A great deal of “believers” seems to suffer the delusion that Atheism is some kind of religion. On the Theist ”agenda” seem to be a claim that Atheism isn’t anymore ”scientific” than Theism. And that Theism doesn’t promote “a state of stupidity” in Theists.
Atheism, which basically is absence of faith in God, in itself, might not be particularly scientific. The same can of course be said about Theism.
There can be no doubt however that Theism actively promote and perpetuate “stupidity” in the form of the most blatant superstition. Most if us here have a common background in the Watchtower organization and we have all experienced the extreme stupidity promoted by the Watchtower Society. We have also been able to observe the same stupidity displayed by Jehovah's Witnesses “half brothers”, the fundamentalists, not to mention the stupidity we can see are being promoted by Islam. Now what do I mean by stupidity here? I mean all the superstitious ideas held and promoted by Theists. Superstition - like believing in demons, resurrection, virgin birth, miracles like walking on water, etc. “Faith is to the human what sand is to the ostrich”.
This does not necessarily mean that Theists are more stupid that the Atheists, but only that Theist let themselves succumb to their religious emotions and accept things that have absolutely nothing to do with sense and logic. Atheists having dismissed such obvious superstition and allowed themselves to be sceptic tend to look to science for explanations of the origin and meaning of life and such existential questions.
For people who believe in God, it somehow seems like a very big deal that not accepting the existence of God require faith, just like it require faith to accept the existence of God. I agree that technically it is an act of “faith” not to accept the existence of God, as it is impossible to prove that he doesn’t exist. But in reality the two different forms of “faith” can’t be compared at all. All they have in common is merely the word "faith".
No one can prove that, Thor, Shiva, Santa, the tooth fairy, Bigfoot etc don’t exist either, still I do not “believe” in them, I don’t think that NOT believing in them make me very religious and that NOT “believing” in God, make me part of a religion, within any means of any sane definition. To have faith in the existence of God (particularly the one described in the Bible) also require the believer to accept a set of additional extremely superstitious notions as mentioned above. Of course the superstition will vary from fundamentalists to the more “liberal” believers, but still it is a whole different world. So to compare the simple “faith” in the non-existence of God or God’s with the complete set of superstition shared by the religious community is of course quite hopeless.
To put a little more “meat on the bone” the theist’s also like to postulate that confidence in evolution require faith, and then voila, they have created a new religion they call atheism. Somehow this seems to be very comforting for them. There might be people who have a religious like relationship to evolution; but I hardly think they are in any majority. The whole idea that atheism is a kind of religion seems to me to be extremely simplistic and far-fetched.
Norm.