The next time some ignorant person says "Atheism is a religion", tell them...

[elias7]

16. No, I'm saying you can be religious while not believing in god

I think many people who believe in what they imagine to be god are not religious at all.

There are also non-theistic religions, such as buddhism, taoism, and others.

When one says they believe in or don't believe in god, the first question, I think, needs to be , "what do you mean by god?" Because, I don't think anyone is on anyone else's page without establishing that. Some people need the idea of god to be concrete, to allay fears, to pray to, to give hope. Some people can deal in abstractions, where god is merely a label for the impersonal cosmic forces that inform the universe and our existence.

But a mythologic or religious system does not need a supreme being to function; creation myths come in all stripes...