Well, that would be the case
if the decisions made on these grounds didn't affect people's lives, every day, everywhere, often in extremely damaging ways.

Don't treat religion as if it's solely some sort of intellectual exercise; it's a very real threat in some instances - a progress-retarding (because we know everything we need to know from the Holy Book so anything contradictory is wrong), misogynistic (all of them), AIDS-enabling (cafflikism), suicide bomber-creating (muslimism) threat.

And don't fixate on the existence of God/gods either; that's pretty much the least of the issues, because the existence of the supreme being is non-disprovable and therefore not worth arguing over.
There's a whole lot of stuff that we do know exists - the holy books, basically - that causes a shitload of trouble, and that's what true atheism is mostly geared towards tackling - people who unthinkingly believe whatever bullcrap a millenia-old manuscript claims and do horrific things based on their unthinking belief.
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Tue 31 Aug 2010, 14:02, 2 replies)

Religion is very different from simple theism.
Not that you'd believe it, according to many atheists.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Tue 31 Aug 2010, 14:17, closed)

"according to many atheists"
Mind the weasel-wording, there.

But yeah, any atheist who claims that god/s DEFINITELY don't exist deserves just as much of a smack (philosophical or otherwise) as any theist, deist or what have you claiming that he/they/it DEFINITELY does.

Nonetheless, out of 'existence of god/s' and 'non-existence of god/s', only one has ever been used to actively justify vile behaviour, so the two may be 'very different', but are not by any means inseparable.

I will here admit that 'twatbag student' is as good a description of me as any (even though I'm only one those things - I graduated), but I'm only just coming around to atheism ( as opposed to my previous religious viewpoint of "meh"ism), so prepare to suck on the zeal of the recent convert.
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Tue 31 Aug 2010, 14:28, closed)

Of course religion is not an intellectual exercise..
that's why no philosophy deals with, and why there are zero contributions it has made to ethics, philosophy and so on.

That is why there are no theologians at all, atheist or otherwise.
( Amberl was stripey and dominated Europe, Tue 31 Aug 2010, 14:21, closed)

Bit pedantic, and I think you missed my point.
Edited for clarity in context.

I'm by no means denying these things...but they're within religion rather than vice versa.
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Tue 31 Aug 2010, 14:32, closed)