Unless you can elaborate and distinguish different kinds of "worship", your accusation is overblown. Maybe he used this word simply because it was the best choice available to capture and communicate the underlined meaning?
1. To believe in something unobservable by conventional means.
2. To value something over anything else.
The word "atheist" clearly implies the first, and he never explains what meaning of the word "atheist" he uses in his "there are no atheists". So this is either a rhetorical trick, or a tautology that defines "atheist" as, roughly, "someone who doesn't value anything that much", but never goes anywhere with this definition.
I like the atheist movement, but there definitely is one major logical inconsistency in it. The whole driving motive behind atheism is that folks have looked at existing religions, where people believe in provably false statements, and – you know, that's "bad". It's bad because it's factually false.
The key thing is that the valuation of objective truth here goes way beyond just a calculus of hedonic means and ends - but is treated as something with inherent moral value. For most of these people (speaking from personal experience as one), if you're given a red/blue pill choice between "hedonic misery but knowing the truth of your existence" versus "ignorance and bliss", most of us are morally obligated to chose the former.
It's a bravery and honor thing. I don't want a security blanket of false beliefs. I want to know the truth.
But that right there - if we're rejecting the hedonic "means and ends" justification - has no logical justification whatsoever. The only reason we want to know "the actual truth" is a completely unjustifiable woo-woo piece of "just because we do". It's like an axiom - there's no proof for it or justification for it. It's just there. We value the truth for no freaking reason - we consider it just somehow morally good in some inherent, unprovable way - dare I say, because it's "sacred", somehow.
I don't mind making a religion out of pure truth-seeking. That seems like a great idea, honestly. But let's recognize it for what it is.
This is useless reasoning. An atheist is someone who is sure there is no God.
An agnostic is someone that admits they don’t know.
A militant agnostic is a person that knows that you don’t know, and wants you to admit it.
The first and third are actual religions / political movements. Claiming the people that ascribe to them are wrong is as offensive as saying all modern members of religion X are self-deluding hypocrites.
Since we’re apparently not using words to mean what they mean, you have no possible rebuttal.
Apparently he is not comparing religion and atheism. He also mentioned money, beauty, etc. You seems miss the point of the quote as a whole. Even atheism is not worship. Atheists, as human, still need something to worship on, like everyone else. But again, the focus is really not atheists.
Getting downvoted. Worship here obviously means something other than religious. Worship money, wealth, power, etc. is commonly used in language. It's pointless to fixated on the narrow meaning of the word.
