Is Atheism A Religion?

An article appeared at Answers in Genesis recently, claiming atheism is a religion:

The article says:

The Oxford English Dictionary defines religion as “the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.” Under this definition, atheism would not be viewed as religious since the dictionary definition of atheism is “disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.”

That seems to conclude the discussion... Apparently not. The article goes on to say that actually atheism is a religion given these seven aspects of religion.

Narrative

Just about every religion has a narrative that explains the world around them.

Atheism has no narrative. It just says there is no god. Most atheists happened to think the universe started with he Big Bang, that life on this planet evolved over 4 billion years, but that is science, not atheism. Virtually all theists accept science to some degree, and plenty of theists accept science as much as atheists do, so it cannot be an atheist narrative.

Experiential, Social, and Ritual

The experiential, social, and ritual aspects of atheism can be seen in the recent establishing of atheist churches.

And yet the vast majority of atheists have never attended those churches. According to Wiki there are 48 such churches around the world, but the number of atheists is getting on for 500 million.

If you are counting, these three aspects count as two to AiG. They probably think counting is part of the atheist religion.

Doctrine

Atheists even have doctrine and are evangelistic in their promotion of it. For example, a few years ago, the humanist society in the UK...

Atheism has no doctrine. It just says there is no god. Some atheists are humanists - but the humanist movement was started by Christians, so it can hardly be called an atheist thing.

Ethical

Even though atheists are moral relativists, they make ethical claims.

Atheism has no ethical claims. It just says there is no god. Some, perhaps all, atheists have ethicial positions, but those positions are not based on atheism.

Material

Finally, the material aspect of the religious nature of atheism can be seen in several ways, but specifically, it can be seen in the atheist’s treatment of creation as sacred.

Atheists do not consider creation to be sacred, given sacred means "connected with God or a god or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration" (whatever Bradbrook might have said).

Conclusion

I can appreciate Christians want to denigrate atheism by calling it a religion, but what does it say about their own beliefs that they think atheism is lessened in this way?

I want to just look at one last quote:

Atheism is a false religion. It is the worship of self where they have “. . .exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).

What is interesting here is that this is about the worship of Egyptian gods. Here is the context:

Romans 1:22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and [o]crawling creatures.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. 25 For they exchanged the truth of God for [p]a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed [q]forever. Amen.

This is very clearly about the worship of gods who are in "the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures". Not atheism - atheism has no gods. This is about the worship of Egyptian gods, popular in Rome when Paul was writing. Thus, "served the creature rather than the Creator" in the fragment AiG quoted is about worshiping animal-shaped gods. It is assuredly not about atheism.

But why should the author bother about that?

I find it fascinating how readily Christians will twist the words of their own sacred text. Atheism is not a religion. Unlike Christian, atheism is based on truth.