"Gus" wrote in message
oups.com...

Webster says that religion is a cause, principle, or system of beliefs
held to with ardor and faith. I think that the way some people hold to
atheism it could qualify as some sort of religion.

Some people.


Don't atheists claim to "know" what does not exist in every nook and
cranny of the universe?

Not many. There are different philosophies of atheism, but the most common
one I see today is what you might call "scientific" atheism, which is based
on the way science deals with things that haven't been proven. To say "I
don't believe in God" doesn't mean they're convinced that God does not
exist. Rather, their position is that there is no evidence (evidence that
qualifies under the terms of science) that God does exist.

It isn't a positive denial, in other words. It's a lack of a support for the
assertion. They see no reason to believe.

This is slightly different from the way we conceive of agnosticism. An
agnostic needs evidence one way or the other before he will assert anything.
The scientific atheist needs positive evidence before he'll believe the
assertion. It may look like a fine line, but it's really not that fine. It
is a different way of deciding what you believe.

--
Ed Huntress