I get quite annoyed when people of faith use retorts like “yeah well atheism is a religion to science” or “how can you criticise other’s beliefs when you believe in atheism?”.

ATHEISM IS NOT A RELIGION, IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM. I’m pretty sure that the “a”-prefix means “absence of”.

Someone (presumably clever, but whose name eludes me at the moment) once wittily said, “calling atheism a religion is like calling not collecting stamps a hobby”.

Like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins would say, most people who are religious are atheists to other gods. A Christian is an atheist to Greek mythology, Hinduism, Muslim, Buddhism etc. Most people only believe either in one god or one particular group of gods to the exclusion to all others. Atheists just go one god/(group of gods) further.