Unfortunately, that's true in both the positive and negative sense, as atheists have no $GOD to kill for.
I think even without believing in an afterlife in your religion, you can believe some idea or value transcends your own death. For example a person could say "I am okay with dying young in an atrocious urban conflict if it means that in the future we can start a socialist regime where everyone has food, health care and shelter provided by the state as it should have been for my family."
It's not a promise of an afterlife, but it is a promise for something good existing after your life because of your willingness to take on death. And in that way, an ideology can inhabit tons of the psychological territory that religion often does.
What pisses me off in this discussion here is that you guys aren't able to have this discussion without either lying or goalpost moving. It is completely incomprehensible to you that something outside of your tiny believe bubble exists. Smug remarks about the 'smug materialists' show how insecure you guys are, then proving that atheists really only also are religious, but still need to be enlightened from you guys. Salvation!
What's even a Canadian? a deeply religious Hutterite in Alberta? An Inuit with their own tribal/folk religion? An atheist in coastal British Columbia or metropolitan Ontario? Catholic Quebecker? A somewhat religious Hindu immigrant? religious for appearances only Middle Eastern immigrant? a Scottish Druid?
Canada is just a hotel, with really bad weather.
As for "discussions", at the very core, belief is freedom of thought.
If one can no longer have whatever wacky beliefs anything from cargo cults to ufo religions, anything really - now we are getting into thought policing. However, Canadians appears to think policing thought is not damaging to society, who would've expected a hotel of a country with no culture of its own and history of mere 300-400 years to have any other opinion? It is profoundly important to have freedom of belief, conscience and thought. As long as others doesn't infringe on my freedoms, they can believe whatever nonsense.
To think that institutions that supported humanity for thousands of years, helped us survive until today, through all sorts of disasters, difficulties and strife, are all of a sudden damaging to society? Only a lunatic could believe this.
The better question would be to ask why is there a global resurgence in religion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desecularization
P.S. I'm not sure why you assume everyone you are talking to online is Christian? Religions vary wildly, and all have very different values. Some don't even have concepts of "salvation" or enlightenment. in others, even some similar concepts might exist - even your personal existence and well being is actually of little to no concern in some creeds, as they are inward oriented.
It held itself up as the "true" alternative to Christian religion in particular. No need for a God - we can do it all ourselves. Perhaps because it saw Christians who were loyal first to God and then to the state as a threat to its plans for totalitarianism.
Materialist don't get to make a smug escape from the stigma of "killing in the name of god". Anything you place at the top of your value hierarchy is, for all intents and purposes, your god.
It's a little on the cheesy side but I think this clip from They Live illustrates simply the idolatrous place capital can take in our day-to-day lives.
What about all the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo? Here's Oxford: 1. (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being. 2. (in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity.
Wow! Yeah! Thats's a god! But you're arguing that god is equivalent to formalism and bureaucracy?! Wow, what a disappointment!
I agree that bureaucracy and formalism makes for a disappointing god. That's the way the pharisees tended towards practicing.
You claim you were an atheist once, for a decade? Maybe you mistook being an atheist for being 'edgy' and smug. All it means is that I don't believe in you sky daddy. Never in my life have I talked about atheism except in response to religious people bringing up their religion and trying to explain to me how really I am religious. I just want to be left alone from your superstition, freedom from religion is the only religious freedom.
It would make for better discussion to call out this assumption and offer arguments against it than to resort to personal attacks.
This is the person who said "Freedom from religion is the only religious freedom", which is something I would expect to hear from a guard at a prison camp whose job is to systematically destroy an inmate's hope, community and individuality outside of basic material desires.
Freedom of religion is freedom to believe or not to believe in any religion or philosophy a person may choose. It is the freedom to express that privately or together, to speak about or practice it openly. It is the freedom to seek meaning, in spite of how you may be looked upon for the journey or its outcome. Without this definition of freedom of religion in place, there can only be the state religion/philosophy and any of the people belonging to systems of belief that the state's adherents subjugate, subvert, or chooses to tolerate for the time being.
Furthermore, it's not a freedom that can just be taken away, even if someone writes a mean comment about it or codifies a law that criminalizes beliefs. It is a freedom embedded in base reality.
I am grateful that I grew up in a world where so many people around me valued this definition of freedom of religion so much. I am grateful for the meanings, symbolism and relationships I have been able to discover on this path. Being a former atheist allows me to cherish them all the more, because I remember what life was like without them.
May God have mercy on everyone in this thread, we are all going to need it. I resolutely believe we are in these sad political times because we have forgotten about God.