The_root_of_all_evil said:
Silva said:
secular =/= religious,
therefore religion =/= atheism.
Despite occasional confusion, secularism is not necessarily synonymous with atheism nor agnosticism, it is instead the belief that religion and authority should be separate
The Secular Clergy is still infact religious.
Restating something enough times does not make it true.
There's also a strawman in there, as the last line would be atheism =/= religion, if you're following standard conventions.
Then I failed to put my point across, because you're not responding to my actual point. I blame my bad attempt at simplifying the argument into math, my apologies.
Secular means "separate from religion" in political and governmental terms. In the sense I was using it, "secular" was a synonym for "non-religious". You don't call relativists religious, do you? Of course you don't, they can be
either religious
or non-religious and still be relativists. The same is true for atheism, in the sense that it is non-religious and yet there is a belief intrinsic to the word.
Restating something? I was making a specific, new refute of your argument that "atheism is a belief system and therefore a religion", which is poppycock. Atheism is a philosophy and a disbelief. A "belief system", as the phrase is used by sociologists, psychologists, and any other academic, does not have to be a religion.
And to add a fresh point, so that this isn't just me trying to explain something: religions, by stricter definitions, have to be recognised by legislation and tax-exemption, or are otherwise technically called cults. Atheism is not recognised as a religion in any official manner, and therefore is not one (you can call it a cult if you really want to). The identification of all or almost all atheists adds to such a consensus.
By the way, I hope you haven't written me off as an atheist, particularly in light of the "restating" point you make. I'm just arguing the point because I see it as silly to call something religious when none of its (non-)believers agree to the idea. In fact, for the record, I am an agnostic. Which, by the way, is also not a religion, for the exact same reasons atheism isn't.