Many things have “attributes of religion” that no one would actually want to call a religion.
Questions of the form “is X really a Y?” notoriously tend to have ill-defined answers, but here are some things that I suggest are usually features of religions but not of atheism:
Sacred scriptures
Sacred places
Rituals
Elaborate bodies of doctrine adherents are meant to agree with
Superior supernatural beings
An afterlife
A system of ethics
Activities intended to induce altered states of consciousness
A hierarchy of authority figures with special power/permission to perform rituals, define doctrine, etc.
Of course particular atheistic movements, or individual atheists, may have some of these. But they aren’t features of atheism in the way that most of them are features of, say, Islam or Buddhism or Shinto.
“But the scientific method is a ritual!” No it isn’t, and in any case science is not the same thing as atheism.
“But Richard Dawkins is an authority figure just like the pope!” No he isn’t. No atheist (with the usual caveat that “all universal generalizations are wrong”) sees Dawkins as having any special authority to define atheists’ beliefs or to tell atheists what they ought to do.
“But you guys believe in eternal life through cryonics!” No. Some people here think there’s enough chance of substantial life extension through cryonics to sign up for it. Many don’t. No one thinks it offers eternal life.
“Ha ha, you admitted that atheists have no morals!” No. Atheism as such doesn’t have a moral code attached, any more than Christianity has a theory of gravitation attached. Atheists can still behave morally, just as Christians can still fall when dropped from a great height; atheists can still have moral codes, just as Christians can still have theories of gravitation.
I think when people say that “atheism is a religion” they don’t usually mean to say that atheism is a religion in some technical sense. Rather they want to say that if there is something bad about their religion, that bad thing will apply to atheism too. And this may be either true or false, depending on what that bad thing is and which atheism you are talking about, but it will very often be false.
But calling atheism a religion in this way is a rather uninteresting attempt at self-defense. Note that it never happens in a positive sense, i.e. no one says “my religion is good, atheism is religious too, so it has some good aspects.” In reality, though, instead of talking about “religions”, where is it clear in an objective sense that atheism is not a religion, you could talk about religious instincts, and in this case it would be reasonable to say that atheists have religious instincts just like theists do, because these instincts have evolved to become a part of human nature. This could also be related to the sorts of comparisons mentioned. For example, even if no one thinks that cryonics offers eternal life, this does not necessarily mean the desire to use cryonics to overcome death (for at least a while) is not related to the desire of religious people for eternal life. And such similarities could be either good or bad, depending on the particular feature of human nature in question.
Even religious people have a concept of “bad religion”—the religion of their enemies. What they worship is not some abstract concept of religion in general, but one specific religion. Other specific religions are wrong.
Saying “atheism is a religion” is reducing a new enemy to a subtype of the old enemy they already have millenia of experience fighting against. It’s not suggesting that atheism is equivalent to e.g. Christianity (something high status), but rather that it is equivalent to Baal worship (something low status).
And, in particular, I think that when someone says “atheism is a religion” they’re (almost?) always saying it for rhetorical effect rather than as a carefully considered statement they’d be prepared to explain the exact meaning of and give justification for. Which means, I think, that it’s reasonable to respond in a way optimized for rhetorical effect (e.g., with the sort of comparison HalMorris posted upthread—I don’t really think it’s a “rationality quote”, but I think it’s a perfectly good response to “atheism is just another religion”).
If the person who said “atheism is a religion” then follows up with something more carefully considered that isn’t refuted by likening atheism to turning the TV off, or being bald, or not playing any notes on the piano, or whatever, that’s a good outcome: you’ve got something actually worth discussing. If they just drop the subject, that’s a different kind of good outcome: a silly rhetorical trick has been neutralized by a less silly rhetorical trick. (Less silly because I think the response is more defensible than the original provocation.)
I would say that atheism is a religion in the sense that it addresses the big questions that our familiar religions do. A religion that answers “Does God exist?” in the affirmative will have to address the follow-up questions like “What is the nature of God?”, “What is the relationship between God and man?”, and “How can I get God to stop smiting me?”. These follow-up questions are where traditional religions hit their stride and build an apparatus for communicating with God, educating people about the answers to these questions, etc. Atheism denies the existence of God (broadly speaking) and doesn’t have to answer the sorts of follow-up questions that theists do.
I think the issue gets complicated by the fact that our world is a lot different from the one that spawned the major religions. In olden days, priests were the learned class. They were philosophers, healers, historians and thinkers as well as spiritual leaders. Religion was inextricably tied to culture. You got philosophy, jurisprudence, history, and cultural norms along with the spiritual stuff. For example, think of how much of Jewish culture is tied up in Judaism.
