Is Atheism a Religion?
There
is spreading conviction that atheism is a kind of
religion. The question is by no means trivial and worth examining whether there is any sense in calling atheism a religion. An
analysis of atheism and then an analysis of religion will provide a
reasonable answer to the question .
What is Atheism?
Atheism is a belief that no
transcendent Divine reality of any kind exists. All that exists is mater in
movement which is responsible for the whole of knowable reality. Atheists claim that existence of any
kind of god or gods cannot be in any way justified by experience or knowledge and therefore is unnecessary deviation of human interest. Some
atheists add that religion is not only obsolete historically but it is a positive source of evil because in the name of god persecutions
inquisitions , burning people on
stakes or even sacrificing children to
the divinity are historical facts. Believing in God is therefore
something mankind has to leave behind. The real future of humanity is guaranteed
by steady progress of science , technology and the conquest of
cosmos.
What is Religion?
Religion is a
belief that besides the visible
universe and it’s multiple forms of
development there exists the real
fundamental , transcendent source and creator of all
finite beings and the existence of this creator explains
the fundamental questions of the
human mind: Why is there a universe at
all? Why not nothing rather than being?
Who or what is man? What should
man believe, what can he/she know, what should he do with his existence and
what is his final destiny. The essence of religion is it’s power
to answer the questions not only of
time but also of eternity. All genuine religion
has definite answers to what happens
after physical death. The crucial point in religion is not only that there must be some First
Cause , First Mover, and a Cosmic
Mind but most importantly that there exists a Personal God and a God
who in some form or other revealed
Himself and His intentions to humans . This is why the three monotheistic
religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity are
deserving the name religion. Of course
religion make sense only if
God really exists otherwise it is something superfluous and obstacle to the progress
of scientifically growing
human family,
From the above it is obvious that atheism cannot be in any rational way called religion of any
kind. Why?. Because it is a pure
negation of any personal transcendent creator or redeemer . Nobody within his/her senses
would pray to or worship subatomic
particles , the force of gravity or the expanding
universe.
However human beings fabricate
their own idols that is pseudo
gods like progress, patriotism,
the reign of , superior race etc. For
those idols millions upon millions of people die throughout history . There
were self proclaimed gods, the Roman Caesars, The Japanese Emperor
, father Stalin, the great leader Hitler who promised thousand years of German domination of the world. Such ideologies perhaps
could be in a very broad sense called religious , since they demand again and again a holocaust of millions of
human lives. Religion contains a living
relationship between God and humans and in this relationship the position of
humans is creature-hood . Since all humans are creatures they expect some sort of salvation from the prison of
time , space suffering and death. For example Christianity
offers to the believer salvation
into eternal life offered freely by
God who became human and through His salvific actions opened the perspective and promise of eternal life which
is the complete fulfilment of human desires
of happiness.
Atheism is the
product of a theory of knowledge which limits
the capacity of the human mind
only to the visible measurable
and somehow discoverable by senses . This limitation of
human knowing must necessarily lead
to some form of skepticism and materialism.
Therefore atheism by no means can be
called religion.
Atheism does not answer any of the fundamental
questions mentioned above. The claim
that science makes God obsolete
has no scientific or philosophical justification.
The crucial question here is
whether God exists or not because one part of the question can be true .
If God exists then any denial of His
existence is fatal to the meaning of
human life and also to the very nature of
human beings. Atheism therefore has
an obligation to justify it’s position not only from scientific view
point but also from the point of men’s existential situation. If all human
values and all reality is necessarily
vanishing into the past without any hope
for eternity then of course Sartre is right life and human existence is meaningless and
absurd. To come however to such conclusion one has to disregard the nature of
the human mind and it’s arguments on the
philosophical and revelational level for
God’s existence.
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