Atheism a religion?

Recently on Fox News a story was covered in the Philadelphia area about an atheist group wanting to put up a religious symbol in front of City Hall. This idea strikes me as humorous because is atheism really a religion? I will come back to that momentarily but for now the two people interviewed was a spokes woman for the atheist group and a Catholic Priest. The two were arguing weather the symbol was appropriate. The symbol the atheists want to use is called “The Tree of Knowledge” (I think God may have that name copyrighted from way back in the beginning). It is basically an evergreen tree decorated like a Christmas tree but instead of lights and ornaments it has book covers (including the Bible and Koran).

This argument is absolutely absurd and one would think that a group that so strongly promotes knowledge would know that Christmas was started by pagans, not Christians. If you want to get technical the Catholic church; in order to counteract a pagan holiday for the return of the “Sun God”, created Christmas and said it was Jesus’ birthday; Which by the way there is no evidence to support that claim. Oddly enough, the symbol used by pagans was a Christmas tree. One could say the same for Easter with all the bunny rabbits and Easter eggs, guess what pagan god that represents. You guessed it, the fertility god! It is funny how the Catholic church enjoys all of these “Feast days” and “Religious Holidays”, while accepting the pagan symbols passed down for many years. A careful look into the Bible would reveal Colossians 2:16-17 as well as 1Tim. 4:1-3.

Back to the “is atheism a religion” question. I leave that to the good folks at Apologetics Press to answer that question from their November and December publications of Reason and Revelation. Enjoy.