Margaret Atwood claims atheism is a religion

[robvalue]

It's a word, words can have many definitions. Philosophers don't get to claim a word.

To be sure that is what they mean, I'd have to ask them if they mean that. That is the reality. In general, people don't know themselves what they are asking me.

If we couple the question with the philosophical definition, then sure. All is well. But this very topic is all about people having conversations without a clue what the agreed definitions are, probably 75% of people don't know the proper definition of atheism.

So I guess you could say the philosophical question "of God", with an implied definition, is different than the Joe Blogs "Do you believe in God".