Atheism as Religion

It seems we basically have one sort of atheism alive and well today. That secular humanism which is, for all intents and purposes, basically identical to most popular religions with the exceptions of its cosmology. Perhaps theres less crisis regarding homosexuality, but the trope 'i'm okay, you're okay' morality is still there.

But this is not a discussion on ethics, its aabout atheism...with a capital A. At the core of modern popular atheism is that materialistic belief, if I cannot sense it (or scientifically" intereact with it, it does not exist. Now, an atheist need not subscribe to scientific realism, nor even materialism entirely, but certainly they must (or do, rather) believe that to believe in anything which cannot be demonstrated is stupid. Now, we do have a sort of weak religious belief here, because inhrent in all this is the unspoken rule that if God confronted an atheist, the atheist would be forced to acknowledge God's existence (ignoring the fac tthat the atheist may deem himself insane first.

But that is not the atheism that that interests me. I want a truly religious atheism, one that is not merely cosmologically bound, but morally bound, to ignore God's existence, nay, to deny it, even if that God presents himself. If I knew for certain that God exists, I would still adopt my Atheism in pure defiance; and note that this is not a sort of lazy defiance, or absured refusal to acknowledge that I was wrong about God's existence. No, its a moral imperative which states that i will not be encumbered by moral norms set upon me by another power, no matter how infinite or powerful it might be. In this way, it is a sort of reverse humanism; it shockingly denies an objective or obviously human good in favor of the heroic morality of the individual.

More later