Why do you say that Atheism can be a religion? Atheism is the lack of religion!
PrevNode LinkNextFirst of all, note that in this tweet, I commented that:
Following on a reply I wrote to a mailing list post, I decided that I'll try avoiding the "X is a religion" argument. Many useful or insightful products/trends/movements have some zealots, including atheism, but they are still useful.
For the scope of this section, I shall restrict the discussion of Atheists to those who believe or have a strong suspicion that God/the gods, however he/she/they/it are manifested do not exist. There may be other kinds of belief categories that fall under the umbrella of atheism or irreligion, but this subset of atheists does exist.
Anyway, from my experience, some Atheists can be overzealous and even very pushy about it, fanatical, or even have a cult of followers and sycophants. The original Nazis and Communists were ostensibly atheists but were destructive, and had their share of dogma, which other people and I find irrational. Note however that by the time of Samantha Smith many communist regimes were far more relaxed and rational in practice, and I suspect that following the popularity of The Colbert Report, most of the best "AltRight" neo-Nazi bloggers are parody ones.
I do not wish to imply all fanatics, whether atheists or otherwise, were as destructive as them, just to note that believing or suspecting God does not exist, does not automatically make you free of faith or pseudo-faith.
Note that currently I am an agnostic, and try not to be overzealous and pushy about it, but I do not rule out that there were or are or can be religious agnostics. Furthermore, I do not rule out that I may have my share of irrationalities, fanaticism, or stubbornness, in other realms of my life.
Just for the record, I recall reading on an Internet site, an excerpt from an interview with one of the creators of South Park (which I admit I have not watched substantially) which was known for ridiculing various religions. That excerpt noted that they thought that despite all that, they found atheism to be the funniest religion, because the contemporary astronomical/astrophysical model expects time to run out and end. This proved as one of the catalysts from my transition from a dogmatic atheist, to an open-minded and pluralistic agnostic.