Is Atheism a Religion? Why or why not?

[The Architect Of Fate]

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. 

Sigh

Actually, we are talking about objective reality. You are making claims about reality and I'm not buying them. Again if the pro-mars people are making a reality-based claim about the existence of Mars unless they can prove Mars exists I am perfectly within my right to not accept the reality-based claims about Mars. It's amazing you wrote all this out only to completely miss the point 

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.

Again we don't need to assign percentages it remains perfectly sound to reject the claim Mars exists till the people claiming it exists to prove it. This really isn't complicated