Reply #43: Changing meanings of words to imply false equivalence [View All]

I can see certain contexts where it might be appropriate to classify atheism as religion. If I'm in a book store, looking for a copy of "The God Delusion", and I see sections for Home Repair, Science Fiction, Personal Finance, Romance, and Religion... yes, I'll go looking in the Religion section. If I worked at that store, and was stuck with those broad categories, Religion is where I'd file the book myself. The book is most certainly a commentary on religion, even if it does not promote a specific alternate religion.

I'd say the general context where I can accept the idea of atheism as a religion is one of broad taxonomic classification. Bald isn't a hair color, but if you're forced to fill in hair color on a form, filling in "bald" makes more sense than filling in red or brown or blond or whatever hair color you might have had at one time, and is more informative than leaving the space blank.

When an atheist is accused of having a religion, however, (and this is often done in a blatantly accusatorial fashion), it's generally done to try to paint the atheist as a hypocrite. The person making the accusation doesn't need to feel themselves that having religion is a bad thing when making this accusation. A black man might do some digging into the ancestry of a Klansman, turn up a black ancestor, and then confront the Klansman with this information. That certainly doesn't mean the black man thinks being black is a bad thing, does it?

The point of a black man showing a Klansman that the Klansman has black ancestry is, "If you hate black people, you hate a part of yourself! Is that what you really want to be doing?"

Similarly the point of the theist in classifying atheism as a religion is generally done (at least in my experience) as way of trying to say, "How can you be against religion since you've got one yourself?", "You've got a religion, and it's just as much faith as mine!", etc., etc.

In that context, trying to call atheism a religion is just a game of playing up false equivalence.