Way back in 1999, I became a National Geographic magazine subscriber. Kept that subscription until 2016, when I let it run out. Why?
Towards the end of 2015, National Geographic was bought by Fox. With that, some of its articles became biased to reflect Fox's views.
The article you show here is from 2016 and is a prime example of that bias.
It's true that, when you poll people about their religion, you need to include the option of "none". Personally, I think the most honest category for these "nones" would be "N/A" (not applicable). This would make it clear that a religious label makes no sense for this group of people and would have saved us the effort of even having to refute the claim that atheism is a religion.
Society's biases show through in that faulty categorization, I suppose.
About the atheist churches, they exist, yes. Some people leave their childhood faiths, coming to be aware that their previous beliefs were erroneous, but still feeling the need for the social connection that a church gathering provided. We are, after all, social animals.
To maintain such a social gathering, some groups have come to mimic many of the church's rituals, but with no deity involved, nor invoked.
As it is when I join a group of friends to go play football on a rented pitch, where each of us contributes to the rental, I suppose those atheist gatherings also need to pay for the space they occupy and thus require those attending to contribute. While the groups are small, everyone needs to pitch in... As the groups become large enough, socialist standards start to apply and those who can afford more tend to contribute more, while those who can't, can contribute nothing. One can say that the Christian church is auto-socialist in this regard, as people do this by themselves, without the church imposing anything.
Towards the end of 2015, National Geographic was bought by Fox. With that, some of its articles became biased to reflect Fox's views.
The article you show here is from 2016 and is a prime example of that bias.
It's true that, when you poll people about their religion, you need to include the option of "none". Personally, I think the most honest category for these "nones" would be "N/A" (not applicable). This would make it clear that a religious label makes no sense for this group of people and would have saved us the effort of even having to refute the claim that atheism is a religion.
Society's biases show through in that faulty categorization, I suppose.
About the atheist churches, they exist, yes. Some people leave their childhood faiths, coming to be aware that their previous beliefs were erroneous, but still feeling the need for the social connection that a church gathering provided. We are, after all, social animals.
To maintain such a social gathering, some groups have come to mimic many of the church's rituals, but with no deity involved, nor invoked.
As it is when I join a group of friends to go play football on a rented pitch, where each of us contributes to the rental, I suppose those atheist gatherings also need to pay for the space they occupy and thus require those attending to contribute. While the groups are small, everyone needs to pitch in... As the groups become large enough, socialist standards start to apply and those who can afford more tend to contribute more, while those who can't, can contribute nothing. One can say that the Christian church is auto-socialist in this regard, as people do this by themselves, without the church imposing anything.