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Sometimes I get confused whether I am posting here or Fark. I was rude and inflammatory, and I apologize.
Atheism is not a religion, but some atheists behave like the second worst type of religious people - not the killers, but the ones with dead certainty.
The reason Atheism is not religion is that it is an explicit rejection of the supernatural, while religion is an explicit acceptance thereof. Will's list of opposed pairs does make that point clearly. Now one could get all Taoist on that, but there's no need. If it looks like a lizard it doesn't matter how much it waddles or quacks, it won't be a duck.
With that said, it is the religious like behavior - the absolute certainty which can only come from faith - which bugs me. I don't believe that it is really arguable that absolute certainty requires faith. Faith being the belief in what one cannot know. I don't know if there's a God, but I do not see enough data (and this is unfortunately complicated by the current theist conception of god as essentially unknowable in a rational way) or have sufficient experience to rule it out. My argument is that neither do you.
That's also my argument to the religious: you have no data to rule it in.
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Light a man a fire, and he will be warm while it burns.
Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.
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