Considering atheism as a religion

I felt a kinship with him. It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak, speaks of faith. Like me they go as far as the legs of reason can carry them - and they leap.

I’ll be honest about it. It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for awhile. We must all pass through the Garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anquished night in prayer, if He burst out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” then surely we also are permitted doubt. But, we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

I've started reading Yann Martel's Life of Pi.  I'm only a couple dozen chapters into it, but it's obviously quite good. The quotation above suggests that atheism is not the absence of religion, but a religion all to itself, with its own creation story, its own (scientific) laws, its own intrinsic (though varying) ethical standards and practices, and the application of faith when all else fails.

More on the book later.