I’m late to this party. I’ll therefore start by addressing the opening post …
A what … ???
It appears you need to be informed what atheism actually is.
Atheism, in its rigorous formulation, is suspicion of unsupported mythology fanboy assertions. That is IT. Being suspicious of unsupported assertions doesn’t involve “rituals” or “doctrine”. Do learn this elementary concept before embarrassing yourself further here.
Indeed, it’s precisely because mythology fanboy assertions about their cartoon magic men are completely unsupported by genuine evidence, that people like me are atheists. And no, “My mythology says so, therefore it’s true” doesn’t count as “evidence”.
Oh, you mean the same way mythology fanboys want everyone to accept their treatment of mythological assertions about cartoon magic men as fact?
Except that no, there isn’t a “symmetry” here. Because mythology fanboys aren’t content with being mythology fanboys themselves, but keep insisting that the rest of us become mythology fanboys as well. Usually by peddling lies about atheism and atheists, misrepresenting valid scientific postulates via farcical strawman caricatures, and demanding that said postulates be suppressed from education just because they flush mythological assertions down the toilet. Along with tiresome ad hominems to the effect that we’re purportedly “wilfully denying” their merely asserted cartoon magic men, or that we’re “deceived by satan”, or some other such nonsense.
Ahem, just because lots of people thought that their mythological magic men were real, doesn’t mean for one moment that any of these entities ever were real.
I’m reminded here of the famous aphorism “You’re an atheist with respect to thousands of other gods, we just go one god further”. Also see the above remarks about evidence.
You need to re-take your history lessons. Epicurus was presenting a case for atheism in Classical Greek society as far back as 300 BCE. Jean Meslier, back in the 17th century, wrote his own version of Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and you can download your own copy of this from the Gutenberg Society webpage.
Oh, and all the smugness and snide condescenion we see here, comes from the mythology fanboys.
Meanwhile, I point you again to the remarks above about evidence.
Did you ever bother asking yourself the elementary question “what reasons do these people have for launching this hypothesis”? No?
I happen not to be in that camp, because I recognise that mythologies are not written in a vacuum, and I also recognise the documented historical fact that being an apocalpytic preacher was something of an industry back in first century Judea. But that documented historical fact doesn’t in the least validate mythological assertions. Do learn this lesson quickly before embarrassing yourself further here.
The only thing those buildings and crucifixes are “evidence” of, is the willingness of large numbers of people in the past to treat mythological assertions uncritically as fact.
Plus, you need to learn something about the history of Christianity, which involves a large helping of ruthless enforcement of conformity to doctrine by murderous mythology fanboys.
Once again … evidence, please?
Drop the duplicitous attempt to characterise science as driven by a “doctrine”, just because it happens to flush mythological assertions down the toilet. We see this mendacity from mythology fanboys all the time.
Oh really? Do tell us all what the world’s most educated cosmological physicists have purportedly missed, along with the world’s most talented neuroscientists …
You’ve just contradicted yourself in one sentence above.
Ah, the smell of lame mythology fanboy apologetics once more pervades the air.
Perhaps if you actually learned something about science, you would realise how nonsensical your apologetics here is.
Now, you can start by explaining a few embarrassing anomalies that exist with respect to mythology fanboyism. Such as:
[1] Why the authors of mythologies were incapable of even fantasising about vast classes of entities and interactions, that have since been alighted upon by scientists, and placed by said scientists into usefully predictive quantitative frameworks of knowledge;
[2] Why mythologies contain elementary errors of a sort that would NOT appear, in any work genuinely arising from fantastically gifted magic entities. Such as failing to count correctly the number of legs that an insect possesses, or asserting that genetics is purportedly controlled by coloured sticks (and this is before we move on to the “global flood” nonsense);
[3] Why, for example, even an elementary analysis of the risible “fall of man” fairy tale in Genesis, reveals said fairy tale to be riddled with fatal plot holes, of a sort that would be laughed at if they appeared in contemporary fiction;
[4] Why, for example, the cartoon magic man of the Old Testament is asserted therein, to possess the mentality of a Bronze Age middle eastern warlord;
[5] Why the authors of the same mythology underestimated the size of the observable universe by nine orders of magnitude, and its age by seven;
[6] Why mythology fanboys around the planet, cannot agree among themselves on a global scale, which of the extant mythologies they subscribe to is purportedly the “right” mythology, and why adherents of a given mythology cannot agree among themselves what said mythology is purportedly telling us;
[7] Why mythology fanboys persist in thinking that apologetics possesses the same rigour as pure mathematics, when it is plainly nothing more than the fine art of pretending that making shit up turns other made up shit into fact.
I’ll let you spend time on this, as you’re going to need it. Indeed, to answer the above questions properly, I estimate you’ll need about two decades of hard study.