Regardless of religion

Posted Sep 20, 2018 19:52 UTC (Thu) by davidstrauss (guest, #85867)
In reply to: Regardless of religion by nybble41
Parent article: Code, conflict, and conduct

> In my experience the idea that atheism is a form of religion is typically advanced by non-atheists hoping to establish a false equivalency (that "atheism requires just as much faith as theism").

It's not always used as a malicious false equivalency. In the United States, courts generally treat atheism as a religion, but they do so as a sort of legal fiction [1]. To these courts, atheism is only a "religion" in the sense that any laws regarding religion apply in equivalent ways to non-practice and non-belief. For example, the protected class (in terms of non-discrimination) that covers religion also applies to non-believers [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_fiction
[2] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/are-atheists-prot...

to post comments

Regardless of religion

Posted Sep 21, 2018 15:59 UTC (Fri) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> To these courts, atheism is only a "religion" in the sense that any laws regarding religion apply in equivalent ways to non-practice and non-belief.

That much I can agree with, but to me it implies only that laws about religious discrimination apply just as much to discriminating on the presence or absence of religion as they do to discrimination among different religions—not that atheism is itself a religion.

I think the problem is that we are mixing up "religion" as a subject with "religions" as particular systems of faith and worship. Atheism is properly part of the subject of religion (as a negative position), but not *a* religion. Religious discrimination refers to the subject matter; you don't need to belong to any particular religion to be covered.