LordReed:


One I am willing to have.

I'll much rather point you to conversations between people who are PhD level scientific and hold this difference in viewpoint and you can watch them trash it out if you don't mind. The first one is an actual conversation between the two differing viewpoints with questions from other scientists, the other is more of a talk on why the creator is a personal being.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZPDIkTpezg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3do_Pp-dQ4

LordReed:


How do you its a who and not a what?

Well that boils down to difference in perspective and a much longer conversation.

OtemAtum:
That a first cause exists isn't the problem, but that the first cause is Jehovah, Allah, Moloch or any of these other puny gods out there is the crux of the matter. God Almighty is the totality of existence and it is an insult to the totality of existence when you handpick any of these riffraff creatures like Jehovah and Allah and call him God Almighty. It's a big slap on the face of nature to call dull religious gods God Almighty.
Science is an offshot of God Almighty (Totality of Existence) and the knowledge of science is far far greater than the knowledge of Jehovah, Allah and all other religious gods combined.

There's only one problem sir. The universe itself has a beginning and was created so if your god is the totality of existence then he is part of this universe; effectively making him also a created being.
Whoever created the universe must exist independent of the universe itself.

Kobojunkie:
What separate ways? The Church of Christ is not in a building or organized in a community as you imagine it. Christ is the Head and since His own learn everything from Him, whether alone or among others, they are still a part of His church, the only church that matters. All other representations mean nothing.

When the Spirit of God led Phillips away to a foreign land, did he, Philip, abandon the church of Jesus Christ? No, he remained a part of the body of Christ, even with an assignment that took him to a faraway place. The same applied then and now to all members of the Church of Jesus Christ. When Andrew and the others were later sent off to foreign lands, their membership in the church of Jesus Christ did not end, even in foreign lands.
The Spirit of Truth went with them, teaching, guiding, helping, comforting and counseling them every step of the way. Though they are separated by distance, they are still part of the body of Christ. Their fellowship is with the very Spirit of God, and they are led and taught by the Spirit of God alone.

I'm not talking about individuals as part of Christ body. I'm talking about the community of believers that was setup by the apostles to worship, pray, strengthen one another, have the communion together etc.
Philip was part of the Jerusalem community and was one of the first deacons of the church. Because of the persecution in Judea the disciples spread out and every where they went, they setup similar communities(churches) and kept in touch with them. We find these in the books of acts and the apostlic letters.(this is the model we still use today in Bible believing churches).

You said these churches were disbanded after the death of the apostles and everyone went their separate ways.
My question is how did you come to this knowledge?

Kobojunkie:
Those of them who were not killed during the persecution continued to live as Christ commanded them through His Spirit, and work righteousness wherever they found themselves, wherever God sent them.

Ok so, everyone went their separate ways.
And you know this how?

Kobojunkie:
None of that!

So what happened to them?

Kobojunkie:
Christ's church is still marching on... only it is not the visible church, what I call "world church" that you see and know of today as Christianity.

Ok so, in your view, what happened to the community of believers after the apostles died. They all stopped meeting together and everybody went home(their separate ways)? Or Christ stopped being the head because the apostles are dead?

Kobojunkie:
The Church of Jesus Christ began after Jesus' death and resurrection. After His Ascension, the church came into its own(became capable) with the arrival of the Spirit of God. That Church, headed by Jesus Christ, is the church that belongs to Jesus Christ. Many of the members eventually met horrible fates but that Church remains the Church that belongs to Jesus Christ and is headed by Jesus Christ.

Ok so, the church ended in the first century?

Kobojunkie:
No, the "world" church you have today is not the same church the disciples were a part of back in the 1st century. That is the point I was making in the comment you jumped in to respond to.
Christ was, and is the head of the first and only church that existed when the disciples were still living. However, Christ is not the head of the "world" churches of the Christian world.

Wait, you mean the only church that existed was when Jesus was with the disciples?

Kobojunkie:
It was unnecessary because I was referring there to the root of the "world church" as we have it today, not Christ's Church which is still led by Jesus Christ Himself.

