follows that Q does not have a Truth Value of its own. Of course, it does, the opposite Truth Value. Thus, if P is the Proposition "It is raining outside", Q, the negation of P, "It is not raining outside" of course has a Truth Value of its own, contra Hitchens. If P is True, Q is false. If Q is true, P is false. This is sheer sophistry from MA Hitchens.

Now, let's take some "definitions" of Atheism that have been proffered on this thread:

Helios: "(A): I lack belief in the theistic claim there is a god 

(T) I claim there is a god"

Your statement is not about objective reality, but a subjective opinion, hence the "I"s in both. Re-formulate it without involving an "I" in either. Also, it would follow, for each Atheist and Theist, both A and T are true, which is trivial; because both respectively either lack belief or claim there is a god. So what does that tell us? Nothing. Whereas as with A-Mars-ism, if you define it as whether Mars exists or not, then that's a statement about reality, not about a person's opinion on it.

If you want to define G: "It is uncertain whether there is a God or not", that would be Agnosticism. 

Also, something is only a Proposition if it has a non-trivial Truth Value: "In mathematics, a proposition is a statement that can either be found to be true or false. The truth value is true if the proposition is true". https://study.com/learn/lesson/propositi...ables.html The way you've defined A and T, every Atheist would find A true in his own mind, and every Theist T true in his. 

Brian:

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But A-Mars-ism would NOT be a claim - in this context- that Mars does not exist. 'I believe Mars does not exist' and 'I do not believe Mars exist' are not the same statement. Additionally, the positive claim that Mars does not exist isn't the same as lacking the belief that it does exist.

Even if the atheist lack of belief in gods turns out to be false, that doesn't negate the lack of that belief, it just makes it wrong. There is a MASSIVE semantic difference between 'Gods do not exist' and 'I do not believe gods exist'.

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Ok, agreed. "I believe Mars does not exist" and "I do not believe Mars exists" are not the same; however, that's just a question of degrees. A dogmatic "strong" A-Mars-ist would say, I absolutely affirm, with 100% certainty, that no such thing as a Planet Mars exists! A non-dogmatic "weak" (to use the same language Dawkins uses on his "scale"), non-dogmatic A-Mars-ist would say, "I lack a belief in the Planet Mars. I'm fairly sure no such Planet exists, maybe 90% sure. However, I don't want to affirm absolutely that it could not exist". Whether that or something like that is what Dawkins meant by giving himself a 6.9, I don't know.

But again, the issue is, when you have an "I" in your definition, then it confuses the issue. The statement "Mars exists/Mars does not exist" is very clear and is a statement about objective reality that can be falsified or not and does not depend on you or me, Brian.