If Atheism is a religion...

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1. Bald is a hair colour.

2. Not collecting stamps is a hobby.

3. Asexualism is a sexual orientation.

4. "Off" is a TV channel.

5. Healthy is a disease.

6. Dead is a state of mind.

7. Uninjured is a form of trauma.

8. Sober is a type of drunk.

9. Transparent is a color.

10. Abiding all laws is a type of crime.

11. Freedom is a type of slavery.

12. Starvation is obesity.

13. Naked is fashion.

14. Muteness is a sort of singing voice.

15. Silence is a favorite song.

16. An empty glass is a beverage.

17. McDonalds is actually a food.

18. Black is a colour.

19. "Exsanguinated" is a blood type.

20. Wanting gold medals for NOT running the Olympic 500m dash

21. Barefoot is a shoe size.

From some of the comments on this site it seems that dead is definitely a state of mind.

an atheist believes that there is no God, so in that sense atheism IS similar to religion (- belief).

Wrong. I have examined the claim that there is a god, and decided that there isn't enough evidence to support this assertion. The Universe could work even without a god, so I remain unconvinced.

is there enough evidence to support the assertion that there is no God?

If a table has four sturdy legs and stands solidly there is no need for a fifth leg.

The term religion refers not only to a system of belief, but also the amount of conviction one has in that belief and the amount of zeal with which one pursues it. In that sence, an atheist can be every bit as religious as any theist. I doesn't have to have anything to do with a deity. Some people (Aspies in particular) are said to follow certain routines religiously.

There are members on this forum (who's names I will not mention) who feel the need to post in every single thread to state the opinion that there is no God and anyone who thinks there is (or even might be) is deluded. Are they not defending their beliefs religioulsy?

What Sand said. You should really look up Occam's Razor, anna-banana.

I am talking about *evidence*, not mental gymnastics.

you can't prove that God exists. you can't prove that he doesn't. so if you choose to be atheist, you choose one unsubstantiated theory over another.

thanks, but I think I knew Occam's Razor when you were still sh*****g your pants Henriksson

I am talking about *evidence*, not mental gymnastics.

you can't prove that God exists. you can't prove that he doesn't. so if you choose to be atheist, you choose one unsubstantiated theory over another.

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

You can't "prove" anything outside of mathematics.