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Saying “I believe in a god” does not make you relgious.
Saying “I don’t believe in a god,” likewise, does not make you religious.
Religion and theism rely on faith: belief without evidence. Or, sometimes, when your god tests your faith, despite the evidence.
Quick aside. This reminds me of when RPGs use the term “faith” in fantastic/magical cultures where the gods make their presence known by direct acts of divine intervention. In this case, the people of the world do not have faith, they have devotion. Evidence exists for the gods’ existence. If you don’t believe in god–right after he made a miracle occur–then you are exactly what the Bible calls you: a fool.
George Orwell predicted the co-oping of words for political purposes. Changing the definition of the word to your own political advantage. Not everyone does this intentionally and not everyone is familiar with the technique. An unrelated example is when the Bush Administration has changed the definitions of “torture” and “terrorist.” (They also tried to include “the unborn” under child abuse laws. A very clever–if unethical–strategy.)
Recently, the religious right has tried to put atheism under the same umbrella as religion. Let me explain why this is a catalogical mistake.
Just saying “I believe in a god” does not make you religious. Yes, it makes you theistic, but not religious. You know the folks who believe in a god but don’t go to church, don’t participate in rituals, don’t eat the flesh and drink the blood and all the rest of that? Yeah, they’re not religious; they’re theists. They believe in at least one god.
This is important because the religious right uses the word “religious” when they should be using the word “theist.” They do this to bolster their numbers. “90% of Americans are religious!” No, not at all. Many of those folks don’t belong to churches, don’t attend services, don’t identify with a specific religion at all. They believe in something, but they don’t know what it is. In fact, if you start defining terms, most of them define themselves as agnostic: “I don’t know if there is a deity, but…”
A religion is a philosophy: a collation of statements about the nature of reality, morality and ethics that invokes the existence of a divine presence. Not all philosophies require a god for their statements of truth, but a philosophy that does is a religion. For example, one could not call the philosophy of Nietzche a religion because it does not include a belief in a god. Now, some can point at many philosophers (Nietzche, Ayn Rand, etc.) who have a cult of personality following, but none of those people believe in the divine powers of their devotion; they just blindly and obediently follow everything their leader says. This does not make a cult of personality a religion; it makes it a cult of personality. Sometimes dangerous, sometimes benign… just like religions. Sometimes dangerous, sometimes benign.
The reason the Catholics have a creed (Latin: “we believe”) is because a religion is also a social institution that teaches its followers the correct belief system. Religions tell you, “This is our god, this is how you worship it, this is what sacrifices it demands, this is its laws.” If you don’t believe in those things, you are not a member of that religion. Sure, the followers of a particular religion can debate the details, but there aren’t many Christians out there debating the divinity of Jesus. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be Christians.
Atheism is a simple statement: “I believe in no gods.” Saying that does not tell you how to act. It doesn’t tell you really anything about the universe… except the lack of gods. Going from “I don’t believe in a god” to any other moral statement is a leap even Morpheus (from The Matrix) couldn’t make.
Saying “I believe in a god” does not make you a Catholic, a Jew, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Neopagan, a Discordian, or anything else. What you believe about that god is what defines your religion.
Saying “I believe there are no gods” does not make you a Nazi, a Communist, a physicist, a bio-engineer or anything else. All of those philosophies are built on statements that have nothing to do with the existence of gods.
So, don’t believe the hype. Don’t allow the meme to change what you are or what you believe.