So which is it?
I’ve heard believers repeatedly say that atheism is just as much a belief as religion. Well, then, recognize it as a religion and give its belivers the same privileges as other religions.
Oh, but then believers say it is not a religion. It is non-belief and thus those non-believers should not get the same privileges as believers in religions.
Seems those anti-atheist believers change their story so that they can keep to themselves the privileges such as tax exemptions, days off for their religious holidays, government provided counselors/chaplains.
The teaching that matrimony is a sacrament gives to a religious clergy the power to judge the lawfulness of marriages and power of ecclesiastical censure for divorce.
The government of men's external actions by religion, pretending the change of nature in their consecrations cannot be esteemed a work extraordinary, it is no other than a conjuration or incantation, whereby they would have men to believe an alteration of nature that is contrary to the testimony of sight and of all the rest of the senses.
The idea "thou shalt marry and be given in marriage" is corrupt and degenerate, which is an impossible immortality of a kind, but not of the persons of men.
Ecclesiastics would have men believe they are not worthy to be counted amongst them that shall obtain the next world, or absolute resurrection from the dead, as inmates of the world; and to the end only to receive condign punishment for their contumacy of monogamy as opposed to the freedom of the polygamy found in nature.
These supposed "atheists" and their ilk ignore the greater premise and scientific fact that mammals can only evolve heterosexually because they are religious faggots (a term I invented exclusively for them.)
And whether either of the philosophical combatants like it or not, this idea is supported by the book of Genesis and is an absolute law found in nature.
There has never been one case of a hermaphrodite (genotype) mammal ever recorded.
“the same privileges as believers in religions”
what privileges?
If you want it recognized as a religion, with both the privileges - and restrictions (i.e. no federal money for teaching what amounts to religious dogma) accompanying that... I have no problem with it. People are free agents and can believe whatever they wish.