I don't know what you mean by "world" here but the church as we have it today is still basically the same as they had it in the days of the early church (atleast in Bible believing church). It's still a community of believers regularly meeting to worship,to pray, to learn and to share the bread and the cup. There was leadership and organizational then like we have it now(larger now as there are more Christains today as opposed to then). Christ was the head then and Christ is still the head now.

Kobojunkie:
In the English language, the word "church refers to a group of people or a gathering of people for a common purpose or reason. The word is also used in reference to the buildings in the Christian religion where worshippers gather to worship their God.

I have no clue what relevance this here has to what I typed, the topic or even the questions asked.

And here I thought you were writing in response to what I wrote or something. Kindly spare me your sermons next time ....

It wasn't a sermon. It was explaining to you from both a historical context and from the Bible that the gathering of believers as a church is built into the DNA of christainity from the very beginning and it's not a Roman Catholic construct as you posited. It's part and parcel of being a Christain and people shouldn't go about telling others otherwise

Kobojunkie:

Also God certainly didn't ask you or anyone to go to church either. Matter of fact, the world church you know of today all have roots in the Roman church, which was decided on by disgruntled Bishops who saw the Christian movement as a source of power and wealth that should be controlled by them, about 300 years after the disciples had all died off.

Ofcourse the many bishops and those that followed did a good job of killing off the competition and what you have today is all rooted in all that.

So?

Well that's not accurate. The concept of the word "church" is rooted in the New testament in the Greek word ekklesia, which means "a called out assembly". The word ekklesia is used in the greek translation of the old testament (the Bible of Jesus, the apostles and the early church), where it is used for the general assembly of the Jewish people, especially when gathered for a religious purpose such as hearing of the Law. It's also used in classical Greek for a general assembly of people but for the majority of the time it's used in the new testament, it was used to denote the gathering of believers(about 115x).

After the Ascension of the Lord, the early Jesus followers came together under the leadership of the disciples to worship,pray, learn and strengthen one another. This concept spread outside of Judea when the Jerusalem persecution started and many of the apostles were forced to spread out within the Roman empire. Everywhere they went they setup this ekklesia (churches) which regularly met in homes and so on(see the book of acts). Hence the bulk of the new testament are letters to these young churches in order to give them doctrinal instructions,words of encouragement,words of admonishment and also pastoral instructions like how to organise the church, what type of person should be chosen as a Presbyter(leader of a local Church),how to approach the bread and the cup(holy communion) and so on.[the letters are generally divided into 3: a) Letters to specific churches b) Pastoral letters c) catholic letters( not to be confused with the later Roman Catholic church; catholic here means universal).
Even the Lord's address in the book of revelation was to churches in Asia Minor.

The idea that one can be a Christain in isolation as it's taught today would be foreign to the apostles and the early Christians. Yes, the Christain race is a personal race but that is just one half of the equation. The body of Christ has always been a communal body where Jesus followers come together to worship, pray, strengthen one another, learn from others and share the bread and the cup together as Jesus instructed(Luke 22:18-20, 1corinthians 11:23-25, mark 14:22-25). The Christain race is a personal race but also a race ran with the help of other believers. Doing one without the other, one runs the risk of being pulled into an extreme.

Its understandable why most people are skeptical of being part a church today especially with all the fake congregations we hear of everyday, but no matter how bad it looks, there are still and will always be lots of genuine Jesus communities around. Just as Elijah thought he was alone but God was like naa, i still have 70,000 people who have not bowed to Baal(see 1kings 19:18), so it is today. The idea is to prayerfully seek out these communities. This is the laid down principle from the Lord.

It would also be great if more Christains take interest in the real historical Jesus and christainity through the ages, because we are living in a time of hyper misinformation. Too much is been ascribed to the Roman Catholic church and Constantine. This things have been repeated for so long on YouTube and blogs that they sound like facts even though they are historically incorrect.

Aside: The English word "church" comes from Old English cirice, circe which after passing through multiple languages eventually ends up at the Greek word kuriakē oikia(house of the Lord).

Kobojunkie:
You saying in all those verses listed Jesus lied about the cost?

