Word: religion
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...Religion 70: “Introduction to Buddhism” will count toward the well-populated Culture and Belief category...
...name of this creed is evangelical atheism. Now, atheism is certainly not a religion, and the phrase “evangelical atheism” certainly appears oxymoronic. But we have witnessed in our time the rise of a virulent strain of atheism championed by Bill Maher, the comedian and star of Religulous, the secularist philosopher Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, and their often indignant ilk. For all its schooling and pretense of intellectualism, this godless vanguard unknowingly adopts the very aspects of religion its leaders passionately lambaste and turns atheism into the kind of evangelical ideology it opposes...
...During the height of conservative whispers about then-candidate Barack Obama’s secret adherence to Islam, Maher parried the smears with one of his own, saying, “…You can’t be president if you practice a violent, Middle-Eastern religion and worship a genocidal desert god, which is why [Alaska Governor] Sarah Palin can’t be president...
...Maher and Dawkins venture beyond the realm of skepticism and enter that realm of conviction—religious conviction. Atheism, like the Abrahamic troika with which it competes, requires faith, and when this faith is replaced by certainty, when doubt and healthy skepticism are jettisoned, atheism becomes a religion...
...Evangelical atheism is not the answer to evangelical religion, for the problem with the latter stems not from the irrationality of its beliefs, but from the absolute certainty with which those beliefs are held. Responding in kind is not the solution...