Don't take it from me, here's a great article. Or, read on.

Incidentally, Buddhism does not follow your definition of religion.

"According to what the Buddha taught, how the world began is completely irrelevant. 

The Buddha taught about anguish, the causes of anguish, that we can be free of anguish, and the methods to be free of anguish. How the world began has no impact on these things, and so the Buddha did not spend time on cosmological theory. However, lots of people in his time did want to know such things, and his answer to one of them was this: Imagine you got shot by an arrow and I came along and said that I could save you, but you insisted in knowing first, what the arrow was made of, who made it, when it was made, who first owned it, who brought it here, and what kind of bow it was shot from. The Buddha, acting as doctor, can cure the suffering caused by the arrow in your side, but he's not going to be able to save you if he has to answer all those irrelevant questions first!"

So, let's look at the second definition for religion.

Details of belief as taught or discussed.

So, does that make Atheism a religion? You can argue yes, but in extension, science is a religion. I mean, science class teaches of how the universe was made, yes? Okay, excuse me while I confess my sins to my grade 9 science teacher.

Now let's ignore what I just said. With the logic presented, let's define a hobby.

An activity done regularly in one's leisure time for pleasure.

Ok. You know what? I've always liked the idea of collect stamps. It sounds fun. If non belief is a belief, is not doing anything doing something? So, not collecting stamps, is one of my hobbies. Cool.

Any other arguments? Sorry if I didn't brush up on anything you said... seemed a bit pointless, honestly. I do have that article after all.

I really don't know enough about buddhism to say anything about it.  I'm not 100% sure on my definition of religion either, but I think in general it works.  the "details of a belief as taught or discussed" is probably better

Yes I would say science could be considered a religion, and perhaps it should be considered a religion in an effort to avoid many misconceptions about it.  Science does not provide us with facts or knowledge, it only provides us with evidence and that is all it has ever done.  Over time we may find something to be so consistent that it becomes a law such as the law of conservation of energy, but that law is still nothing but a belief supported by evidence; and no matter how strong that evidence, it is not true knowledge.  Thus, if you believe in the law of conservation of energy, or science in general, it is not farfetched at all to call science your religion, or a piece of something that makes up your religion

I don't see anything logically wrong with saying not collecting stamps is a hobby.  Inaction is still action, it is not the equivalent of doing nothing.  You acknowledge collecting stamps is a hobby, but you don't do it.  Inaction implies that you could be doing something, whereas doing nothing does not.  Doing nothing would be the equivalent of never contemplating collecting stamps at all, or simply not thinking of collecting or not collecting stamps at any given moment.

This is sort of like how an Atheist might say the default position of a human is "not believing in God" [not collecting stamps].  That is not true, the default position is to not know or to have never contemplated God.  Only when you have contemplated God's existence [collecting stamps] is believing or not believing possible [collecting or not collecting stamps], and both require blind faith [action].

I really don't know enough about buddhism to say anything about it.  I'm not 100% sure on my definition of religion either, but I think in general it works.  the "details of a belief as taught or discussed" is probably better

 

Yes I would say science could be considered a religion, and perhaps it should be considered a religion in an effort to avoid many misconceptions about it.  Science does not provide us with facts or knowledge, it only provides us with evidence and that is all it has ever done.  Over time we may find something to be so consistent that it becomes a law such as the law of conservation of energy, but that law is still nothing but a belief supported by evidence; and no matter how strong that evidence, it is not true knowledge.  Thus, if you believe in the law of conservation of energy, or science in general, it is not farfetched at all to call science your religion, or a piece of something that makes up your religion

 

I don't see anything logically wrong with saying not collecting stamps is a hobby.  Inaction is still action, it is not the equivalent of doing nothing.  You acknowledge collecting stamps is a hobby, but you don't do it.  Inaction implies that you could be doing something, whereas doing nothing does not.  Doing nothing would be the equivalent of never contemplating collecting stamps at all, or simply not thinking of collecting or not collecting stamps at any given moment.

 

This is sort of like how an Atheist might say the default position of a human is "not believing in God" [not collecting stamps].  That is not true, the default position is to not know or to have never contemplated God.  Only when you have contemplated God's existence [collecting stamps] is believing or not believing possible [collecting or not collecting stamps], and both require blind faith [action].

Actually, most atheists were believers at some point in their lives, as most people were raised to be religious. That does include me, for the record.

Also, I forgot the thesaurus exists.

http://thesaurus.com/browse/belief

While I was trying to play along and say that disbelief is a belief before... it isn't. The fact you think, logically, not collecting stamps is a hobby, means I have an infinite amount of hobbies. Or, the same amount of hobbies you have tried. If hobbies are similar to that of religion, and you're defining it that way, everything ever is a religion, or at least anything you've experienced. Which, in turn, makes nothing religion.

One last question. Why does this even matter? The reason atheists don't like being called a religion, is because that's what we walked away from. But why are believers so strong on saying Atheists are a religion? Is it to say we aren't any better then religion (I've heard that so many times...)? Because, that is saying religion is a bad thing, especially when part of your argument is that Atheism is bad.

Thanks!

What constitutes "true knowledge"?  Your reasoning puts every experience possible into the form of belief and disbelief, but for there to be a true anything, there must be a metric to measure it against.

Only not doing the actions that you consider hobbies are hobbies.  Not doing things you don't even know about aren't hobbies because you haven't contemplated them.

I have outlined the reason why disbelief is a belief in the first post.

Like hobbies, only the beliefs or disbeliefs you believe in are part of your religion.  The ones you don't know about aren't part of your religion, nor are the ones that you acknowledge "I don't know" to.

It matters because I'm tired of atheists saying they're being logical lol.  Your problem is exactly that you walked away from religion instead of fully acknowledging that you don't know.  If you want to hope that God isn't real that's fine, but to believe that he isn't is just as bad as believing that he is.

And yes I would say atheism isnt better than any religion

What constitutes "true knowledge"?  Your reasoning puts every experience possible into the form of belief and disbelief, but for there to be a true anything, there must be a metric to measure it against.

I would call true knowledge knowledge that you know for certain.  Being that most [i'm assuming] humans aren't capable of knowing anything for certain, I might also be inclined to call "true knowledge" God.  If you want to make the assumption that this reality is real, then yes the foundation of all your experiences is the belief that your experiences are real.

That kinda made my head spin lol

I suppose you could say I'm a follower of the creed "wisest is he who knows he knows nothing"

This is proven quite the while ago...

Nowadays, people who don't believe it, and don't want to associate with atheism call themselves agnostic or "non-religious"

Sounds more like skepticism to me. Atheism is believing that there is nothing that can not be explained through logic. Skepticism is doubting everything that can be doubted in search of something that is beyond reproach, and I'm pretty sure that skeptics came up with the idea that they might be wrong first.