-"Atheism is a system of religious faith...
Atheism is not a religion. It is not even a faith. Atheists are skeptics.

Atheism is not a religion, it is not a faith, and it is NOT a system - since it concerns only one matter - the non-belief in gods. But Claire, you have to be very clear what you mean about being a skeptic because universal skepticism Is a system of belief. I, for one, am an atheist who is not a skeptic.

Universal skepticism is usually stated in two ways. The first being claims that man can know nothing, and this belief can be easily dismissed for the following reason:

"There is such a thing as knowledge. The assertion of this proposition is necessarily true if there is to be any assertion at all, for its contradictory is self-contradictory. If the assertion "There is no knowledge" is true, then it is false, for that assertion itself purports to be an instance of knowledge. Thus the only alternative to the recognition of the existence of knowledge is, as Aristotle said, a return to the vegetative state where no assertions whatever can be made." Francis Parker

"The second form of universal skepticism consists of the doctrine that we must doubt every alleged instance of knowledge. But the doctrine that we should doubt every knowledge claim translates into the positive assertion that man can never attain certainty - and this version of skepticism fares no better than the preceding, for we must ask if the principle of universal of doubt is itself to be doubted, or is it open to doubt as well? If it is known with certainty, at least one thing is beyond doubt, which makes the principle false. If, however the principle is open to doubt- ie, if it is not certain-then on what grounds can the skeptic claim greater plausibility for his theory than any other?" George H Smith

C.N Bittle on the issue:

"Skeptics either have valid reasons for their universal doubting, or they have no valid reasons. If they have valid reasons, they surely know something that is valid, and they are no longer real skeptics. If they have no no valid reasons, they have no reason to doubt. In the first case their position is inconsistent, and in the second case their position is irrational. Whichever way they turn, their position is untenable."

Before we can even begin to determine if we are atheistic about a case, the God that is being asserted must be described and given attributes. For instance, if a person said "I believe in God." and we asked, "What do you mean be God?" and he said "God is a sandwich.", I'd have a problem in believing that sandwiches don't exist - on the other hand I would know that nothing meaningful had been asserted. This is not capricious, some people assert, when asked what God is, such things as "God is everything." or "God is in everything." or "God is power." or some other claim without real meaning. We wouldn't say we are skeptical about it, we would answer that nothing meaningful had been said. If somone asserted that God was all powerful, we wouldn't say we are skectical, we would justifiably say that we KNOW that that god does not exist because the concept entails a paradox or self-contradiction, and contradictions cannot exist. Which is to say, that a thing cannot both be a and null a at the same time and in the same respect, or to restate, cannot both have and not have a given attribute at a particular time and in a particular respect, which is what is entailed what we ask, "If God is omnipotent, can He build a fence so high He cannot climb over it." Well, if He cannot build such a fence He is not omnipotent, and if He cannot climb over it He is not omnipotent. The statement can be falsified because a specific claim has been made. Any claims to super naturality can be refuted in this way. On the other hand, if, if the claiment asserts that God is subject to natural law, then the refutation takes a different path. But if we KNOW that a claim is not true, then we are not skeptics - we are certain - and then the atheist can claim not just that that case for God is unproven, he can claim knowledge that that case is not true and that that version of God does not or cannot exist.

""and has been responsible for more human deaths by far, than has institutional religion under the banner of 'Christianity'"

Atheism is responsible for no such thing. Fascism, yes. Communism, yes. Not Atheism. Inquisition records and witch trial records detail the cruel punishments Christians reserved for unbelievers. To my knowledge, no such thing has ever been done in the name of atheism."

Atheism asserts nothing more than the lack of belief in God, that is it would, if we can get a believer to even define clearly what it is that he is saying God is. If there is no definition, there is nothing to refute, and it is as if nothing has been said. The onus of the definition is the responsibility of he who asserts that a thing exists. It makes no claim beyond that. It has no politics attached to it. To say that atheism is responsible for the atrocities of Hitler and Stalin is like saying that they did what they did because they didn't believe in leprechauns - it is absolutely irrelevent. To claim that Stalin and Hitler were evil because the were atheists gains no traction either because there are plenty of Christians who have commited great evils and done so in the name of their belief, so doing reat evil is not restricted by belief, and they justified their actions in the name of that belief. Neither Hitler nor Stalin justified their actions on a belief in atheism - because there is nothing in which to believe - atheism is the absence of a belief - they did so on the basis of a belief in Naziism(or fascism) or in communism - to the extent that they justified it at all.

But to add to the sins of theists, since the Bible is purportedly the word of God, let's let Him speak for Himself - let's add to this list of sins the biblical support for human sacrifice, rape, pillage, child molestation, slavery, murder, and genocide, as in:

"He demanded and sanctioned human sacrifices (Leviticus 27.28-29); Judges 11. 29-40; Samuel 21. 1-9
Leviticus 27:28-29 (New International Version)
He killed the first-born of every Egyptian family (Exodus 12. 29)
He sanctioned slavery (Exodus 21.2-6; Leviticus 25. 44-46)
He sanctioned the selling of one's daughter (Exodus 21.7)
He commanded the killing of witches (Exodus 22.18)
He ordered death for heresy (Exodus 22.20)
Death for violating the sabbath (Exodus 31. 14-15)
Death for cursing one's parents (Leviticus 20.9)
Death for adultery (Leviticus 20.20)
Death for blasphemy (Leviticus 24.16)
Death by stoning for unchastity at the time of marriage - only on women, of course (Deuteronomy 22.20-21)

