No one is free from criticism. Harmful ideas should be condemned, when they are demonstrably harmful. But theist beliefs are such a vast range and diversity of ideas, some harmful, some useful, some healing, some vivifying, and still others having served as potent drivers of movements for justice; that to lump all theist religious belief into one category and attack the whole of it, only demonstrates your ignorance of theology, and is in fact bigotry.
By saying that religious and superstitious beliefs should be disrespected, or otherwise belittling, or stigmatizing religion and supernatural beliefs as a whole, you have already established the first level on the “Pyramid of Hate”, as well as the first of the “10 Stages of Genocide.”
If your religion is atheism, that’s perfectly valid. If someone is doing something harmful with a religious belief as justification, that specific belief should be challenged. But if you’re crossing the line into bigotry, you’re as bad as the very people you’re condemning.
Antitheism is a form of supremacy in and of itself.
"In other words, it is quite clear from the writings of the “four horsemen” that “new atheism” has little to do with atheism or any serious intellectual examination of the belief in God and everything to do with hatred and power.
Indeed, “new atheism” is the ideological foregrounding of liberal imperialism whose fanatical secularism extends the racist logic of white supremacy. It purports to be areligious, but it is not. It is, in fact, the twin brother of the rabid Christian conservatism which currently feeds the Trump administration’s destructive policies at home and abroad – minus all the biblical references."
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/5/4/the-resurrection-of-new-atheism/
Atheism is not a religion. It’s the idea that there are no gods, and in most cases no religion follows.
Atheism is not getting involved. Your whole thing then is really just pro-theist vs. Antitheist. I would say that even the most diehard anti-theists aren’t invading other countries, jailing people, or beheading them for their beliefs.
Teasing religious people for their dick head beliefs, is a response to all the shitty things that have been done and are currently being done in the name of religion.
If you NEED religion to be a good person then you’re not a good person. Every single shitty thing happening on the planet right now is directly related to greed, or religion. Yet you still think it’s “bigotry” to call that out.
Fuck religion, and fuck a god that would sit and watch all this happen and do nothing. If god is real he’s a real piece of shit.
The notion that “atheism is a religion” is so comical that I’d love to watch the brain sprain when people who spout that nonsense come across a legit, non-parody, atheistic religion.
So I’m not talking about the Temple of Satan types. Nor the Flying Spaghetti Monster types. Nor the myriad of other spoof religions. I’m talking a serious religion with a long history (it’s older than Christianity) that is at the very least agnostic if not flat-out atheistic¹: 儒教 (which you’d know as Confucianism).
So here we have a religion that is either agnostic or atheistic. Kind of hinting that atheism and religion are separate axes.
¹ “You are not yet able to serve men, how can you serve spirits?” was 孔夫子’s (Confucius’) stance on paying homage to gods.
Atheism is a religion. To argue that it isn’t is an attempt to use language to set it apart from other religions, as if it’s something special or superior. It’s a part of that same kind of supremacy talked about in the first article I posted.
https://www.montclair.edu/holocaust-genocide-and-human-rights-education-project/wp-content/uploads/sites/176/2019/12/RamadanPresentation-Slides.pdf
An atheist is just someone who doesn’t believe in any gods. Some religions are atheistic. Atheism itself is not a religion.
The lack of religion isn’t a religion. What is so difficult about this for the religious to grasp?
If you are a theist, that implies specific beliefs following specific patterns. If you are not, you are an atheist. That is the specific, universally accepted definition of that word. Whatever you want it to mean instead, for the purposes of making your point less bad, is not all that interesting to most people.