Atheism is a form of religion...

[Mudhammam]

...is what I hear apologists claim from time to time. Sam Harris has made the comparison, and I think it's fitting, that religion is a term similar in function to the word "sports," as in it's a general term used to describe a broader activity that involves a certain set of rules for engagement with the world, and most importantly, includes a vast array of specific types of activity that have included beliefs about what is acceptable, or even instructed, behavior, that ranges from bloody and violent to wholly introverted quests for bliss, from a rational and stable strategy for maximizing human interaction to patriarchy and xenophobia.

If this analogy in some way capsulizes the meaning of the word "religion," then atheism is simply sitting out. Not on the bench but perhaps on the stands or at home, watching television, disinterested in any participation at all. The sorts of movements that atheism inspires as attempts to diminish the role of religion in the public domain seem analogous to the activists who, violently or (hopefully) non, fight to moderate certain forms of sport, and concerning those most grotesque forms, ban them from the collective conscious in what is considered rational, and ultimately tolerable, forms of societal behavior.

Thoughts?