The fact that you hate religion does not an atheist make. Partly because, as best I can see, religion is too general a term to describe its related attitudes and opinions. For instance one can point to the men who destroyed innocent lives in service to their god by driving a plane into the Twin Towers or one can refer to a group that endanger their lives to help people who are starving in service of Christ. Here in Victoria, we have places like “our Place” that help the homeless but we also have pro life groups that gets their kicks by harassing young ladies in trouble..We have churches that accept gays and churches that disparage gays. And there are religions that offer love and support that will also punish you, even Kill you if you are not loyal to that religion. Some religious groups support evolution and some oppose its very idea .
You simply cannot nail religion except for their one common claim that their God justifies your right to judge others and demand that they concur with your personal standards. And it is easy to see, then, that the one problem with all religions is this deity that its adherents claim has unlimited power and whose laws , they claim, transcends all human made laws.
And it must also be easy to see that atheism’s open rejection of the very existence of such a deity best describes its stance, unlike most other groups who, while questioning the authority of a deity feel a need to convince society that they are not lawless people just because they are not frightened by a god’s wrath. And these come by all kinds of names—Freethinkers, skeptics, Agnostics, Humanists of varied sort, Brights ,deists, naturalists.
Cheers
Andy Mulcahy