[Lizzie]

Atheists believe there is no God. They believe that they is no afterlife, and the only life they have is this one on earth. That there is no outside power or force affecting our daily lives and the outcomes of those lives.

That is a belief system. Just because it is a negative one, in the sense that they don’t believe things exist, does not make it not a belief system. You can’t know that those beliefs are the truth, you just believe them to be.

And because there are a large amounts of people that agree with these belief systems, and live their daily lives with these belief systems in mind, it affects them. They are uniformed, they believe the same thing. In my mind it is considered a religion.

It almost seems like people are just offended being associated with the word.

I really like this definition of religion:

Originally Posted by ReligiousTolerance.org

"A shared positing of the identity of and relationship between the world, humanity and the supernatural in terms of meaning assignment, value allocation and validation enactment. A religion need not accept or believe in the supernatural, but it takes a position on. Likewise, some religions deny the reality or at least value of the world, but they still take a position."