24th Confession

Recently, one commented to me that atheism is a religion as much as not smoking is a habit.  I consider that an interesting proposition: after all, is a habit defined only by the observance?  Or can the thousands of recovering smokers consider their "not smoking" to be a habit that they are creating day by day?  Or perhaps a habit is more accurately called a force of personal choice, made unconscious by repetition, to one's benefit or detriment.

Either way, the main focus of the argument was that atheism is not a religion.  While I respect that point of view, I feel that I must disagree.  The hallmarks of any religion are a set of rules, behaviors, rewards, and incentives based around a particular belief; most of the time, these include a creation myth, an explanation of world events, a view on the afterlife, and ethical standpoints.  The rest of the trappings - the sacred texts, the relics, the vestments and music and so on - are peculiar to whichever sect you might study, and of little major relevance other than to enforce a sense of commonality and unity across a local establishment.

So, then, is atheism a religion?  The main "rule" seems to be that there is no Deity, save perhaps the human mind.  Logic, science, and humans seem to be the holy trinity, with the Big Bang Theory servicing as a creation myth.  I use the term "myth" not as a slight against my atheist friends, but rather to serve as a reminder that any story told from that far back without some kind of physical proof must remain a story.  I can no more explain the Christian creation story than they can explain how a precisely ordered everything came from a large explosive nothing.  But it's these traditional stories that are accepted as history that shape and mold the entire worldview of both Christians, atheists, Muslims, Wiccans, and the like.

Thus, this chaotic creation story underpins some of the basic tenants of a world without a God: nothing is ever planned, everything is random, circumstances are accidents, and man has no intrinsic value except from being the last step (so far) in a great chain of evolutionary steps.  After one dies, there is nothing but release and decay, so one ought to eat, drink, and be merry with the time that one has.  There are no rewards save the earthly pleasures one has, there are no great "Reasons" or anything other than natural knowledge, and life is nothing more than a complex biological function.

There are prophets of atheism: Nietzsche, Darwin, Hawkings, Fry.  There are zealots who will argue the non-existence of God for hours on end.  Even the agnostics who have stopped searching are a subset of atheists; otherwise, it'd be an important enough decision that they'd come down on one side of the post or the other.  There is a degree of faith involved in atheism, one to which  I can only dream of aspiring: that nothing matters in the long run.

I wish I had enough time and wherewithal to refute each of these points.  I'm tired, though; I can't really bring myself to argue with it anymore right now.  Eventually, perhaps, but not today.