The main ULC site has pages where the site administrators give their perspective on what each of the various belief systems entail. Their page on atheism is surely a hoot: http://www.themonastery.org/jcontent/training/12-guide-to-divinity/97-agnosticism-atheism-non-religion?template=themonastery
I've had the contents of that page pointed out to me by a few of my fellow atheists here, and i have assured them that i have tried multipel times to get the authors of the page to explain why their descritpion of atheism comes right out of the Pat Robertson play book. No response, and nor is one actually expected.
Whether atheism is a religion or not is a settled point in US law, as the Supreme Court has ruled that it is. I could debate that point on philosophical grounds, but it really just comes down to what one means by 'religion'. IMO, and from a philosophical rather than LEGAL perspective, though i grant that this is NOT unambiguous, any philosophical system that doesn't focus on supernatural beings is a PHILOSOPHY, but not a religion. From that definition, atheism is NOt a religion, but then neither is Buddhism or Confucianism, and most demographers do include those on the list of world religions.
My onbjecton to the contents of that page is not on this aspect of the discussion, but on the prominent inclusion of the illogical assertion that "atheism is based on faith". That's about as false as it's possible for a statement to be, in spite of the assorted logical fallacies suggested by theists to support it.
No atheist i have ever encountered would accept the description of our perspective as recounted on that page, but it does sound EXACTLY like the nonsense i hear from time to time from fundamentalist Christians who try to assert that atheism is based on 'faith'. How one goes from THEIR definition of faith, i.e. to wuote their scriptures: "The belief in things unseen" , to considering a REFUSAL to believe in things unseen and also call that EXACT opposite position 'faith' isn't clear to me or to any logical thinker, but it's a position i have heard many times from theists. However, NO atheist i have ever encountered would agree with that characterization, so i really wonder about the objectivity of the contents of that page.
However, i'm not upset or ready to burn my credentials over this issue. It's OK. This is THEIR site, and they get to make the rules, even if that includes their insistence on repeating the description of MY beliefs that is favored ONLY by those who don't respect my beliefs. I do know the historyn of the ULC, and that its original roots are to be found in Bible-based Christianity. The fact that they let us play with the theists and pay lip service to considering us equally worthy of respect is more than i would have expected, and i'll take what i can get. I salute them for including a page for us, just as i give props to Obama for explicitly including us as citizens in his original inaugural adderss in spite of his regular religious based rhetoric, since that's a GIANT leapo forward from the time that George Bush the elder declared that athesists should't be allowed to be citizens of the US.
But i do have a suggestion that may put this in focus. If the page on atheists is to be written up by a fundamenralist Christian, shouldn't the same princliple apply to the other pages? Perhaps we could get Fred Phelps to write up the official description of paganism, or get the president of Iran to produce the description of Judaism? We have a number of gay pagans/wiccans who could probably provide a very colorful description of Christianity based on their previous experiences as members of one or another such congregation. Fair is fair after all, and if its cool to have the atheist page be provided by people who clearly don't have a clue what it MEANS to be an atheist and who appear to me to be fundamentally biased against our TRUE position, shouldn't we be treated to the same creative description of the assorted religions on the associated pages?