Nowadays we have access to accurate information on many different beliefs and theories on any topic imaginable. It’s an intellectual buffet. Atheism grew in an environment where it wasn’t so closely tied to these cultural norms or that philosophy. Atheism is restricted to spiritual matters alone. So, I suppose the question of whether atheism is a religion depends on whether you think religion should provide a comprehensive guide to living.
a religion in the sense that it addresses the big questions that our familiar religions do
It addresses one big question that our familiar religions do. The others it leaves alone (beyond rejecting one specific claim that’s alleged to answer several of them.) What is the nature of right and wrong? Where do human beings come from? Do we have anything like souls and if so can they survive (or be restored after) death? Is there a purpose to our existence (individually or collectively) and if so what?
There are lots of possible answers to those questions that don’t involve gods.
(I think it’s probably true that most atheists in present-day Western society have similar answers to most of those questions. If so, I think that indicates not that atheism is really a religion but that there are other things besides atheism pushing us towards those answers. For instance, actual evidence that they’re right; or historically contingent groupthink; or other possibilities that will readily occur to the imaginative reader.)
That’s a very good thing to ask, but it happens not to be the point actually at issue in this discussion.
(Is it churlish to point out that the remainder of the paragraph you quoted really ought to make it abundantly clear that I’m aware that the answers could be right or wrong and that it matters which?)
I don’t think atheism is a religion, precisely because it does not provide a comprehensive guide to living. However, our form of “rationality”—with its precise reasons for atheism, its specific moral aspirations and justifications therefor, and even its prophecies of the defeat of death and suffering by science—does qualify.
“Ha ha, you admitted that atheists have no morals!” No. Atheism as such doesn’t have a moral code attached, any more than Christianity has a theory of gravitation attached. Atheists can still behave morally, just as Christians can still fall when dropped from a great height; atheists can still have moral codes, just as Christians can still have theories of gravitation.
It is however, true that atheists cannot obtain a meta-ethical position similar to Divine Command, which is how most people define code of morals.
It might be how they would explicitly define a code of morals, but I think they just don’t understand why they have morality. When I was still a theist, I wondered why there’d be any reason for an atheist to have morals without the promise of heaven and the threat of hell. I suspect lots of theists ask that. I didn’t base my every action on greed for heaven and fear of hell and I doubt many theists do.
I don’t think sacred scriptures, elaborate bodies of doctrine, and hierarchies of authority figures are usually features of religions. I’m pretty sure it’s just Abrahamic religions that are like that. They have stories that they think happened, but if that’s all it takes to call something scripture then atheists have scriptures. I’m pretty sure that authority figures in most religions are just people who are generally respected, and fit perfectly with someone like Richard Dawkins.
What would you call the Vedas or the Tripitaka, if not sacred scriptures embodying elaborate bodies of doctrine?
You might be right about the hierarchies of authority figures, but since the “Abrahamic” religions account for more than half the religious population of the world I’m not too bothered if one item in my list is specific to those.
My view on the matter is that there are those individual atheists, or atheistic movements, that do have a lot in common with various religions; and because they are loud, and vocal, and make a good try at being missionaries in their own way, they are also the groups of atheists that a lot of people will run into first, despite quite possibly being in the minority; and thus, despite being quite possibly a minority, there exist quite a lot of people who have only, ever met that sort of atheist; that is to say, in their minds, that is the pattern which the word “atheist” matches to.
No atheist (with the usual caveat that “all universal generalizations are wrong”) sees Dawkins as having any special authority to define atheists’ beliefs or to tell atheists what they ought to do.
In a perfect world that might be the case. In the real world I doubt that’s true.
There are people who deconvert from Christianity by reading “The God Delusion” and who don’t really change the structure of their belief system. They just replace one authority with another.
They say things like: “The purpose of life is to spread one’s genes.”
“But the scientific method is a ritual!” No it isn’t, and in any case science is not the same thing as atheism.
The scientific method as such is a vague term that different people use to mean slightly different things.
Using 5% as cut of for significiance is an example of practice that’s a bit ritualistic.
University graduates wearing silly hats when the graduate on the other hand has parts of ritual.
People changing their legal names because they completed initation proceedings also has something of a ritual.
As far as those things not being about atheism that’s motte-and-bailey.
That’s why I remarked that all universal generalizations are wrong. I bet there are, here and there, a few people whose attitude to Richard Dawkins is similar to a typical Roman Catholic’s attitude to the pope. But I’m pretty sure they’re rare. “Atheism has a rare failure mode where X happens” is not at all the same proposition as “In atheism, X happens”.
an example of practice that’s a bit ritualistic.