You mean to say that there is a way to get around Jesus's own commandments as far as becoming His follower ( born again) is concerned?

I'm guessing you are confusing the free gift of salvation with the likely consequences of choosing to live a counter-cultured life in a broken world(different degrees of friction for different people living in different cultures). One of the many reasons we rely on the HolySpirit to strengthen us and help us navigate through the journey.

My advice if you would accept it, is to read the entire gospel according to Matthew and try working through how those verses you quoted fit not just into the gospel alone but also into the entire biblical story as God has shown you. A good well grounded commentary on the gospel of Matthew would help if you choose to use one(Just a suggestion cos it is not an absolute necessity but a helpful one).
While you are at it, you should also read the books of Hebrews,Romans and Ephesians. They would be helpful

Have a good Sunday.

Kobojunkie:



Let me help you with Jesus Christ's own teaching. If you claim to belong to Jesus Christ but never knew this or did what He commanded in the passages belong... i suggest you begin considering reviewing the relatonship you claim to have with Him.

His Salvation comes at a cost. And those who want it ought to understand the cost and be willing to pay it. There is no cutting corners to get at it and there is no 419 way to it.
No one can become a follower of Jesus Christ simply by wishing for it. Jesus required that those who choose to follow Him do the work that He commands they first do.

1. Be prepared to abandon parents, brother, sister, children, spouse, in-laws, e.t.c.
2. Abandon all that you know/believe, have, and all that you are
3. Bear your own burden (not someone else's cross- not even your family's or children's)


4. Become a child again in your thinking and your actions

5. Be prepared to lose life(reputation, career, control, property, etc.)




6. Desire above all to find and enter the Kingdom of God and also walk the path of righteousness, with God as your guide every step
7. Let go of all control you have over your life and circumstances, allowing God to take care of your every need

So basically you are rejecting the free gift of salvation for working your way into it?

Mehn, people will always read what they want to in any situation. She said it happened when her and will were separated and they both thought their marriage was effectively over, but everyone making sound like it happened when they were still together. Like she was running around sleeping with someone else when she was still sharing a bed with Will.

What she did was still wrong from a Christain standpoint(sex only with someone you are legally married to) or from a secular black & white stand point(she should have waited to be officially divorced before sleeping with another person) but truly how many people actually live up to these standards.

But it's someone else so everybody got jokes.

LordReed:

I am open to learning your point.

BLM organisation are becoming or have become inseparable from the movement such that support for one is essentially support for the other which I am categorically calling bullocks.

That's not my point. If you read my post again,you would see that the point i was making was, " they can become inseparable if people are not intentional in separating the two, as the line separating them can become blurry if you are not paying attention".

The time to warn against and curb the influence of interest groups or extremist ideas in any society is at their inceptions or when their influence has not yet been fully entrenched into the collective mindset. Once that happens,it's already too late.

Consolidation of power do not happen overnight, extremist ideas do not take hold at once. They take time and are usually a gradual process.
It's easy to dismiss the BLM organisation currently because they do not yet hold considerable influence, but the thing is they are trying to. Same goes for the extremist ideas floating around.

If there's one thing we can learn from history during this period is, whenever there's a disruption in the societal mindset or a vacuum in the society, there are always individuals ready to take advantage of it. The Nazi party and the Church during the middle ages are two extreme examples of how seemingly obscure groups of people and ideologies can slowly and gradually become very powerful and unchallengeable.

If there was ever a time to start ringing the alarm bells against interest groups and extremist ideas floating around during this racial equality climate, now is that time.
In summary: It's prudent to be very intentional about separating the BLM organisation from the black lives movement itself. Not because the BLM controls the movement now but because they are trying to.
Same goes for any extremist ideas trying to bundle itself with the racial equality conversation.

In Terry Crews case, He is speaking out mainly against any extremist ideas floating around in the racial equality conversation and not against any organisation in particular.




Below is my original post, so you can read it again in view of explanation.

I doubt that is what he meant. I read his statement as someone saying we should all have the presence of mind in separating the movement from the organisation, as sometimes that line can be blurred.

