Wrong - atheism is not a belief in something, it's the absence of belief. That's a very important distinction. Claiming that atheism is a religion is a lot like insisting that "off" is a TV channel.

I don't understand why this obvious fallacy is so widespread. Just because an undecidable proposition can be either true or false (or even nonsensical), that doesn't mean that both possibilities are equally valid or credible. You are putting the burden of proof on those who reject an unfalsifiable assertion, which is absurd.

All right, let's get into sematics again. As far as I know - and I might be wrong - Atheism is belief that there's no deity of any kind. And then we've got Agnosticism, which basically says 'oh right, deities, so why should we care?'
Nope, I'm putting burden of proof on both sides. I just believe that when you're trying to disprove something which cannot possibly be disproven, you're putting yourself in a position where you're actually strenghtening belief in it's existence (it's kind of like I was trying to disprove existence of lizardpeople amongst us - you can bet that this would lead to people starting to believe in lizardpeople, because hell, if that guy's trying to disprove their existence, he's got to build upon something, right?)

How the hell did this thread deviate from querying the presence of chicks on this forum to religion?

You definitely have a point there, yet such a symbol may serve a purpose as the lack of a symbol may be taken both as "atheist" but also "not going to tell you" or "not known" etc. There's a reason for using both the value 0 and the value NULL in programming; they're not the same, yet indistinguishable from each others when forced into variable accepting only integers.

There's no amount of semantics that can "cover up" that atheism has no spiritual aspect, while every single religion has. Symbol or not, every religion is spirituality at its core.
Because none of us really understand either of them?

All right, let's just put the word 'sematics' out of that sentence entirely, I think I have finally formed up my thoughts in a ... slightly more coherent manner: I think that if you want religion to die off, your answer to the question "Do you think god exists?" should not be "No," but "I don't care." No starts discussion. It spawns more believers that are forced to take one side of the barricade. "I don't care" is very easy to slip into for anyone, just as we don't really care about presence of lizardpeople on earth, and it's not one of the 'extreme' stances, which both need some sort of proof. You can't, with certanity, say that god exists. You can't say he doesn't. What you can say is that you're not really interested, because it's pointless to venture out and discuss something that can't be discussed on any proper basis.

edit: I do think that there's a reason why most of Czech republic is not religious. Because people here usually don't care either way and see no point in discussing it or even thinking about it.

Exactly.

You didn't understand what I was trying to say. Not believing in the existence of X and believing that X does not exist are NOT equivalent. This is not semantics - the former position is actually weaker than the latter. I will admit that the difference is a bit subtle, but it's important because people frequently use this misunderstanding and the fuzzy meaning of the word "belief" to claim that religion and atheism are somehow on equal footing.
Exactly, you are putting the burden of proof on both sides, which is wrong. Only the side that makes the initial assertion must bear the burden of proof. When an assertion is unfalsifiable, it is completely permissible to dismiss it out of hand without requiring proof. And it's an especially serious error to treat both sides as equally valid. Are you familiar with Russel's teapot?
What you are describing is an organization, not a religion. If common goals and a symbol were enough to make a religion, Alcoholics Anonymous would be a religion.

You do have it wrong. Atheism simply denotes the lack of belief in any gods. A subset of atheism, often called "strong atheism", asserts the positive position that there are no gods, but again this is only a subset of atheism. It should also be noted that whether one is an atheist and whether one is religious are two independent questions; for instance, some forms of Buddhism are atheistic as they don't include the belief in any gods, yet are still a religion.

Agnosticism is the philosophical position that whether or not any gods exist is something that is unknowable (not just unknown, but unknowable). It is a positive assertion regarding the state of human knowledge. It should also be noted that agnosticism is an independent position from whether or not one is a theist or an atheist; there are both agnostic theists and agnostic atheists, just as there are both theists and atheists who are not agnostic. Also, people not aware of what agnosticism actually is often confuse it with weak atheism (a simple lack of belief in any gods, as opposed to strong atheism, the positive assertion that no gods exist), leading to many people claiming to be agnostic when they would be better described as atheist.

We now end this message on semantics and return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

I'm not really going to argue about strength of argument from either side, because whatever the strength of any claim is, if you claim that something doesn't exist, you need a proof of that. It might be a stronger argument. I don't care, you still claim something you cannot prove, and by claiming that any diety doesn't exist, you're inderictly comfirming reality of some form of it's presence, giving birth to people who will try to discover why you're wrong. That's just going full circle. If you want to disprove religion, you disprove things you can disprove, for which you do have some actual leverage, if you know where I'm going with this.
My way's prettier. I'm going to create a religion based around atheists being group which disproves existence of deities. It'll get really complicated from that point onwards.

It will persist more once orcishgamer, Stringingvelvate, Navagon comes here :)

There's the problem right there. Atheism DOES NOT SAY THIS. Atheism does NOT claim that gods don't exist. You seem to think that on the question of gods existing, theists say "yes" and atheists say "no". That's not the case.

Atheism = Lack of belief due to lack of evidence

That's it, that's all of it. Do you believe in unicorns? No? That means you have a religion then, right, about denying unicorns? It also means you're an amoral murderer right, since you don't believe in unicorns? It's silly.

The only reason people keep hearing about atheism in the news and society and whatnot is because theists keep making such a big stink about it. It's the same thing with homosexuality. If religion would stop beating issues, we wouldn't hear about them all the time because people could live their lives. It's religion harping on subjects that makes them bigger than they need to be.

Atheism is simply non-agreement with outlandish claims.

not sure if there are any -Females- on this forum ....



.... but there sure are plenty of little bitches! (oh yeah, I went there)

I didn't claim that god doesn't exist, and I am not trying to disprove the existence of deities. My point was that your definition of atheism is wrong, as are your claims that atheism is a religion and that one needs proof in order to reject unfalsifiable claims. Anyway, I've said everything I wanted to say and I'm going to stop derailing this thread now.

Hey don't go offtopic man.

And he better be damn well prepared to provide proof and evidence that unicorns do not exist.

Atheism isn't a religion because it doesn't submit to dogma, revelation, authority or any other nonsense. It's just a lack of belief (as has been pointed out, there are "strong" or "positive" atheists that outright believe that there IS NO god, but most of the time "athesim" refers to those who simply reject belief in any deity). That doesn't mean there can't be a symbol that represents that: lack of belief in god(s). Am I sporting the symbol, what does it mean? That I'm a proud non-believer in any sort of deity or deities. The more common atheist symbol as of late is thus: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/wp-content/blogs.dir/470/files/2012/04/i-f6edc606e875a3f308dec10fb1bf1298-A51.PNG
By your logic McDonalds is a religion because they have a symbol! Oh, I have a Depeche Mode-symbol pin! I must belong to that weirdo 80s religion ([url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jaVy1XBa2I ]I love DM by the way. [/url]). In a world where the majority have religious beliefs, not having them does become a common feature under which you can fall and group. When/if atheists become a majority then the need for such symbols will disappear.