Oh yes, you reminded me of a category of unreasonable response I failed to mock in my original comment, so let me go ahead and mock it now.
“But atheists admire the writings of people like Russell and Ingersoll, which is like having sacred scriptures! And some of them do significance tests or always check the same things when they get into the car, which is like having rituals! And to be an atheist you have to not believe in a god, which is like having a body of doctrine you have to agree with! And many atheists expect there to be super-advanced aliens, or superintelligent AIs, now or in the future, and that’s like believing in supernatural superior beings! Etc., etc., etc.!” Nope. Those similarities are vague enough that if you’re willing to accept that sort of thing then everything “is a religion”. Software development is a religion: the scriptures are things like Kernighan & Ritchie or Knuth; the sacred places are maybe the Googleplex and (in memory only, now) Bell Labs; there are rituals like checking that all your tests pass before committing code to the version control repository; etc. Business is a religion: the prophets are famously effective businesspeople like Carnegie and Rockefeller in the past or Jobs and Elon Musk more recently; the system of ethics is the principle of always maximizing profits; the authority figures are CEOs; etc. Playing chess is a religion; the scriptures are opening manuals and books of famous games; there are lots of rituals like saying “j’adoube” before touching a piece you aren’t moving, and shaking hands with your opponent at the start or end of the game; the rules of chess somewhat resemble an ethical code and a body of doctrine; etc. I could go on for hours but I hope you’re bored already.
If a standard of comparison is broad enough to say that every institution or practice is “like a religion”, then the fact that it says atheism is like a religion is completely uninteresting.
motte-and-bailey
I’d agree if atheists were, when not being challenged by theists, busily engaged in worshipping the shade of Christopher Hitchens, or insisting that everyone has to read “The God Delusion” once a year, or otherwise behaving in ways that would plausibly count as religious. But I don’t see that; I genuinely think such things are really rare. There may be a bailey corresponding to the motte of just-disbelieving-in-gods (I put it that way because I do think the common claim that atheism means only not positively believing in any particular god has a whiff of motte-and-bailey about it, but that’s not something I’ve been arguing for or assuming) but if there is I don’t think it has anything to do with atheism being religion-like. (Things that might go in the bailey: the idea that religion is harmful as well as merely factually incorrect on the question of gods; admiration for science and maybe some preference for treating all questions in a broadly scientific manner; secularism.)
Many things have “attributes of religion” that no one would actually want to call a religion.
Questions of the form “is X really a Y?” notoriously tend to have ill-defined answers, but here are some things that I suggest are usually features of religions but not of atheism:
Sacred scriptures
Sacred places
Rituals
Elaborate bodies of doctrine adherents are meant to agree with
Superior supernatural beings
An afterlife
A system of ethics
Activities intended to induce altered states of consciousness
A hierarchy of authority figures with special power/permission to perform rituals, define doctrine, etc.
Of course particular atheistic movements, or individual atheists, may have some of these. But they aren’t features of atheism in the way that most of them are features of, say, Islam or Buddhism or Shinto.
“But the scientific method is a ritual!” No it isn’t, and in any case science is not the same thing as atheism.
“But Richard Dawkins is an authority figure just like the pope!” No he isn’t. No atheist (with the usual caveat that “all universal generalizations are wrong”) sees Dawkins as having any special authority to define atheists’ beliefs or to tell atheists what they ought to do.
“But you guys believe in eternal life through cryonics!” No. Some people here think there’s enough chance of substantial life extension through cryonics to sign up for it. Many don’t. No one thinks it offers eternal life.
“Ha ha, you admitted that atheists have no morals!” No. Atheism as such doesn’t have a moral code attached, any more than Christianity has a theory of gravitation attached. Atheists can still behave morally, just as Christians can still fall when dropped from a great height; atheists can still have moral codes, just as Christians can still have theories of gravitation.
I think when people say that “atheism is a religion” they don’t usually mean to say that atheism is a religion in some technical sense. Rather they want to say that if there is something bad about their religion, that bad thing will apply to atheism too. And this may be either true or false, depending on what that bad thing is and which atheism you are talking about, but it will very often be false.
