And yes, atheism is now on its way to being a full-on religion.
Reddit is a notoriously atheistic place, with its most popular subreddit, r/atheism having over 2mil official subscribers and millions more of lukers. And in it you had endless waves of posts praising everybody from Carl Sagan to the comedian Gervais. r/atheism even has multiple subreddits itself that complement the "main course". subreddits focused on helping people break the news to their loved ones that they're atheists, and also where to brag about it. Places where you can receive information and help on how to start an "atheists" club at your school. This is the organizational methods of a religious organization, well adapted to the XXIth century. Atheism is the most perverse of religions at this point. It is a religion that doesn't even have the balls to admit it is a religion to start with.
Now I have nothing against atheism and atheists, but I do have something against militant atheists and anti-religious zealots. Both of which the online environment of reddit, and its real-life subsidiaries that get created because of the online influence, promotes. Severe anti-religiousness and militancy. So it is therefore only fit that now, r/atheism is goign through a massive identity crisis. Almost all the discussion topics there are about how r/atheism is bad now simply because a new moderator has been put in charge of this subreddit apparently. So for the past 5 days you have all these other "atheist" subreddits spring to live, each turning on each other. Atheismreborn. Atheismrebooted. newatheism, etc. And for a while now, there were various atheist subreddits specifically for those atheists who wanted to not be considered as part of the other atheists.
Generalizing atheists by looking at /r/atheism is like generalizing Christians by looking at the Westboro Baptist Church. Sure, there are a lot of rather silly memes that get posted and people got mad when they couldn't post the memes anymore. That's basic humanity, people have different views on issues and tend to congregate with people who share their views. Religions aren't the exclusive part of society where that happens, you see the same thing with sports teams, favorite musicians/genres, political parties, countries, and so on. It's very basic sociology.
So like catholics and protestants.
Now I know, I know, online environment is different than real life. But lets face it, we live in an online world. Saying that "oh just because it's online it doesn't matter" doesn't work anymore. Online behavior and online life is very connected to real life and what happens online haunts you in reality and is indicative of this. So now, there is a religious war between the atheists on reddit. Many sides to be taken. the "protestant" atheists are the majority, overtaking the "catholic" atheists but the "catholic" atheists are still holding strong because they're in power so far.
It's just hilarious. And the zealotry is obvious. The main "battleground" is over memes. The pro-meme side argues that memes are a great way to "convert" people to atheism, while others defend the taking down of memes as being "karma-whoring" and annoying. I say it won't be long now till the online interractions in reddit turn to real life and real atheists "bishops" have to be selected, along with a whole "clergy" to help organize the many lanes of attack that atheism needs to have in order to convert people.
Many of them want to deconvert people from religion, but that's not the same as being a religion on their own. They see religions as a form of harmful self-delusion, like a drug addict or alcoholic that has convinced themselves that they are "fine" and such. Most of them were religious themselves and simply want to see others make the same transition to reality. Still others really don't care about whether or not others remain religious and simply want to be treated with respect - many times atheists are denigrated by the religious. You can see this in mainstream culture where people assume atheists are unhappy, anti-social and immoral people. For example, just read this
cover article from Time Magazine - the author unnecessarily jabs at atheists as people that don't help in disasters. It's as insulting as it is untrue, many atheists do help a lot in the community, but we're not noticed as much because a) we are a much smaller percentage of the population than Christians, b) we don't always identify ourselves as atheists, particularly because by doing so many of us have encountered negative reactions and c) some of us even help and volunteer for Christian organizations (soup kitchens, etc). I volunteer, but you'd probably never know I was an atheist unless you asked, and depending on the situation I may not tell you (if you come across as an aggressive Christian and I don't feel like getting into a confrontation, I'll tell you I'm a Christian - I am an ex-Christian and know enough to fool pretty much anyone).
Request a Group Starting Packet | Secular Student Alliance
This is just one. How to start an "atheist" group. Churches were just that initially you know, for Christians. A place where many Christians got together to pray and comfort one another. They could have been anything from houses to actual chapels.
Atheists sometimes want to meet up in groups for very good reasons, for community support to let people know they aren't completely alone, etc. We are social animals and being an atheist in a heavily religious community can make some people feel alienated. Most of the time it's just people talking about their lives, etc. I've been to a few, but not many since we didn't have much in common - there's very little to rally around if the only thing you have in common is what you *don't* believe. Some groups focus on bettering the image of atheists in the community by going out on community aid missions while identifying as an atheist or humanist group.
So bottom line. Atheism is a religion. Online, in reddit, its going through the great schism. Militant atheists and anti-religious zealots are in the same pot with the zealots of any other religion. Except there is no organized "clergy" yet to tell them to murder people or blow themselves up for atheism. But the rest of the same methods are there. How to convert people. How to start groups for atheists. How to promote atheism. How to inform your friends and family of your atheist religion. And all that good stuff.
Bottom line, atheism isn't a religion any more than bald is a hair color and "off" is a TV channel.
As others have posted, I'm kind of curious why you're wanting to paint atheism as a religion too. Why does it matter to you whether or not atheism is considered a religion?
