Atheist Fundamentalism

[genkaus]

Which is just perplexing, because it takes all of the actual content out of the religion and leaves just the name. If you get to pick and choose whatever you want out of a religion and leave the rest then you're just acting like a person, not with the kind of purpose or unification that would indicate group membership. It'd be like forming a club, but having no declared interests or tenets or requirements. You can call it a club, but that's just people meeting in a room. There's nothing differentiating the members of that club from a bunch of random people stuck in an elevator.

Not just the name. You take out scripture from the religion but you are still left with the culture, traditions, practices, rituals, festivals, certain moral dictates and so on. That is more than enough for most people to gain club membership.

Moreover, if that really is Aslan's point, then the actual authority of religion to govern the lives of others, and especially the lives of those who don't believe in it is essentially nil, because there's no actual content to those beliefs beyond what any given adherent would believe anyway.

Yes, I think moderates believe that government should stay out of religion and that religion should not have power over all aspects of life.

If you have to take away the defining aspects of religion, the tenets, in order to make it palatable and immune to atheist criticism, then there was nothing worthwhile in that religion to begin with.

That again would be a debatable point - whether the tenets actually are the defining aspect of religion.