Atheism is a religion according to a 2005 Wisconsin Federal Court ruling on the matter of Kaufman v. McCaughtry, as well as the Torcaso v. Watkins case that was affirmed by the 1961 U.S. Supreme Court--the highest court in the land--where court rulings become national law
Not exactly. Kaufman v. McCaughtry held that atheism was 'equivalent' to a religion, for the purposes of the First Amendment.
quote:
As such, we are satisfied that it qualifies as Kaufman's religion for purposes of the First Amendment claims he is attempting to raise.
If you want to make more of the holding than that, then you aren't following the holdings of the courts. You are off on a personal quest that none of us need care about.
As for Torcaso v. Watkins, there is a footnote that lists Secular Humanism as a religion, however the holding says the following (emphasis mine):
quote:
We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a State nor the Federal Government can constitutionally force a person "to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion." Neither can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against non-believers, and neither can aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs.
In short regardless of whether atheism is a belief or a non belief, the holding still applies. The words 'atheist' and 'atheism' never appear in the Torcaso opinion.
So is atheism a religion? Only in the same sense that not going to soccer matches is an activity.
according to them, non-belief in God is proof positive that they are not religious.
That argument would be stupid. I have never encountered an atheist on this site making such an argument.
I intend this to be my last post on this topic, so perhaps there is no need to respond to this post. I do find your ridiculous Hitler/Stalin comparison quite beyond the pale. You would do well not to continue to use it.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree; ‘That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heaven goes.’ Galileo Galilei 1615.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass