Not all beliefs, even dogmatic ones, equate to religion though. That's the part I never get with this argument.
I thought my point was clear, that to some atheism can be a religion, that this means they treat it with as much devotion to self-identification as a traditionalist in religion does. This all ties back to my point at the beginning I raised as to why people are resistant to challenges to their views, why they become dogmatic, why they defend them, why they even go on crusades, such as touring the world promoting their beliefs calling God-belief a "Delusion", and such narrow-perspectives.
What will help is to understand my point that was missed in all subsequent posts about what exactly religion is in this context and why it pertains equally to atheists as it does theist, or anything that defines the world for them like this. I said in post 221:
A religion, its practices, its customs, its beliefs are tied to ones culture and values. Its tied to family and tradition. Its tied to loyalties. Its tied to self-identity. When someone moves in with challenges to traditional understandings, they are viewed as a threat to a way of life. These ways of life are built upon cultural transmissions, not rational propositional truths. People are afraid of moving because they think they will amputate their own culture, their family values, their grandparent's values. So this fear of amputation is what freezes people and makes them entrenched in their own camp.
What you seem exacerbated by is that others can't move into the worldviews you've adopted. They should be able to shift their center of gravity away from their own past to the future you've found for yourself. And to go after their sacred cows, showing how illogical or irrational these associated beliefs are they still hold to as part of that system, should be enough to get them to see the light and be saved.
It is not religion as an organized institution that I am talking about by saying atheist can be a religion to some. It is anything that someone ties themselves to like this which makes their defense of it irrational, that revolve their lives around and will defend tooth and nail to protect, because they are protecting themselves, their sense of personal identity.
A friend of mine from Bible college many years ago, having left the church and become an atheist said to me, "I'm so glad I know the truth now!". I smiled at him and said, "I remember you and I saying the exact same words when we were Bible-believing fundamentalists". His response? He said in all honesty, "But the difference is now I really DO have the truth!". :faint:
You see, all that changed was shifting the set of beliefs, not the mentality that makes them a religion in this way. When someone treats anything this way, it becomes a religion to them. And thus, it doesn't matter if they approach those beliefs as mythic, rational, or post-rational.
I posted this list elsewhere on the common meanings of the term "Religion" as used in culture. This is a paraphrased list from the philosopher Ken Wilber that I feel quite accurately touches on these in a general way. The way I am using religion in this context, is definition number 2, or "R2" as Wilber later refers back to this list, and R6 as well as R8 when it is tied to science as
Scientism. This is from his book
A Sociable God:
1. Religion as non-rational engagement:
- Deals with the non-rational aspects of existence such as faith, grace, etc.
2. Religion as meaningful or integrative engagement:
- A functional activity of seeking meaning, truth, integration, stability, etc.
3. Religion as an immortality project:
- A wishful, defensive, compensatory belief in order to assuage anxiety and fear
4. Religion as evolutionary growth:
- A more sophisticated concept that views history and evolution as a process towards self-realization, finding not so much an integration of current levels, but higher structures of truth towards a God-Realized Adaptation.
5. Religion as fixation and regression:
- A standard primitivization theory: religion is childish, illusion, myth.
6. Exoteric religion
- The outward aspects, belief systems to support faith. A non-esoteric religion. A potential predecessor to esoteric religion.
7. Esoteric religion
- The inward aspects of religious practices, either culminating in, or having a goal of mystical experience.
8. Legitimate religion:
- A system which provides meaningful integration of any given worldview or level. A legitimate supporting structure which allows productive functionality on that level, horizontally. The myth systems of the past can be called "legitimate" for their abilities to integrate. A crisis of legitimacy occurs when the symbols fail to integrate. This describes the failure of a myth's legitimacy we saw occur with the emergence of a new level of our conscious minds in the Enlightenment. Civil religion is one example of an attempt to provide legitimacy to this level, following the failure of the old legitimate system.
9. Authentic religion
- The relative degree of actual transformation delivered by a religion or worldview. This is on a vertical scale providing a means of reaching a higher level, as opposed to integrating the present level on a horizontal scale. It provides a means to transformation to higher levels, as opposed to integration of a present one.
I'll leave it at this for the moment, and hopefully this helps as my point originally was lost about how, "
People are afraid of moving because they think they will amputate their own culture, their family values, their grandparent's values. So this fear of amputation is what freezes people and makes them entrenched in their own camp. " That's the key to all of this, and atheism is not excluded from this because it is rational, as opposed to prerational mythic views, when it is treated as religion as per definition R2 and R8 as it acts as a philosophy of rationalism.
