I always liked the incorrect definition for atheism [without theism] of 'the disbelief in or the denial of the existence of [YodHehVavHeh]', simply because, as the rest of the numbers show, that places some 4.5billion people into the category of atheists. After all: Al'lah and YodHehVavHeh are two different and competing deities; the muslims are atheistic, by this definition.
     Incidentally, the first use of the term atheist was applied to those who declined to believe in Zeus, making it larger still.
     As for atheism as a religion, it's definitively impossible. A religion is 'a bond between men and deities'. Since atheism most literally means 'without deital beliefs', atheism as a religion is a nonseuitur; it's like calling Nonsmoking a brand of cigarettes.
     Meanwhile, the figures at adherents.com haven't changed in a couple of years. Current global estimates push atheism [the absence of deital beliefs] up to about a billion people.
     Also in recent years, the sunni muslims have pushed ahead of the catholic christians as the largest religious sect--there are about 900million catholics and roughly 1.15billion sunni now.
     And no, deities are not factual animals; they're supported by the same amount of actual evidence as goblins are: zero.
--Gremlin

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