But calling atheism a religion in this way is a rather uninteresting attempt at self-defense. Note that it never happens in a positive sense, i.e. no one says “my religion is good, atheism is religious too, so it has some good aspects.” In reality, though, instead of talking about “religions”, where is it clear in an objective sense that atheism is not a religion, you could talk about religious instincts, and in this case it would be reasonable to say that atheists have religious instincts just like theists do, because these instincts have evolved to become a part of human nature. This could also be related to the sorts of comparisons mentioned. For example, even if no one thinks that cryonics offers eternal life, this does not necessarily mean the desire to use cryonics to overcome death (for at least a while) is not related to the desire of religious people for eternal life. And such similarities could be either good or bad, depending on the particular feature of human nature in question.
Even religious people have a concept of “bad religion”—the religion of their enemies. What they worship is not some abstract concept of religion in general, but one specific religion. Other specific religions are wrong.
Saying “atheism is a religion” is reducing a new enemy to a subtype of the old enemy they already have millenia of experience fighting against. It’s not suggesting that atheism is equivalent to e.g. Christianity (something high status), but rather that it is equivalent to Baal worship (something low status).
Right.
And, in particular, I think that when someone says “atheism is a religion” they’re (almost?) always saying it for rhetorical effect rather than as a carefully considered statement they’d be prepared to explain the exact meaning of and give justification for. Which means, I think, that it’s reasonable to respond in a way optimized for rhetorical effect (e.g., with the sort of comparison HalMorris posted upthread—I don’t really think it’s a “rationality quote”, but I think it’s a perfectly good response to “atheism is just another religion”).
If the person who said “atheism is a religion” then follows up with something more carefully considered that isn’t refuted by likening atheism to turning the TV off, or being bald, or not playing any notes on the piano, or whatever, that’s a good outcome: you’ve got something actually worth discussing. If they just drop the subject, that’s a different kind of good outcome: a silly rhetorical trick has been neutralized by a less silly rhetorical trick. (Less silly because I think the response is more defensible than the original provocation.)
I would say that atheism is a religion in the sense that it addresses the big questions that our familiar religions do. A religion that answers “Does God exist?” in the affirmative will have to address the follow-up questions like “What is the nature of God?”, “What is the relationship between God and man?”, and “How can I get God to stop smiting me?”. These follow-up questions are where traditional religions hit their stride and build an apparatus for communicating with God, educating people about the answers to these questions, etc. Atheism denies the existence of God (broadly speaking) and doesn’t have to answer the sorts of follow-up questions that theists do.
I think the issue gets complicated by the fact that our world is a lot different from the one that spawned the major religions. In olden days, priests were the learned class. They were philosophers, healers, historians and thinkers as well as spiritual leaders. Religion was inextricably tied to culture. You got philosophy, jurisprudence, history, and cultural norms along with the spiritual stuff. For example, think of how much of Jewish culture is tied up in Judaism.
Nowadays we have access to accurate information on many different beliefs and theories on any topic imaginable. It’s an intellectual buffet. Atheism grew in an environment where it wasn’t so closely tied to these cultural norms or that philosophy. Atheism is restricted to spiritual matters alone. So, I suppose the question of whether atheism is a religion depends on whether you think religion should provide a comprehensive guide to living.
It addresses one big question that our familiar religions do. The others it leaves alone (beyond rejecting one specific claim that’s alleged to answer several of them.) What is the nature of right and wrong? Where do human beings come from? Do we have anything like souls and if so can they survive (or be restored after) death? Is there a purpose to our existence (individually or collectively) and if so what?
There are lots of possible answers to those questions that don’t involve gods.
(I think it’s probably true that most atheists in present-day Western society have similar answers to most of those questions. If so, I think that indicates not that atheism is really a religion but that there are other things besides atheism pushing us towards those answers. For instance, actual evidence that they’re right; or historically contingent groupthink; or other possibilities that will readily occur to the imaginative reader.)
The real point, however, is to ask whether they’ve got the right answers to those questions.
That’s a very good thing to ask, but it happens not to be the point actually at issue in this discussion.
(Is it churlish to point out that the remainder of the paragraph you quoted really ought to make it abundantly clear that I’m aware that the answers could be right or wrong and that it matters which?)
I don’t think atheism is a religion, precisely because it does not provide a comprehensive guide to living. However, our form of “rationality”—with its precise reasons for atheism, its specific moral aspirations and justifications therefor, and even its prophecies of the defeat of death and suffering by science—does qualify.
It is however, true that atheists cannot obtain a meta-ethical position similar to Divine Command, which is how most people define code of morals.
It might be how they would explicitly define a code of morals, but I think they just don’t understand why they have morality. When I was still a theist, I wondered why there’d be any reason for an atheist to have morals without the promise of heaven and the threat of hell. I suspect lots of theists ask that. I didn’t base my every action on greed for heaven and fear of hell and I doubt many theists do.
