Atheism is a religion.

[Umberto]

Okay first of all I want to know that right know I am a little angry, but don’t let that stop from speaking your mind okay.
Now the stuff is this. I was talking with a creationist that suffers from atheophobia. Even when she is an atheophobic she doesn't encourage anyone to hurt atheist however she constantly do what most atheophobics do, you know: diminish, ridicules, ignore, mock, denigrate and insult atheism. And while we were talking she drops out the classical “Atheism is a religion.” Witch of course I claim it wasn’t truth. And imagine my surprise when she gave me a list of names and locations and examples of atheist churches. I am from a third world country and in here there aren't such churches much less heard of anything like that. And so I decided to look and prove that there aren’t such things, which I can’t because there are in fact atheist churches.
So I was wondering if anyone could be so kind of explaining to me WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WITH THOSE CHURCHES!!

Because I always thought that CREATING A CHURCH IS THE LAST DAMN THING WE ATHEIST WILL DO!
Why would we create them in the first place. What would atheists go there? What the hell do they do there? And most important: WHY THE HELL DO THOSE ATHEISTS THINK THAT ASSIST TO A CHURCH ISN’T RELIGIOUS?

Take a breath... I would agree that the use of the term 'church' to describe the places where these atheists, humanists, naturalists, etc. gather is ill conceived. In most circumstances they are similar to UU churches where they hold lectures on secular topics, sing encouraging songs, report on issues of mutual concern like the separation of church and state, and carry out social networking that would otherwise have been conducted at a religious church. In many cases this satisfies the desire of those atheist families, who can remember positive social experiences that revolved around church functions, without the cloud of theism. They could call them something else but most other terms which might be more appropriate usually have negative political connotations. In any case, having a church in the social sense is not a circumstance of being a religion which requires a doctrine. In all the cases that I'm familiar with, these churches do not profess a common doctrine other than the shared acknowledgement that they perceive no evidence of God.