This is in no way a criticism, but Atheism is surely the most puritanical, difficult and strict religion of all, requiring more faith, belief and unswerving dedication than any other to follow. By rejecting and dismissing anything unscientific, unworldly, 'supernatural' or weird, it just has to be not only highly vulnerable, but wide open to criticism from anyone who wants to score a few, easy points? Personally, I eschew all organised religions, and the hypocrites, bigots and easily led simpletons who follow them, since I absolutely refuse to be TOLD by anyone claiming to have 'divine answers' what to believe, what to worship, how to behave or what is right and wrong. Atheism is, to me, just about the most unsatisfactory philosophies and/or religions af all!
Holy Jeebus Chrust. That's just about the most gigantic strawman I ever saw, well done.
No one is telling anyone to be an atheist. Saying "
there is no God, and religion is bullshit" is an opinion. Everybody is entitled to an opinion, and everybody is entitled to say their opinion publicly. And an opinion is not something which it is needed to have blind faith in, which you seem to think. Opinions are maleable, they can change. Not so with faith, you either believe or you don't believe. (Well, I guess you can doubt, but that makes you a bad theist, doesn't it?)
How can atheism be puritanical? That's nonsense. Atheism just means lack of faith in a God or gods. There's no dogma or intrinsic doctrine "to follow" in atheism. There's nothing you have to do or not do, as an atheist. There's no moral or ethic precepts.
There's communist atheists, fascist atheists, nihilist atheists, libertarian atheists, humanist atheists, buddhist atheists, etc ad nauseam.
That much should be obvious, but apparently it isn't.
If you, by "difficult and strict" mean that being an atheist demands some kind of fanaticism or zealous faith, then you are again talking complete rubbish. Atheism can take what ever shape you want, everything from agnosticism: finding it quite unlikely that there is a God, and keeping it to oneself, to being absolutely sure there's no God, and being full on anti-theistic about it, due to all the religious bullshit in the world. I can personally relate to the whole spectrum.
And unsatisfactory? You know what I would find unsatisfactory? To find my answers about life and the universe, in a 3000 years old bronze-age book, written by people who didn't know why it rained, and who believed the earth was flat and that the heavens rested on pillars. That would be unsatisfactory, seriously unsatisfactory.
Atheism doesn't demand faith, like religion does, just a willingness to acknowledge that we don't know everything (yet ) Most religion are actually extremely arrogant by claiming they have all the answers to something so unfathomable as our existence and the universe. In this way science is humble, since it never claims to have any absolute answers, while the arrogance of theism is complete. "
God did it all with magic - end of topic".
Most atheists have become atheists, not by conversion as with religions, but through a logical line of reasoning, often based on science.
Generally, the scientific discoveries about the universe around us, done in the age of enlightenment, is what really set atheism going. Because it really became much more difficult to believe in magic and miracles, once we discovered the fundamental laws of nature. Of cause, some people persist with superstitions, maybe because it is a basic psychological need of humans to anthropomorphize the universe, and thus embue a meaning into a meaningless existence.
Anyway, I think science and atheism are linked.
And the difference between a scientific worldview and a theistic one, is that the scientific worldview is verifiable.
For instance, if I claim, that by using Newtons laws of gravity, it's possible to bring a rocket into space, and that they therefore are true. You can test it by using the same laws, and thereby bring your own rocket into space. Therefore, Newtons laws of gravity are verifiable. Everytime some one test them, they get the same results.
The laws have never ever fail, which is why they are called "laws". *(1)
Now oppose that to a claim of "
Jesus Christ is the son of God" (the son of Yahve or El, that is)
There is no way of verifiying that! For all we know Jesus could be the son of Odin, or the son of Satan, because how do you know that Satan didn't write the bible to fool humans to worship his son?
Or maybe Jesus was just an ordinary man, or maybe he didn't exist at all? There's actually no real evidence of either Jesus having lived, or the purported tall stories in the new testament being true. And the 4 different gospels can't really agree on the story anyway. Add to that, that the new testament was written by anonymous authors, the earliest 50 years after Jesus alleged death, so it's completely useless as any kind of witness account, which it actually doesn't claim to be anyway.
I guess that's why it's called faith, I suppose.
But nevermind that, if someone can find wisdom in the new and old testament, then good for them. I know I can't, and to me it's just nonsense from begining to end. I have to say preemptively that the historicity of Jesus and the bible is something I really couldn't be bothered less to discuss.
In the age we live in, we have developed "the scientific method", which in my opinion makes faith-based physics obsolete, which is basically what religion is. An attempt to explain the world around us by faith instead of knowledge.
Some people will claim that physics and science is about the physical world, while theism is about the spiritual world. Well, in my opinion, neuroscience has proven that there is no soul, which means there's no spiritual world either, obviously, this is not a fact but rather my conclusion on the existing data. Remember, each and every spiritual or religious experience is always completely subjective and unverifiable.
Add to that, they don't conform to each other. For instance, many people have completely different NDE's. If you, when clinically dead really experience what will happen after death, then everybody should have more or less the same experience. Well, folks don't. There's a wide variety of NDE's reported.
So, I personally find it most likely that NDE's are just made up in our brains, which actually is the creator of our reality anyway, and therefore certainly has what it needs to make us experience anything it might want, and that even in a hyperrealistic way.
And, as others have said, atheism is neither a philosophy or a religion, although the question of wether there exists a God or not, sure is a philosophical question in itself.
Well, that became a bit longer than I intended, and it wen't kind of off-topic, sorry about that. Horray for espresso induced rants, lol. And Voyager3, I saw some of you other posts after writing this, and I find your last one making a bit more sense than your 2 first in this thread, and I see we have some common ground there. And I'd comment on them too if I wasn't on my tablet.
*(1): The caveat here is; that in science, nothing is ever set in stone, and in the case of gravity, we saw Einstein expound on this in his general theory of relativity. But that doesn't make Newtons laws of gravity obsolete. I believe that when the graviton one day is found, or what ever kind of field that is responsible for spacetime dilation, it will revolutionise physics, and again elaborate on Einsteins theory of general relativity.
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
I think that everywhere has a problem with people being militantly or aggressively atheistic in the same way that people take issue to overt religious declarations. In Australia, there is a conservative religious right but its pretty powerless. Most would be slightly suspicious of organised religion (and for good reason if you know whats happening in Australia re: child abuse and institutions) but would possibly go to church at Christmas or send their children to Christian schools. I don't think the majority would believe in god in Australia. So atheism is seen as pretty much normal, though in Austrlia you never make any claims about yourself at all... I have my own spiritual views and as a conversation topic they go absolutely nowehere to most in my immediate vicinity... 
