Atheism is a religion.
It is their belief system relating to the existence (or in their case, the nonexistence) of a divine creator.
The fact that the courts routinely issue edicts favoring their belief-system (religion) over the belief-systems of Christians and Jews (for the most part, they only attack Christians and Jews) is unconstitutional.
Good luck with them shutting up or practicing what they preach, however.
(Full disclosure: I consider myself agnostic, bordering on atheism. My opinion though is that Judeo-Christian values are great, moral values and are what this country was founded upon. I see, and oppose, the militant atheist religion's attacks on those religions.)
Well said.
Agnostics merely say that there is not sufficient proof of God (any god). Some will thus stipulate that there is no valid reason for beliefs therein to be a part of the laws or official structure of society or make lack of profession any sort of basis for disqualification for a position in government or industry, others will say “but look at what works, our Constitution has a theistic basis and it is the best structure ever devised for running the affairs of men”. One cannot lump all agnostics together, they range from “there is no evidence of anything” to “spiritual but no faith tradition has provided evidence that it is the One.
No government could possibly EVER stop someone from worshiping in their heart. Indeed I know of evangelical Christians who feel that persecution only makes their faith stronger (which makes sense, it’s one thing to merely go along in what you were raised in, it’s something else to profess when there is punishment or ostracism for doing so)
A lot of people confuse “Atheist” with “Agnostic”. There is no way to disprove God. An agnostic will say “fine, worship as you wish, and I might often agree that many of the values you believe are divinely inspired are good for society, even if I see them as merely an end result of societal trial and error”. That there be no religious test is even written into our founding documents. Agnosticism is a perfectly valid viewpoint that would be disrespected by only a rude moron.
Atheism, on the other hand has all of the attributes of a religion - the requirement for ‘faith’, the need to confront and proselytize, the ‘inner circle’ versus ‘them’ mindset that feels persecuted when it encounters ANY disagreement..... in other words, none of the benefits (joy, forgiveness, hope) and all of the dangers (rationalization of the use of force and violence or merely opprobrium against /non believers’).