Inching Towards Becoming A Full Blown Religion, Atheists Create Their Religious Symbol
First Atheists start building churches, now this.
STARKE, Fla. — A group of atheists unveiled a monument to their nonbelief in God on Saturday to sit alongside a granite slab that lists the Ten Commandments in front of the Bradford County courthouse.
As a small group of protesters blasted Christian country music and waved "Honk for Jesus" signs, the atheists celebrated what they believe is the first atheist monument allowed on government property in the United States.
"When you look at this monument, the first thing you will notice is that it has a function. Atheists are about the real and the physical, so we selected to place this monument in the form of a bench," said David Silverman, president of American Atheists.
It also serves another function – a counter to the religious monument that the New Jersey-based group wanted removed. It's a case of if you can't beat `em, join `em.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/30/atheists-monument_n_3523762.html
Atheists In Worship:
= new reply since forum marked as read
...then bald is a hair color. 
...that error still doesn't make atheism a religion, per se. I consider that to require a number of characteristics that atheism doesn't possess ( most importantly, belief in some form of supernatural controlling power, which is a component of the definition of the term in most any lexicographical source).
Atheism is most definitely a belief system (or at least a belief...hard to call a single doctrinal point a "system" , though. Anyone categorically stating that there are no such things as gods (in a context that doesn't make it clear that there's an "I believe" being implied) bears the burden of proof for their assertion. I with 'em luck (and they'll become one of the most famous figures in the history of philosophy if they can pull it off).
In this sense, we're all technically agnostics, both theists and atheists alike. No one knows whether gods exist...at least not in any way that fulfills knowledge conditions. We all have to make something of a Kierkegaardian leap of faith to arrive an an operative conclusion, a way to act one way or another in matters which require a resolution of the question of god(s)' existence.
McD for worship!
They are a false icon of burgers, the crossed palms will reign triumphant in heaven!
I see it posted over and over again that atheism is very rigidly defined as a lack of belief in a god or gods and that that is the only thing atheists have in common.
And you are basing it on your anecdotal experience?
You can say many. You can say all the ones that you know.
But I would argue that you can't say this is a position held by all atheists. Particularly since there is evidence to the contrary.
Some might say that to do so would be overtly irrational, lol.
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"The World's Smallest Super-Hero"
Here is one of their buldings:
In the same sense as the op. I don't agree with the op I think it is rank bullshit, I also think de botton is a silly git, but if one wishes to declare places were atheists regularly get together as 'places of worship' for example to qualify for the same stupid tax exemption that religious businesses get for their 'churches', I'm all for that. It might be a way for Barnes & Noble to get out of the fiscal hole they are in 
please, build them with covering to provide and misters to keep cool. (Can you tell I come from a southwest state )
edited for typo
1929 magazine cover showing muscular workers dumping Jesus with garbage
Thanks for this historical tidbit. All the Russians I know are Orthodox. They are highly educated and take their faith seriously, but believe in protecting all other faiths so long as they don't commit terrorist acts. From the Wikipedia page on the Russian Orthodox Church:
Under Communist rule
After the October Revolution of November 7, 1917, the officially proclaimed objective of the Soviet Union was to unite all of the people of the world in a communist state free of "capitalist exploitation" (see Communist International). With such a view of the world any ethnic heritage closely tied to traditional religion and its clergy was targeted by Soviet authorities.[18][19]
The Soviet Union was the first state to have elimination of religion as an ideological objective. Toward that end, the Communist regime confiscated church property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in schools. Actions toward particular religions, however, were determined by State interests, and most organized religions were never outlawed. Orthodox priests and believers were variously tortured, sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals, and executed.[20][21] Many Orthodox (along with people of other faiths) were also subjected to psychological punishment or torture and mind control experimentation in order to force them give up their religious convictions.[22][23]
Thousands of churches and monasteries were taken over by the government and either destroyed or converted to secular use. It was impossible to build new churches. Practising Orthodox Christians were restricted from prominent careers and membership in communist organizations (the party, the Komsomol). Anti-religious propaganda was openly sponsored and encouraged by the government, which the Church was not given an opportunity to publicly respond to. The government youth organization, the Komsomol, encouraged its members to vandalize Orthodox Churches and harass worshippers. Seminaries were closed down, and the church was restricted from using the press.
The history of Orthodoxy (and other religions) under Communism was not limited to this story of repression and secularization. Bolshevik policies toward religious belief and practice tended to vacillate over time between, on the one hand, a utopian determination to substitute secular rationalism for what they considered to be an unmodern, "superstitious" worldview and, on the other, pragmatic acceptance of the tenaciousness of religious faith and institutions. In any case, religious beliefs and practices did persist, not only in the domestic and private spheres but also in the scattered public spaces allowed by a state that recognized its failure to eradicate religion and the political dangers of an unrelenting culture war.[24]
In November 1917, following the collapse of the tsarist government, a council of the Russian Orthodox church reestablished the patriarchate and elected the metropolitan Tikhon, the former Metropolitan of All America and Canada, as patriarch. But the new Soviet government soon declared the separation of church and state and also nationalized all church-held lands. These administrative measures were followed by brutal state-sanctioned persecutions that included the wholesale destruction of churches, as well as the arrest and execution of many clerics. The Russian Orthodox church was further weakened in 1922, when the Renovated Church, a reform movement supported by the Soviet government, seceded from Patriarch Tikhon's church (also see the Josephites and the Russian True Orthodox Church), restored a Holy Synod to power, and brought division among clergy and faithful.
