Is atheism a religion? According to the American judiciary, it is. The ruling came after a prisoner in 2005 claimed that his rights were violated when the warden refused to allow him to form a group of inmates to study and discuss atheism. A federal court agreed. “Atheism is the inmate’s religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being,” the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals said.
Specifically, the point the judges made was that when a person sincerely holds beliefs dealing with issues of “ultimate concern” that for such a person occupy a place parallel to one filled by God in traditionally religious persons, then those beliefs represent the person’s religion.
Critics were quick to criticise the judgment, calling the court’s ruling a sort of Alice in Wonderland jurisprudence where up is down and down is up, and atheism, the very antithesis of religion, is religion. They also took exception to the court’s reference to atheism having a code of ethics when apart from a position on the concept of God, there are no tenets, creed or code associated with atheism at all.
But belief in a supreme being or possessing a code of ethics is very dicey grounds for any kind of labelling. For instance, was Mother Teresa an atheist? We might be aghast at the suggestion but the fact remains that a religious person can be — and often is — considered an atheist with respect to other religions. “Infidel” and “kafir” are words that immediately come to mind. Yet, the Mother did have a code of ethics and definitely believed in God.
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