Atheism is a Religion

In the Detroit Free Press last Sunday, July 3rd, columnist Mitch Albom wrote about the inappropriateness of American atheists planning various protests on July 4th as attempt to gain respect for their creed. Needless to say, his words created a backlash. There were six letters to the editor in today's Free Press from atheists protesting his column.

So be it. Their basic complaint is they are tired of being treated as second class citizens. One letter writer went so far as to assert that their cause is right up there with the crusade for civil rights.

Hyperbole is great fun, and as with most such causes the atheists are very good at it. It does little to address the real issue at hand, though. They lament that Christianity in particular is being forced upon them in today's United States; references to God on our money and in our formal creeds make them feel put upon. Yet this ignores a rather simple and legitimate question: is your faith in your creed (for faith is all that it ultimately is) so weak in truth and fact that the mere mention of a Supreme Being shakes it?

Still, even that is small potatoes compared to the cry of one of the letter penners. One blithely states that atheists 'believe that the quality of each person's life is dependent on how he or she treats all of mankind.' Such off the cuff statements ignore many important questions. What do you mean by quality? How do your measure whatever is meant by that? What type of treatment do you mean exactly when asking how we should treat mankind? And of course the most important question is: On what grounds do you assert that you are right? Your own beliefs, your own feelings, your own wish that something is true? If that isn't the very essence of religious thought, asserting that something is true on its own merit, then what exactly is it?

In fact, it is much worse than the belief in a God, any God, indeed, at this point in the discussion, on which ethics may rest. It's about an individual claiming an absolute value to be true on his own say so, and nothing more.

So when the atheist asks, 'Okay, Mr. Christian, which God is God? Which creed is the creed?' the best retort becomes, “Well, then, Mr. Atheist, which individual among you do we believe represents real atheism?' For among atheists there must be as much disagreement as they fault religion for having. The fact of their own humanity must indicate as much. For whatever failings may be found within religions, and we must concede they exist (as our human flaws do indeed prevent us from applying good religious principles as well as they ought to be), when the individual becomes the final arbiter of right and wrong, of determining 'how well we treat mankind', whatever that means, then the individual becomes God. What kind of a world can we have with more than six billion little self assured Gods mucking about in it?