[TheNumber42]

Originally Posted by Michael.

Satanist believe in the supernatural as well so it would be considered a religion.

I suppose I was thinking of LaVeyan Satanism, which doesn't believe in any sort of supernatural powers or beings as far as I can tell. Really depends on what variant of Satanism we're talking about.

Originally Posted by Michael.

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.

Well, I will agree that the dictionary.com definition is probably less biased and since it's what everyone else is using, I'll go by it. I was just lazy and used Google to look up the definition and Princeton is what came up

I'm not sure I agree with all that you said though. I think that your interpretation of religion is too broad. Say someone's significant other is a soldier away at war. They believe and have faith that their loved one will come back safely, but they can't know. Assuming no faith in a divine power or anything is involved, does that mean that they are of the "believing my loved one will be safe" religion? Or maybe they have faith in their loved one's skills to survive, so does that make them part of a religion centered around their loved one? I personally think that is stretching religion a bit too far, though if I understood your post correctly, that is a correct extension of your reasoning.

Also, just because someone believes in miracles and is an atheist, it doesn't mean atheists believe in the supernatural. Kind of like all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. An atheist can believe in the supernatural, but not all atheists do. It isn't so much related to Atheism as to the individual, and as such, has little to do with how Atheism is defined. Though I think this part has more to do with the Princeton definition, which we decided to disregard anyway.

Now, as far as having a set of beliefs. It appears you are right, but I will say indirectly it does. If there is no belief in God, then your set of beliefs are merely relative concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe and therefore it indirectly gives you beliefs and qualifies as a religion. Though it may be subjective to each individual within the religion it does not disqualify it as a religion because it is still self-focused.

I also wanted to reply to this. I think that, similar to what I said above about miracles, an Atheist believes there is no God. That is their one belief based on atheism. Individual atheists may have other beliefs, but these are not part of atheism, rather they vary from individual to individual. Since they are not tied to atheism, but to the individual and his/her personal experiences and preferences, I don't see how they can be used to define atheism one way or another. Seems like taking irrelevant data into account.