My article in Quillette: A rebuttal of John Staddon’s claim that secular...

[DaleCutler]

I know a devout atheist, Patrick.

And there’s this:

Atheism is a religion* in an academic sense and in a practical one, too. The etymology of “religion” shares a root with ligament, ligature and ligand, denoting a binding. An atheist is bound to her worldview, which frontloads into her thinking and excludes the existence of God. Atheists that are philosophical naturalists have an implicit, unwritten dogma in their religion/worldview that tells them to refuse to accept anything as evidence which suggests that anything other than the four dimensions of our spacetime might exist. Similarly, an agnostic is bound to the rejection of the knowability of God or his existence. That frontloads into their thinking and everything is interpreted from those perspectives. That would be confirmation bias.

We continue to confirm our existing worldviews according to our confirmation biases then, unless something, maybe radical, changes them. Everyone who is conscious has a worldview and a faith, even if that faith is only in themselves and their ability to reason.

*[Geertz’s definition] suggests that every group–and every individual–may have a religion, even if no one in that group believes in a god or an afterlife or any of the more familiar trappings of organized religion. Every group has a religion because every group has some overall framework that all its members share in common, to make sense out of life and guide behavior.
Geertz Summary