In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed.[25]
Stalin era
The main target of the anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and 1930s was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest congregation. Nearly all of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labor camps. Theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited.
The sixth sector of the OGPU, led by Yevgeny Tuchkov, began aggressively arresting and executing bishops, priests, and devout worshippers, such as Metropolitan Veniamin in Petrograd in 1922 for refusing to accede to the demand to hand in church valuables (including sacred relics). In the time between 1927 and 1940, the number of Orthodox Churches in the Russian Republic fell from 29,584 to less than 500. Between 1917 and 1935, 130,000 Orthodox priests were arrested. Of these, 95,000 were put to death. Many thousands of victims of persecution became recognized in a special canon of saints known as the "new martyrs and confessors of Russia".
At no time before the mid to late 1930s did the Bolsheviks control the situation. They maintained that the clergy organized united resistance against the Soviet state. During the mid-1920s, Soviet officials in Nizhny Novgorod and other locations encountered religious groups successfully circulating anti-Soviet political materials. According to party officials, legal organizations served as fronts for oppositional activities.[26]
In January 1918 Patriarch Tikhon proclaimed anathema to the Bolsheviks (without explicitly naming them),[27] which further antagonized relations. When Tikhon died in 1925, Soviet authorities forbade patriarchal elections to be held. Patriarchal locum tenens (acting Patriarch) Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky, 1887–1944), going against the opinion of a major part of the church's parishes, in 1927 issued a declaration accepting the Soviet authority over the church as legitimate, pledging the church's cooperation with the government and condemning political dissent within the church. By this declaration Sergius granted himself authority that he, being a deputy of imprisoned Metropolitan Peter and acting against his will, had no right to assume according to the XXXIV Apostolic canon, which led to a split with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia abroad and the Russian True Orthodox Church (Russian Catacomb Church) within the Soviet Union, as they allegedly remained faithful to the Canons of the Apostles, declaring the part of the church led by Metropolitan Sergius schism, sometimes coined Sergianism. Due to this canonical disagreement it is disputed which church has been the legitimate successor to the Russian Orthodox Church that had existed before 1925.[28][29][30][31]
With aid from the Methodist Church, two Russian Orthodox seminaries were reopened.[32] Moreover, in the 1929 elections, the Orthodox Church attempted to formulate itself as a full-scale opposition group to the Communist Party, and attempted to run candidates of its own against the Communist candidates. Article 124 of the 1936 Soviet Constitution officially allowed for freedom of religion within the Soviet Union, and along with initial statements of it being a multi-candidate election, the Church again attempted to run its own religious candidates in the 1937 elections. However the support of multicandidate elections was retracted several months before the elections were held and in neither 1929 nor 1937 were any candidates of the Orthodox Church elected.[33]
After Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Joseph Stalin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support for the war effort. On September 4, 1943, Metropolitans Sergius, Alexy and Nikolay had a meeting with Stalin and received a permission to convene a council on September 8, 1943, which elected Sergius Patriarch of Moscow and all the Rus'. This is considered by some as violation of the XXX Apostolic canon, as no church hierarch could be consecrated by secular authorities.[28] A new patriarch was elected, theological schools were opened, and thousands of churches began to function. The Moscow Theological Academy Seminary, which had been closed since 1918, was re-opened.
Between 1945 and 1959 the official organization of the church was greatly expanded, although individual members of the clergy were occasionally arrested and exiled. The number of open churches reached 25,000. By 1957 about 22,000 Russian Orthodox churches had become active. But in 1959 Nikita Khrushchev initiated his own campaign against the Russian Orthodox Church and forced the closure of about 12,000 churches. By 1985 fewer than 7,000 churches remained active. Members of the church hierarchy were jailed or forced out, their places taken by docile clergy, many of whom had ties with the KGB. This decline was evident from the dramatic decay of many of the abandoned churches and monasteries that were previously common in even the smallest villages from the pre-revolutionary period.
Persecution under Khrushchev and Brezhnev
A new and widespread persecution of the church was subsequently instituted under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. A second round of repression, harassment and church closures took place between 1959 and 1964 when Nikita Khrushchev was in office.
The Church and the government remained on unfriendly terms until 1988. In practice, the most important aspect of this conflict was that openly religious people could not join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which meant that they could not hold any political office. However, among the general population, large numbers remained religious.
