Your claim that two courts have determined that atheism is a religion is unfounded.
Regarding
Kaufman v. McCaughtry, what the Federal Court declared was that in a particular prison, under First Amendment rights, atheists have
the same rights to meet as do religious groups.
The court noted:
It is undisputed that other religious groups are permitted to meet at Kaufman’s prison, and the defendants have advanced no secular reason why the security concerns they cited as a reason to deny his request for an atheist group do not apply equally to gatherings of Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or Wiccan inmates.
This is not the same as a court ruling that atheism is a religion. The court ruled that if you allow specific religious groups to meet, there is no valid security reason to prohibit anti-religious groups (i.e., atheists) to meet as well--under the same First Amendment. While being accorded the rights of a religious group under the law, this does not make them a religious group.
From Wiki:
Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488 (1961) was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court reaffirmed that the United States Constitution prohibits States and the Federal Government from requiring any kind of religious test for public office, in the specific case, as a notary public. ...
It has occasionally been argued that the Supreme Court, in
Torcaso v Watkins, "found" Secular Humanism to be a religion. This assertion is based on a reference, by Justice Black, in a footnote (number 11) to the court's finding, to court cases where organized groups of self-identified Humanists, or Ethicists, meeting on a regular basis to share and celebrate their beliefs, have been granted religious-based tax exemptions.
Justice Black's use of the term "secular humanism" in his footnote has been seized upon by some religious groups, such as those supporting causes such as teaching creationism in schools, as a "finding" that any secular or science-based activity is, in fact, religion.
It should be noted that
footnotes (dicta) are not a part of the opinion and have no force of law. Creationist websites, hoping that nobody will know this, frequently make claims such as you have repeated.
All this case did was overturn a state law that required an office-holder to declare his belief in God.
There was absolutely no legal status granted to "secular humanism" or to atheists by
Torcaso.
All of what I have gathered here is freely available on the web. You should check your sources before reposting anything from a creationist or fundamentalist website. They tend to lie, misrepresent, obfuscate, and otherwise mislead their readers. They don't have any real evidence, so they have to do this!
Edited by Coyote, : speelling
Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
Belief gets in the way of learning--Robert A. Heinlein
How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?--Robert A. Heinlein
It's not what we don't know that hurts, it's what we know that ain't so--Will Rogers
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