The Old Testament credits the Israelites, acting under the auspices of Jehovah, with massacring an incredible number of men, women and children through conquest. Time and time again we read accounts where they "utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword" (Joshua 6.21)...
In Chapter 31 of Numbers, we read that Moses, angry with the officers of his army because they had taken captives from a conquered people instead of killing everyone, issued the following orders: "Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves" (Numbers 31. 17-18).
Jehovah himself was fond of directly exterminating large numbers of people, usually through pestilence or famine, and often for rather unusual offences. In one instance, he is reported to have killed 70,000 men because David took a census of Israel (2 Samuel 24). In another strange case, he sent two bears to rip apart forty-two children for mocking the prophet Elisha (2 Kings 2. 23-24)."

George H Smith, "Atheism, the Case Against God"

If any man should do any of the acts above, he would be deemed evil. Should God rise to a lower standard than man?

And from Tom Paine (one of the Founding Fathers), in The Age of Reason:

"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel."

-"Elected officials should not violate laws"
That is self-evident. Is it? What if those laws are evil and pernicious? This would say that the elected officials in Nazi Germany - Hitler was originally elected to power - should have done precisely what Hitler demanded, no matter what?. I cannot agree with this. This would be to commit a great evil, and our government has NO right to demand that our elected representatives commit evil. The teaching of the founding fathers was to resist unjust laws.

-"The U.S. Constitution is still the law and must be obeyed"
True.
So the XVI th amendment should not be resisted? Or if the nation is taken into a war of great evil, the citizens are not to rise in revolt? Does the state exist to serve the citizen, or does the citizen exist to serve the state? Now there were people in Nazi Germany who hid people from the state at great risk to their own lives - they should have obeyed the state and delivered those people up?????

Thanks, Claire, for being a perfect model of the subject thread (Ben Franklin's suggestions for polite discourse) and also for admitting you still have some learning to do in some of these areas.

So do I. I merely posed them to illustrate their common aspect: they're all fighting words in certain segments of society even though each of them can be rationally, dispassionately defended from history (primary source texts, not modern historiography) and from empirical evidence.

On the sexual perversion thing: most cultures for most of human history have ruled perversion as a no-no for very good biological reasons, as well as social and moral ones. Decadent cultures, however, tend to embrance sexual perversion as they embrace other forms of corruption. That's the West at present (and increasingly the East).

But if one happens to review the plague journal of history, he knows that perversion is bad. Or if one happens to read and take to heart the first part of the apostle Paul's letter to the gathered saints in Rome (Romans 1:18-32 or thereabouts), he sees that Paul lays out the inevitable cause-effect sequence of sexual perversion...and it's not what the hokey "homosexual ministry" preachers say it is!

Nope; the reason so many sexual deviants struggle more than ever "in church" is that these 'ministers' have it backwards, trying to suggest that the EFFECT is actually the SIN! For anyone interested, note the sequence in Paul's letter to the Roman folks (many of whose fellow citizens were steeped in perversion, and some of whom had formerly been perverts themselves):

First: the person who knows of God's existence from the entire universe around him, refuses to glorify God and instead glorifies himself, or creatures, or trees, or what-have-you...

Then: God gives the rebel over to whatever perverse ideas (s)he can come up with, and Paul THREE TIMES reiterates that this includes sexual deviancy...

Finally: The rebel digs his/hole ever deeper, seeking to pull others into the same mire, and approving of the perversion and all who engage in it.

So, is the sexual perversion the root sin, deserving God's judgment? No! It's actually one aspect of the judgment of God on the rebel whose root sin is refusal to give Him the glory He is due as Creator.

Until the rebel gets the order of the universe straight in his mind and begins to glorify the God that (s)he knows exists, God continues to "give them over" to perversion. So can we expect the $99.95 'recovery package' offered by "homosexual ministries" to help matters, since their clinical nostrums have the order of Romans 1 twisted exactly in reverse? Nope; it's wasted money.

But with cultural decadence stock gaining in market value these days (all over the world), the deviants just force normal folks to shut up about the whole thing. Accept them as 'misunderstood minorities' and accept the judgment of God on their rebellion as just an 'alternative lifestyle'.

Say what you will about God's 'cruelty' in the matter, the perversion lobby (and those that make a paying career "ministering" to every social malady instead of doing it for free out of love, and following the Bible they claim to follow) are much more cruel.

I agree about the "cruel punishments that 'Christians' reserved for unbelievers" but such punishments are now foisted on deviant unbelievers as "ministry"! In other words, religious hucksters advertising themselves as Christians still do some very cruel things. And supposed apologists for sexual deviancy do similarly destructive things, for purely selfish reasons. Both groups misrepresent the nature of reality, and young people are taken in: the deviant urges are no longer a red flag to the godless rebel...no, these things all must be a result of...um...parental malpractice! Supressed natural love from the very womb!

Because it can so often be faulted in the breach, does not diminish by a frog's hair the efficacy of faith in God, honestly lived out as Christ taught and modeled.

It's like the Tax Honesty thing, Claire. Perform your due diligence in study, and over time you may seem to become more intelligent, whereas you're merely banishing ignorance and apprehending what was there all the time.

Thanks for engaging in such a Franklinesque manner.