Some Orthodox believers and even priests took part in the dissident movement and became prisoners of conscience. The Orthodox priests Gleb Yakunin, Sergiy Zheludkov and others spent years in Soviet prisons and exile for their efforts in defending freedom of worship.[34] Among the prominent figures of that time were Father Dmitri Dudko[35] and Father Aleksandr Men. Although he tried to keep away from practical work of the dissident movement intending to better fulfil his calling as a priest, there was a spiritual link between Fr Aleksandr and many of the dissidents. For some of them he was a friend, for others - a godfather, for many (including Yakunin) - spiritual father.[36]
By 1987 the number of functioning churches in the Soviet Union had fallen to 6893 and the number of functioning monasteries to just 18. In 1987 in the Russian SFSR, between 40% and 50% of newborn babies (depending on the region) were baptized. Over 60% of all deceased received Christian funeral services.
Glasnost and evidence of KGB links
Beginning in the late 1980s, under Mikhail Gorbachev, the new political and social freedoms resulted in many church buildings being returned to the church, to be restored by local parishioners. A pivotal point in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church came in 1988 - the millennial anniversary of the Baptism of Kievan Rus'. Throughout the summer of that year, major government-supported celebrations took place in Moscow and other cities; many older churches and some monasteries were reopened. An implicit ban on religious propaganda on state TV was finally lifted. For the first time in the history of the Soviet Union, people could see live transmissions of church services on television.
Gleb Yakunin, a critic of the Moscow Patriarchate who was one of those who briefly gained access to the KGB archive documents in the early 1990s, argued that the Moscow Patriarchate was "practically a subsidiary, a sister company of the KGB".[37] Critics charge that the archives showed the extent of active participation of the top ROC hierarchs in the KGB efforts overseas.[38][39][40][41][42][43] George Trofimoff, the highest-ranking US military officer ever indicted for, and convicted of, espionage by the United States and sentenced to life imprisonment on September 27, 2001, had been "recruited into the service of the KGB"[44] by Igor Susemihl (a.k.a. Zuzemihl), a bishop in the Russian Orthodox Church (subsequently, a high-ranking hierarch - the ROC Metropolitan Iriney of Vienna, who died in July 1999[45]).
Konstanin Kharchev, former chairman of Soviet Council on Religious Affairs, explained: "Not a single candidate for the office of bishop or any other high-ranking office, much less a member of Holy Synod, went through without confirmation by the Central Committee of the CPSU and the KGB".[41] Professor Nathaniel Davis points out: "If the bishops wished to defend their people and survive in office, they had to collaborate to some degree with the KGB, with the commissioners of the Council for Religious Affairs, and with other party and governmental authorities.".[46] Patriarch Alexy II, acknowledged that compromises were made with the Soviet government by bishops of the Moscow Patriarchate, himself included, and publicly repented of these compromises... [47]
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Russian_Orthodox_Church&printable=yes#Under_Communist_rule
I don't think I could handle either the pain or message that I am worthless because I was not a member of a group I didn't want to belong too, I would cease thinking for myself, and join them.
Thankfully the government has saved me from ever having to see....oh wait, I am seeing it now without even leaving my house! And the government made the internet (and gives tax breaks to companies who run the cables/etc). Ahhhhhhh! My delicate mind is blown!
They've had that symbol for years now and it's quite obvious the point of the atheist plaque was missed by many here.
Right wingers saying stupid shit online? Not sure organized atheists can take much credit in either area 
...by the American Atheists organization. It's fifty years too late to start accusing atheists of forming a 'religion' because they have a symbol.
Here's their discussion of their logo:
Recognizing the new atomic era, but also emphasizing the truths of older scientific findings, the atomic whirl was chosen. The atom is still a distinguishing unit of all matter, the smallest particle of an element that can exist and still retain the properties of that element.
You may notice that one of the orbitals in our symbol is broken, or open-ended. This demonstrates that while Atheists rely on the scientific method for learning about the cosmos and increasing our knowledge about nature, we know that not all of the answers are in. We recognize that with new knowledge come new questions and areas for human inquiry and exploration.
That open orbital forms an "A" to represent Atheism.
Personally I would not have chosen a Bohr model image of the atom, since by 1963 quantum mechanics provided a very different view of the nature and likely physical structure of atomic orbitals:
...where atoms would look more like this:
...than this:
...since 1892!! Who knew?? Other than you.
...
I am hopeful the American Atheists will update their logo to reflect the current and future understanding of atomic orbital structure. However, given that the Department of Energy religion still has a Bohr atom, a 19th century oil well, and a windmill on its symbol, there is apparently a logo inertia to overcome.
? Is the DNC headquarters a church?
People form non-sectarian organizations with symbols all the time.
One of the best things about our country is the potential to invent and reinvent yourself.
If this group if atheists feel passionate enough to do this, then more power to them. I like how the symbol offers a degree of balance and will cause many to have a conversation about non-belief.
Cool.
Becoming a Full Blown Religion"?
What utter crap. 
Atheism isn't a religion, and the atheist symbol isn't a religious symbol. How can any reasonably intelligent person think otherwise?