Interest groups have a long history of usually trying to control the narrative of an ideology/movement from within, effectively making the group and the movement one and the same. If people are not cautious of these at the onset, the leadership of these groups can become too powerful, at which point it's already too late (well except the movement itself breaks down).

LordReed:


Both you and CoolUsername are insinuating that the BLM organisation are becoming or have become inseparable from the movement such that support for one is essentially support for the other which I am categorically calling bullocks. The dynamics of the movement have gone beyond the direct handling or influence of the BLM organisation. Take the Seattle CHAZ/CHOP for example, the BLM organisation is not in charge there, it is purely a community effort.

I'm guessing you missed the point I was making, but it's fine sir

LordReed:


I'd like to see where anyone claimed that supporting the BLM organisation was essential to the fight for racial justice and equality.

I doubt that is what he meant. I read his statement as someone saying we should all have the presence of mind in separating the movement from the organisation, as sometimes that line can be blurred.

Interest groups have a long history of usually trying to control the narrative of an ideology/movement from within, effectively making the group and the movement one and the same.
If people are not cautious of these at the onset, the leadership of these groups can become too powerful and at this point it's already too late (well except the movement itself breaks down).

Well for starters, outside of the Abrahamic religions that have a developed conception of God that is utterly transcendent and distinct from the universe; an infinite individual who created the universe out of nothing, other creation myths have mostly anthropomorphic concepts of God and a creator within or part of the universe.

That's kind of a big difference.

From greek the name was further transliterated into Latin which was pretty straightforward, the only thing that changed was ou being rendered as U.
IESOUS = IESUS.
As the christainity became the state religion and Latin the Lingua Franca of the church, the Latin translation of the Bible(Vulgate) became the defacto translation of christainity throughout the empire.
IESUS was the defacto pronunciation of the Jesus's name for about 1000yrs.

Originally the letter ( J ) was just a stylish way of writing( I ). Meanwhile, at this time the English language was developing and evolving from the 5th century Germanic tribe settlement of Britain (Old English).
Sometime around the 12th century, the Latin word Iesus entered into Middle English and for the next 500 years the language kept evolving, mixing with French and other languages, undergoing the great vowel shift where the letter ( I ) gets its current sound from the Middle English ( ē )as in sweet. And finally in the 16th century the letter ( J ) is differentiated from( I ) and officially enters into the Modern English with its current consonant form in the mid 17th century.

It is from this mid 17th century Modern English we get the proper name Jesus as we pronounce it today. It's also from these period we get other proper names in the Bible like Jacob, James, Jerusalem,Judah, Jeremiah,Job etc.

In summary the name Yeshua passes through greek, through Latin , through Middle English and then finally gets to us in Modern English as Jesus.
Yeshua -> Iesous -> Iesus -> Jesus

Just as Ade and Vladimir retain their meanings from their source languages, the names Jesus also retains its meaning from its Hebrew roots.
Similarly Peter, Petrus, Pierre,Pedro, Bitrus ,Петър all have no meaning in their respective languages but get their meaning from one source Πέτρος(meaning stone).

The Hebrew name of the Lord is Yehoshua, which is also the name of Moses's successor (Joshua son of Nun) and the high priest in the book of Ezra .The meaning of the name in its literal form mean Yahweh saves or Yahweh is my/our salvation if you want to put it in proper English grammar.
Sometime after the Jewish exile the name was shortened to Yeshua and was a common name for Jewish males.
Because of the exile and subsequent settlement of Jews outside of Isreal many Jews living in diaspora weren't conversant with Hebrew and couldn't read the tanak(Jewish Bible/ Old testament) on their own. Not too different from how 2nd or 3rd generation of Nigerians born in Europe can't speak any Nigerian language.

Alexander the Great's conquest of the then-known world gave everyone a unified language, Greek. From this we get the Jewish Bible translated into greek around the 3rd/ 2nd century bc. This translation commonly known as the Septuagint or the LXX was the unifying translation for Jews everywhere during the greco-roman period and was also the translation the new testament authors quoted from when quoting the old testament.

It is from this translation we get the earliest greek transliteration for the name Yeshua. Basically it goes like this:
Y: In Greek there is no specific letter that
indicates the “y”-sound. The letter “I” used with the “apostrophe”-symbol at the top left is used to indicate the sound “Y”.
E: The closest equivalent Greek sound to the “e” of Yeshua is the η. This sounds like “ey” as in they.
SH: In Greek there is no “sh” sound like the Hebrew shin in Yeshua, and therefore the “s”-sound is used as a substitute.
U: The “u” of Yeshua sounds like Luke, and it correlates with the Greek οῦ.
A: Because greek is a case-ending language, the “a” at the end of Yeshua is dropped and replaced with “s” (ς) to indicate it's a masculine noun(name).
At the end we get Ἰησοῦs (the ending s here is to denote masculinity of the name in the normative case).
In English letters it would look like IESOUS(pronounced as ee-ay-soos). This was how the name was transliterated into greek long before Jesus was born.

The new testament was written in greek so the authors followed the Septuagint transliteration by using Iesous in it for multiple people. Other Jewish writers writing in the same time period in greek (Josephus , Philo etc) also used this transliteration for people bearing the name "Yeshua"(remember the name was fairly common at the time).

Seems like the question is becoming important to some people so I figured I do a writeup about it to the best of my knowledge.

So firstly, a bit of background:
When translating from one language to another, we have the options of either translating the words(I.e finding equivalent words in the target language with the same meaning as the words in the source language) or we transliterate them(Meaning: changing the letters from the source language into the corresponding, similar-sounding letters in the target language). Basically in the case of a transliteration, we are creating a whole new word in the target language and this new word only gets its meaning from its source language.

The goal most of the time is to stick to translating words as much as possible but transliteration is sometimes the preferred option in a couple of sceneries
• The word is indigenous to only its culture and there is no substitute for it in the target language. Example sharwama, gbegiri etc.

• The word is a proper name, like the name of a person or a place.
Example: Adé lọ si ìlú Ìbàdàn (Yoruba).
In this case it would be weird if we translated Adé and Ìbàdàn to give us "Crown went to the city of the edge of the meadow(atleast that's the etymology of Ibadan i could find)".
It's pretty easy to see how we would quickly run into problems and confusion if we try to translate the proper names.
To get a more accurate translation for the sentence above,we do a transliteration for the proper names and get "Ade went to the city of Ibadan".
In this instance we just created two new words (Ade & Ibadan) that do not exist and have no meaning in English but they get their meaning from the their language, Yoruba.
Lets take a proper name in a language that does not share alphabets with English to drive home the point.
Владимир (Russian: loosely meaning "great ruler, to rule greatly,ruler of the world/peace [modern]).
As it's a proper name we do a transliteration to find equivalent alphabets in English that match on to the russian ones as best as possible.
В = V
Л = L
А = A
Д = D and so on until we get the English word Vladimir(the first name of Russia's current president).
Again this word has no meaning in English but it gets its meaning from the Russian word Владимир.

One thing to note is that transliteration is not an exact science as there would be instances when there is no equivalent alphabet or sound In the target language. For example there are sounds in Arabic or Southern African languages (think the gods must be crazy movie) that have no direct equivalent sounds or alphabets in English. At other times, the rules of grammar in between languages can also affect how words get transliterated. In both these cases ,words would inevitably loose some of their sounds during transliteration.

With that background,we can walk through how get Jesus from Yehoshua in the next post.

YouAreFinished:
You're the most useless thing on nairaland

When did it become a crime for someone to voice their opinion? Why are you guys so triggered by it? I'm less bothered about trump or America's politics, but calling someone a "thing" for voicing out their opinion... That says more about you than him

IMAliyu:

Ok, I get your point.

We've been religious creatures for thousands of years, so simply consciously concluding that no deity exists still doesn't get rid of some of our religious and groupthink nature.

But I think what you are seeing is just something that is characteristic of an ideology (which I would call 'New atheism' one) and in any ideology there are people that take things a bit too far.
Like self proclaimed atheists that got offended by words like 'Godspeed' simply for having 'god' in it, and things like changing the reference of the calendar from BC (Before Christ) to BCE (Before Common Era), both mean thesame time frame, but I feel BCE is a discredit to religious(Christian) origins of the modern Gregorian calendar.

And yes there are some forms of religions that don't have a belief in a deity like some sects of Buddhism, however they still retain practices(spirituality, prescribed meditation) that are characteristic of religion.

I've heard some that try to argue that an atheist is never truly an atheist, because they retain a presupposition or value that orients them in life which is based on some kind of faith and not rationality and that presupposition and value serves as their god whether they are conscious of it or not. Although I think they were seriously stretching meaning of words here or speaking in a metaphorical sense to come to this conclusion.

Yea, I heard neil degrasse talk about the "godspeed" episode on Joe Rogan's podcast a while back.

I understand what you are saying also and I can understand why we agree on some things and where we might disagree on others.
But all in all,Its been a great conversation sir. Enjoy the rest of your week.

IMAliyu:

I think you may be conflating having a philosophy and belief structure with a religion.
A religion is a belief structure, but a belief structure is not a religion.
So, 'New atheism' seems to have a belief structure and a philosophy attached to it, but I wouldn't call it a religion.
And not unless we are stretching the definition of words. Atheism still just means a lack of belief in any deity(s).

That point I was trying to get at sir is that the word religion is more complex than what it is normally distilled into. The problem stems from the fact that when the word "religion" got it's modern connotations in the English language ,it was already heavily influenced by the Christain/western worldview and failed to encapsulate many other worldviews. Today trying to get an all encapsulating definition for the word is alot complex when you have to consider the spectrum of worldviews involved, from theistic religions to nontheistics religions(there are and have been actually a couple of nontheistics religions, both historically and in modern times).

I think you may be conflating having a philosophy and belief structure with a religion.

A philosophy can also be a religion sir. Confucianism is fundamentally a philosophy but it is also considered a religion.

Atheism still just means a lack of belief in any deity(s)

Yes,that is true sir in its most basic form and I also do agree that merely having a belief structure doesn't automatically make something into a religion. But when this beliefs make adherents exhibit behaviours that can be mapped unto behaviours associated with what would be considered a religion (when taking holistically), at that point you have the making of something new.
Take an extreme example, when Antony Flew(one of the most prominent atheist at the time) left atheism and became a deist, the new Atheist movement went bezerk and Flew was vilified. Richard Dawkins went as far as accusing him of “tergiversation (a fancy word for apostasy)". This is a behaviour that can be mapped unto what you expect from other established religions.
I know this is an extreme example but if you take a step back and begin to observe the behaviours of many adherents of the new Atheist movement you begin to see a pattern of behaviour that you expect to see in adherents of other established religions (when taking the word religion holistically). That's why I said previously the answer is both a yes and a no answer.

Finally sir, I try to be as intentional as I can with my language. I do not mean to say everyone who identifies as an atheist necessarily exhibits these behaviours and as human beings are complex ,not everyone also neatly maps unto either side of the spectrum.

tintingz:
Hinduism and Buddhism believe in supernaturals and gods(awaken Buddhists, folk deities).
I still maintain that, a religion is composed of what I listed.

It is well sir, let's leave it at that then.

JMAN05:


I will comment when it has to do with grammar as regards John 3:5. I think, there is no more reason to speak on that. There is no grammatical reason to input "the" before "spirit". It's all about doctrine. I won't make much issue about that cos that often happens in translations. What I won't agree is that Greek grammar supports it. It doesn't.

However, as to why "water" there refers to water baptism, I will prefer a private discussion. Without such, I assure you that there won't be an end to the tunnel. If you want to discuss that, let's make it private.

It is well sir.. let's drop it at that.
Enjoy your weekend.

tintingz:


So it's only on Judeo-christian those listed exist? When infact it exist in over thousands Religions out there? Name any religion.

Sir,You need to read more on other religions outside of the major ones. There have been many religions that do not include many of what you wrote, for example there are nontheistics schools within Hinduism or Buddhism( as this religions in their pure form do not require a belief in God or gods ). Cārvāka is an ancient belief system founded purely on materialism principles. You can look up many other religions past and present that do not fit the bill of what you posted.

