Just another reason to hate religious extremists and organized religion in general...

[FireIceTalon]

Is it me, or is atheism turning into a zealous religion these days?

Not an atheist? Then you're a moral and intellectual inferior and must convert because you offend me!

The only thing I can comment is that the name atheism is wrong. It makes theism the standard.
When the world was ignorant theism was the standard, but now that most of the intellectual elite doesn't have anything with organized religions, maybe we should change the name.

Theism in many ways still is the standard (or at least a standard), as I explained in my response to Nite. It would be in serious error to think religion is not political or social, and it is in fact an ideological appendage of the state (i.e. the state still permits the church hold anti-gay or anti-abortion policies, in some nations religions are supported by taxes, etc). If you aren't implying that though, then disregard what I said. But although religion may be less affiliated with the "intellectual" elite nowadays, it isn't so much the case with the financial elite (and an argument could be made that the intellectual and financial elite intersect quite often since the ruling ideas in society are those made by the elite, but that is another topic).

But it is also a social thing. For many, it makes an inhumane and unlivable world seem livable by means of illusion, which is a significant reason why it remains prominent. Religion is a social construct that predates class society, and its original purpose was to attempt to explain the social phenomena that man saw around him, since a materialist explanation or the scientific method was not yet conceived. Like all social constructs, its purpose came to change when class based societies developed, and it ultimately became structured and shaped around that premise. Thus religion became extremely useful as a ideological tool by the ruling classes to preserve and strengthen their social status, to varying degrees and contexts across time and space. There was indeed a time, very long ago, when christianity upheld values very different (equality, cooperation, love thy fellow human being) then the ones it does today (patriarchy, decadence, and a whole list of other vices) - but it (and all religion in general) now just acts as the root of our self-imposed alienation in so many spheres of society (including the familial level). It is logical to believe the nature of religion would change under a classless society.

I'm not sure changing the name of "atheism" to something else at this point has any real value. It's just semantics anyway, and discussions on semantics of course, usually go off on tangents from the meat and potatoes of the issue. In my very humble opinion, anyway.