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Atheism a religion Pt II.

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I know, I know, we have already prooved that Atheism isnt a religion. Ive heard all that crap in the last time I did this thread, get over it. We still need to debate stuff like this. I mean it is a debate forum after all.

Can anyone give me the definition of religion?

And then can someone give me the definition of Faith?
 
Here is my take.

Religion is the belief in a higher purpose. This may be directed toward an entity or a sense of spirituality or enlightenment. The point is there is a goal to be reached through various actions united under one common belief system.

Faith is the belief in that extra something that cannot be seen nor controlled that helps keep you on track. When you lose your footing while climbing to reach your goal Faith is that branch that happens to be sticking out of the cliff where no other plants are that allows you to grab hold and regain your balance to progress forward.

Obviously they are both hard questions to answer.
 
Religion, something that requires faith. Generally the religion itself (not something like some other theory that may be valid if my religion is right) should include at least one of the following, but I guess strictly speaking these are not needed. Morals, explanation of how we got here, expectation of worship of what we have faith in, the supernatural, a reason for the faith, stuff like that. But the big thing is faith.

Faith: Clearly choosing to believe or trust in something beyond a degree not supported by the evidence. For example, if my computer crashes half of the time, if I would believe that it would crash only 20 percent of the time, that would be faith. Also evidence can be practically anything. Personal experiences, thought, something you read or heard, research, experimentation, anything that would support that something is true.

In real life there are hardly ever clearly drawn lines like with my computer (it was like that before Linux :2razz: ). Do you trust a friend? Well, there may be a gray area and lots of factors to consider and just really confusing and lots of maybes. That is why I said "Clearly" up there.

However one thing that is without a gray area is absolute faith. Except for that I exist to myself and maybe some semantics, nothing has absolute evidence, or proof (if I am wrong, if there is something else, please let me know). You cannot really know something beyond any doubt, but you can accept something without any doubt. It is possible that there is very strong evidence for something and from a practical point of view there is no difference in how we act to something we practically trust all the time and absolutely trust. But it is how much we accept it in our minds and in our hearts (if that has meaning to you) that makes that difference.

Now, if you believe in something absolutely, like there is or is not a god, that is a religion. However, atheism does not require to absolutely believe that there is no god. Heck, I wonder if atheism should be defined as 'not having any faith' as opposed to 'there is no god.'

EDIT: Hooked on phonics didn't work for me (I probably didn't find all of my mistakes even with two edits)
 
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