by Mark Brewer

Created on: July 02, 2008

Why Atheism is not a Religion

Often when I decide to express my atheism (or "unbelief" as Ghazali would have put it) in public, I am mostly expected to defend my position. People of faith often observe that I hold a passion for philosophy and science and query as to whether I might possess as strong a faith as them. Could my atheism possibly even be classed as a religion in itself? For the individual holding the faith card, this appealing argument would probably seem almost like a trump.

When I first began my philosophical studies and could usually rely on others, such as my college teachers, to aid in my formulation of arguments, I found this one to be particularly useful. After all I, like most individuals of our time, had fallen victim to the post modern values that are ingrained within us at an early age. I was a spokesman for needless subjectivity and a defender of potentially dangerous value systems. It is easy to make the jump from these hideously subjective thought-traps to the conclusion that a keen interest or a professed absence of belief is actually a substitute for religion. It is likely that I used the same argument myself in casual debate. However, this line of logic, whilst satisfying to a religious True Believer, is an example of misleadingly nonsensical reasoning.

Foremost, the term atheism by definition cannot be used as a label to define any one individual belief system and far less a religious one. Often the individual attempts to do so based on a common misunderstanding. Words like atheism, theism, monotheism or pantheism are, roughly speaking, descriptors for an individual's intellectual disposition on god(s)/God. (If the language of this analogy isn't suited to you, try to think of them as the allegorical umbrella under which your belief system shelters.) Ideally, one would have to have this descriptor in place before even contemplating which individual religion they would believe in. The word atheism defines itself as the complete opposition to even entertaining an opinion on any kind of Supreme Being. Therefore with the atheism descriptor in place, nothing thereafter can be termed as religious, for the descriptor defines a complete absence of belief in any kind of theology.

The analogy is a crucial element in the toolkit of any philosopher of worth and I have devised what I would term as an adequate one to express the value of such language. Human, conversational language holds a direct parallel to the language of computer programming.

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