Why are atheism and no religion both up there? they mean exactly the same thing.
I disagree completely.
I don't know what definitions you're using.
Atheism means lack of theism. Morality is a useful parallel. There is Immorality, Amorality, and morality, and there is anti theism, atheism, and theism. Atheism is merely a lack of belief in any claim to a god. If your answer to the question "do you believe in god?" is anything other than yes, including I don't know, then you're an atheist.
Theres a common misconception that atheism means you believe there is no god. This is not the case.
Gnosticism and Agnosticism speak to what you claim to know.Theism and Atheism refer to what you believe.You can be a gnostic atheist, an agnostic theist, or any other combination.I would class myself as a gnostic atheist under most meaningful defintions. I don't buy into absolute certainty, its a pretty useless concept.
Much like I can't 100% for sure say there aren't any unicorns on earth, the kind of knowledge that would allow me to say for sure that there are or not, is unattainable and not practical in real terms. So while I accept there is a minuscule chance of there being some super powerful creator/father figure to the universe, I have seen no reason to believe, and I actively disbelieve it based on a few facts:
a) Religions are clearly human inventions. only a mind shattered with cognitive dissonance could dismiss Zeus as a story but accept Jehovah as real
b) Pretty much every major religion makes claims about the nature of the universe that have been proven to be false
c) If a super powerful being existed there should be some sort of measurable effects. since there is a total of 0 measurable effects that can be contributed to any god, then all things being equal, something that cannot be measured in anyway is most likely nothing, rather than some inordinately more complex entity that produces the same effects as nothing but is in fact something.
While these facts are not sufficient to be absolutely certain that there are no god like entities, its enough for me to believe that most likely there are not at the current moment.
most religions work on : Look at this old book, this says what I believe is true so it must be, and the old classic, prove there is no god
even on brass statistics all religions fail. all major religions claim to be true, only one is possible to be true, all of them have the same explanation power, there are more than 2 religions in the world, ergo whatever one you pick you most likely have not picked the correct one, although more importantly:
no religion has ever met the burden of proof for the claims they make