The fact that you even believe a religion needs saints to be one reflects your Judeo-Christian worldview. Like I said earlier, what constitutes a religion is more complex than a listing of things on a checklist.

Lol, you really quoted out the bolded, like what's the connection

I'm guessing you didn't read up on it ,but that's fine sir. The summary is that Kaufman won the case ,so atheist organisations for the purpose of the law are considered religious organisations and are conferred with the same protections. This was a watershed moment as it paved the way for other rulings which places atheism as a protected belief system at the same level as any religion. (see Burwell v. Hobby Lobby as a subsequent and more concise example)
The main reason why I pointed you to it is so you can follow the proceedings and see how the judges and experts had to grapple with what is and is not a religion or belief system. It's definitely not a simple checklist

Any ideology can be Religion as long as it follows the listed. Atheism is lack in belief in gods that's all. Like Lordreed said can you call an off TV a cable channel?

@the bolded is obviously wrong. It's too simplistic a worldview.
Ah, the good'ol if atheism is a religion or belief system then ....(off is a TV station,bald hair is a hair colour and so on). The problem with these statements is that they are false equivalences. Those things usually listed are not ideologies or concepts. No one says anything can become a religion, what is said is any ideology (ideas, concepts) can become a religion. For example there's a cult of Elvis today and you will be surprised by how many people are part of the religion. They replaced the real Elvis with an idea of him and center their beliefs around this idea. I know it's easy to dismiss them as silly but its an extreme example of how powerful an idea/concept can be.

So back to the question, is atheism a religion? Short answer: Yes and No.
No in its historical sense and at its most basic form.

Yes in the modern sense in that many of its adherents have a core set of beliefs and positive claims. It's also possible to map many of their behaviours onto the behaviours of adherents of other established religions and belief systems. Problem is some do not realise this and some choose to deny it.

PS: I used the word many here intentionally because I do not mean all atheist.

tintingz:


There are things that make up a religion.


1. Designated behaviors and practices
2. Morals
3. Worldviews
4. Texts
5. Sanctified places, temples
6. Prophecies
7. Ethics
8. Organizations
9. Supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements.
10. Faith, beliefs
11. Rituals
12. Festive
13. Saints
14. Prayer, meditation

Actually that's not true. Numbers 4-14(including number 2) are not necessary for something to be recognised as a religion. You are basing your concepts of a religion on the Judeo-Christian worldview and western bias but in reality what constitutes a religion is really more complex.

As kobojunkie pointed out, any ideology can become a religion. Atheism isn't meant to be a religion but over the years has morphed into becoming one for alot of its adherents even without them recognising.

In many western countries, even at the judicial level there's been this constant shift on how to recognize and in giving their organisations the same rights as any other mainstream religious organisation. See the Kaufman v. McCaughtry (2005), Seventh circuit court of appeal ruling for an example.

JMAN05:


No. I have been here for long. I ve observed that people are readily open to change when they think no one is seeing the conversation. Unlike when it is open, they are ready to argue to death even when the evidence is obvious. Why? Perhaps, they want to save face. They feel they ll loose if they accept in public. You will likely observe this later.

Secondly, there are chances of derailing the thread in a public discussion.

Pm works best. Trust me.

I've been here off and on for a while so I understand what you are talking about. Despite that, there are things that can be discussed here.
This is more of a conversation that centers around how we parse certain texts and not necessarily a conversion conversation, so it's okay be discussed in the open. You have offered to show how you arrived at your interpretation and I'll very much like to read it. I'll in turn will probably give you reasons why I agree with some parts and disagree with others and some else can probably chip in from a different angle.
There's too much misinformation on the internet and the more respectful conversations that are public, the better.

Either way sir, I'll understand if you are not inclined to do so. It's perfectly okay

JMAN05:


I see that place as referring to water baptism. Do you wish we discuss it? I will prefer a mail from you. Not public forum.

I personally think an open forum is fine for a topic like this. It gives opportunity for others to chip in with other view points. I think as long as we all handle the conversation with grace, it should be fine.

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