Hmm, sounds like Atheism is becoming a Religion unto itself.



Why else would they need to have meetings and congregate?



Hey, I'm all for Atheists being protected under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, just like everyone else, but sometimes you have to call a spade a spade. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is a duck (and I can't believe I just quoted G. Bush!).



I do agree that Alternative Religions, as well as Agnostics and Atheists are growing in leaps and bounds due to the failure of Mainstream Religions to adapt to the changing of times to the point where they have become not only irrelevant to many but an anachronistic nuisance to some.



However, it just seems to me that Atheism is going too far in promoting itself in such a way that it becomes a Religious Surrogate that will inevitably fall into the same sanctimonious trap that Mainstream Religions have.



America doesn't need a Gymnasiarchy or a Pedantocracy, just as we don't need a Theocracy. There was a very good reason why Thomas Jefferson wrote about the wall of separation between church and state and the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution...and as far as Government is concerned, the lack of a belief in a religion or God is a religious belief in and of itself, protected by the Constitution, and behind the wall of separation between church (or in this case, lack thereof) and state.



(Don't get me wrong though, I do like the quote "What schools need is a moment of science". That couldn't be more true!)