Is it? My impression is that most people would consider utilitarianism to be a moral code, even if they thought it a terrible one.
I don’t think sacred scriptures, elaborate bodies of doctrine, and hierarchies of authority figures are usually features of religions. I’m pretty sure it’s just Abrahamic religions that are like that. They have stories that they think happened, but if that’s all it takes to call something scripture then atheists have scriptures. I’m pretty sure that authority figures in most religions are just people who are generally respected, and fit perfectly with someone like Richard Dawkins.
What would you call the Vedas or the Tripitaka, if not sacred scriptures embodying elaborate bodies of doctrine?
You might be right about the hierarchies of authority figures, but since the “Abrahamic” religions account for more than half the religious population of the world I’m not too bothered if one item in my list is specific to those.
My view on the matter is that there are those individual atheists, or atheistic movements, that do have a lot in common with various religions; and because they are loud, and vocal, and make a good try at being missionaries in their own way, they are also the groups of atheists that a lot of people will run into first, despite quite possibly being in the minority; and thus, despite being quite possibly a minority, there exist quite a lot of people who have only, ever met that sort of atheist; that is to say, in their minds, that is the pattern which the word “atheist” matches to.
It’s not only a matter of meet.
It’s a matter of those people strongly self identifying as atheist will other people don’t care that much about the question.
In a perfect world that might be the case. In the real world I doubt that’s true.
There are people who deconvert from Christianity by reading “The God Delusion” and who don’t really change the structure of their belief system. They just replace one authority with another. They say things like: “The purpose of life is to spread one’s genes.”
The scientific method as such is a vague term that different people use to mean slightly different things.
Using 5% as cut of for significiance is an example of practice that’s a bit ritualistic.
University graduates wearing silly hats when the graduate on the other hand has parts of ritual. People changing their legal names because they completed initation proceedings also has something of a ritual.
As far as those things not being about atheism that’s motte-and-bailey.
That’s why I remarked that all universal generalizations are wrong. I bet there are, here and there, a few people whose attitude to Richard Dawkins is similar to a typical Roman Catholic’s attitude to the pope. But I’m pretty sure they’re rare. “Atheism has a rare failure mode where X happens” is not at all the same proposition as “In atheism, X happens”.
Oh yes, you reminded me of a category of unreasonable response I failed to mock in my original comment, so let me go ahead and mock it now.
“But atheists admire the writings of people like Russell and Ingersoll, which is like having sacred scriptures! And some of them do significance tests or always check the same things when they get into the car, which is like having rituals! And to be an atheist you have to not believe in a god, which is like having a body of doctrine you have to agree with! And many atheists expect there to be super-advanced aliens, or superintelligent AIs, now or in the future, and that’s like believing in supernatural superior beings! Etc., etc., etc.!” Nope. Those similarities are vague enough that if you’re willing to accept that sort of thing then everything “is a religion”. Software development is a religion: the scriptures are things like Kernighan & Ritchie or Knuth; the sacred places are maybe the Googleplex and (in memory only, now) Bell Labs; there are rituals like checking that all your tests pass before committing code to the version control repository; etc. Business is a religion: the prophets are famously effective businesspeople like Carnegie and Rockefeller in the past or Jobs and Elon Musk more recently; the system of ethics is the principle of always maximizing profits; the authority figures are CEOs; etc. Playing chess is a religion; the scriptures are opening manuals and books of famous games; there are lots of rituals like saying “j’adoube” before touching a piece you aren’t moving, and shaking hands with your opponent at the start or end of the game; the rules of chess somewhat resemble an ethical code and a body of doctrine; etc. I could go on for hours but I hope you’re bored already.
If a standard of comparison is broad enough to say that every institution or practice is “like a religion”, then the fact that it says atheism is like a religion is completely uninteresting.
I’d agree if atheists were, when not being challenged by theists, busily engaged in worshipping the shade of Christopher Hitchens, or insisting that everyone has to read “The God Delusion” once a year, or otherwise behaving in ways that would plausibly count as religious. But I don’t see that; I genuinely think such things are really rare. There may be a bailey corresponding to the motte of just-disbelieving-in-gods (I put it that way because I do think the common claim that atheism means only not positively believing in any particular god has a whiff of motte-and-bailey about it, but that’s not something I’ve been arguing for or assuming) but if there is I don’t think it has anything to do with atheism being religion-like. (Things that might go in the bailey: the idea that religion is harmful as well as merely factually incorrect on the question of gods; admiration for science and maybe some preference for treating all questions in a broadly scientific manner; secularism.)