Quote:
Originally Posted by TheNumber42
S: (n) religion, faith, religious belief (a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny) "he lost his faith but not his morality"
S: (n) religion, faith, organized religion (an institution to express belief in a divine power) "he was raised in the Baptist religion"; "a member of his own faith contradicted him"
So, going by that definition, it is NOT a religion. It is a belief, but not a religion.
As to those who said that if Satanism and Buddhism are considered religions when they do not worship a deity, then why not Atheism? Well, first of all, I would not consider Satanism a religion. Satanists do not worship Satan or believe in any supernatural powers. As far as I know, Satanism is a philosophy, a set of guidelines for living your life. Not a religion at all.
Buddhism IS a religion because Buddhists believe in supernatural powers. Karma and reincarnation for example. By definition, a religion doesn't need to be centered around a deity, any type of supernatural power will do.
So, revisiting Atheism, Atheists believe that there is no God and (atleast the vast majority) do not believe in supernatural powers of any sort. Which would make me consider Atheism a belief, but not at all a religion. I'm sure that in casual conversation that distinction is bound to be forgotten more often than not, but technically it is not a religion by definition.
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Satanist believe in the supernatural as well so it would be considered a religion.
However, you're simply defining religion off an educational site which contains certain biases already depending on the educational system. However, despite this I will use your definition, though I do not agree with it as it goes against the dictionaries definition and is simply a private interpretation. Therefore, since it's NOT the dictionary definition I will not respond any further to this definition after this post.
If using this definition however, you are only expressing a definition of religion and not relating it back to Atheism. An atheist according to Princeton is:
"someone who denies the existence of god." Notice atheism is not a denunciation of the supernatural, only God. If I am not mistaken, I believe Nick is an atheist, yet in a previous thread he said he believes in miracles. Therefore, it is possible to believe in something supernatural while denying a divine being.
According to Princeton religion is linked to faith. Do you have faith regarding the supernatural? Whether atheist or theist you have faith regarding these things. You either have faith they exist or do not exist but either way you have faith regarding these topics. If faith is put in something that cannot be proven either way then each are qualified as a religion because you cannot prove or disprove God to me using natural laws, yet we know that supernatural is anything that cannot be explained by natural laws and therefore God can supernaturally exist. So in essence, natural laws cannot account for everything unless our knowledge is full and complete. Yet knowledge can be wrong or false and therefore knowledge cannot be complete unless our knowledge is infinite, yet we are finite, so because our knowledge is finite, there is a chance there is a God. So, if you acknowledge that things can happen supernaturally there is a chance for there to be a God. Therefore if you deny this, you must have a supernatural knowledge and are contradicting yourself because if you have a supernatural knowledge then the supernatural does exist and to believe that you are right you must exert faith in your supernatural power (which if supernatural knowledge was available, it is certain your knowledge would control your life, and anyone who puts their faith in your knowledge and thus controlling them), hence religion. So if you deny God you are exerting faith in a supernatural knowledge that God does not exist and therefore are within a religion.
Yet either way I would argue that we all agree there is something controlling us, whether God or not that is outside our control that cannot be thoroughly explained and therefore we all must exert some faith in something supernatural that cannot be explained that controls the course of our life. The fact we are within a finite universe is nothing short of a miracle or something supernatural. Why? Because whatever you believe, everything in our known universe is finite. You cannot account for an infinitude of things with an infinite of finite objects because finite can never achieve infinite, therefore we must have faith in something supernatural that is infinite. Therefore, something had to of always been in order to create our universe. Whether you believe that to be God or not is up to you. The question is, where did we come from and how can an finite amount of things continue to exist or even come into existence to begin with? There had to of been something existing outside our universe that was infinite, or the universe itself is infinite and everything in it is finite. So... whether atheist or not, we must have faith in something supernatural that controls us. I can go on to explain this if you want, but it's rather complicated. But to give you a simple analogy, try this: Do you control the color of your hair? Where did the color of hair come from? What about your eyes? Your skin color? Did you control any of these things? Narrow it down till the first living thing or person (whatever you may believe), did these things come by freewill or choice? No. Therefore, something MUST control these things whether natural causes or God, there is something that cannot be explained. It can say, "Well this happened because of this and that because of that." However, it is only a finite answer and does not answer the infinite as to really WHY that color, WHY are we living? It can explain how, or in essence how come, which is answering a simple version of why, but namely gives no purpose to that why. Therefore, there is something that controls us but cannot be explained. The same is with our minds, behaviors, etc. I can explain further again if you wish, yet it gets rather complicated.
Either way, this is a Princeton definition and is insufficient even though a respected university. I can go to another site or educational system and get a completely different definition, so for argument sake I think the one we all agree on is dictionary.com and I suggest reading the post above where I responded to Nick as it refutes some arguments in your post.
Hope this makes sense.