"As to your definitions of religions, they don't really concern me.

I am an A-theist. I hold no belief in any theistic god. I have no dogma, tenets or worship ritual that is informed by either a belief or a lack of belief in a god.

If you want to ascribe religiosity to the rational scepticism that informs my unwillingness to accept any of the thousands of gods, that ancient human beings invented, from their insecurities, fear, and ignorance, then you would have to accuse most theists of dualism.

Although religious people are more inclined to be gullible, or at least less sceptical than atheists, they nevertheless use the same kind of reason, to their ordinary life, as an atheist further extends to a scrutiny of any claim of a god.
The most obvious demonstration of this, of course, is that believers in one god don’t readily accept the claims of the others.
However, all theists tend to suspend the irrationality required to believe in their god, in order that they might function in the real world.
Your assertion that atheists “place an invalid prerequisite” on theists is absurd, because outside of their religion, theists observe the world with the same standards of evidence, reasoning, and with the same sensory apparatus.
Christians, for example, don’t live their everyday lives in the assumption that a man can walk on water, or that virgin birth is possible. Creationists accept what scientific observations don’t contradict their dogma – and some that do, if they are unaware that they do! - Even the most devout, “saved” fundamentalist has enough grasp on reality to fear his own biological death! – That’s not showing a lot of faith in eternal reward!

As to your really irrational idea that atheists are motivated by atheism itself (and therefore atheism is a religion): - I can only assume that, by this, you can only mean the sense of justice and morality held by someone who doesn’t take his moral worldview from a belief in a god?
Not that it matters, because the absence of dogma is absence of ANY motivation that theists attribute to their personal belief in a god.

But let’s take morality:

Some semblance of what we describe as morality exists in all higher life forms. They are the instinctive, uncommanded rules of the herd/pack/shoal that allow the survival of the group beyond the lesser needs of the individual. For example, ravenous fish don’t eat each other in a feeding frenzy, the maternal instinct in higher mammals, cats burying their dung, mutual gleaning, lifetime monogamy in some species etc.

It’s difficult to explain a logical point to someone who concludes that a LACK of belief con motivate or inform any opinion, let alone a faith based religion,
However, I will try: -

I am atheist. I have NO BELIEF WHATSOEVER with regard to a god.
I don’t believe one exists and I have no reason whatsoever to assert that one doesn’t.
To quote Hitchens again: “What can be claimed without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence”
Pick any fictional or mythical figure that has thus far been posited and I’ll say the same thing I make no claim that any do not exist the unknown universe is too vast to state as knowledge that something that someone might call god, does not exist.

You might argue that god exists as a concept if not as substance. OK, but concepts are contingent on human minds and the mind that conceives it isn’t mine.
The only manifestation of god available, to my personal sensory appraisal or powers of reason, comes from claims from other human beings, made without evidence.




Humans, being more intellectually and culturally complex, have a more complex morality, that we have applied less practical rules, from a personally biased perspective, of stronger humans over lesser ones. In our early cultures, morality, as with everything else, was ascribed to the command of the particular deities that were worshipped and feared by the given tribe or civilisation.

In reality, regardless of religion and superstition, morality, in humans is a mixture of instinct, empathy, reason, experience, intuition and fear.
I would add that my personal morality came, in part at least, from my Roman Catholic upbringing. I’m sure most people even atheists were brought up in some kind of religious dogma.
What atheists have, in their NON-belief, is the freedom to abandon irrational religious moral dictates – This is because they no longer have any emotional or intellectual investment in the validity of that religion. They are then free to take their sense of moral justice from a more educated source.
For example, as an atheist I no longer have to be sexist, bigoted homophobic, scientifically ignorant etc as the Christian canon and dogma would command me.
This is not informed by my atheism, nor even allowed as such. It is simply the freedom from the abandonment of religious dogma.
My morality comes from other sources – probably from where the “believer” would ordinarily get his. The only difference is, I can ignore the more unfair or irrational moral dictates of a religion, that were decreed in a different culture and/or in a less enlightened time.
My non-belief tells me nothing as and by itself! How can it? There is nothing there!!"