If I may chime in re: atheism and politics. One thing I rarely see brought out is that the roles of philosophy and religion are essentially the same, and serve the same roles to people. Not to say they are mutually exclusive...but they deal with the same issues...the nature of reality, the nature of knowledge (revelation?), ethics, and a group ethics/political structure built onto those foundations.
The point I want to make is that the Left derives its politics from Kantian/Marxist philosophy. Politics without the substrate of the underlying beliefs is largely meaningless...those politics include the underlying philosophy...including atheistic answers to the foundational answers.
In America we see this as a 'religious divide'. People who derive their philisophical/religious concepts such as right and wrong from a Judeo-Christian foundation is the essence of Conservatism. People whose foundation is philosophical are by and large the secular socialist Left. The mushy middle are often mildly religious or generally agnostic. They are generally influenced by both religious AND Kantian perspectives and haven't sorted through the inherent contradictions.
However, this continuum from Kantian/Marxist on the left through the agnostic/mildly religious in the middle to the Judeo-Christian on the right does not capture everyone, including myself. Just as there are religions other than Judeo-Christian with obviously different ethical and political implications (9/11) there are philosophies that are not Kantian, although Kantian philosophy is very much dominant in 'official' academia.
I am an atheist. I have different foundations from most here. But I am VEHEMENTLY opposed to the secular left. People here are very conscious of the religious influence on our system and the founding fathers who created it. I encourage you all to also become familiar with the enlightenment era philosophy that also was a major (in my mind, even larger) influence on them.
It might surprise you to learn that I was an atheist too until minoring in Philosophy in college. Only then did I see that, as in Plato's theory of forms, that which is merely perceived has some essence.
My views on God are not the norm, and I although I was raised Catholic, I came to a belief in the Judeo-Christian worldview later in life. (Mostly through the revelation that an act of ultimate sacrifice was unique)
I remain unchurched, and it seems to me that what religion could be considered important in life is that which was accurately captured by the Founding Fathers....iow, that there is a creator that endowed us with certain inalienable rights. That there is just moral cause.
To me, religion is not church or fellowship, but is that foundation which acknowledges man's true place in the order of things, and that something larger than us moves just beyond our senses.
FReegards.