Sensible comments, Strinsinger. I would disagree on one point, though, where you say: "There is no belief system at all in atheism."

To the contrary, everyone holds a great variety of their own unique belief systems...regarding almost every aspect of their own lives, their cultural makeup, their family, their emotional life, their philosophical viewpoints, etc. That is to say, life isn't just a question of what you know on a factual basis. That's part of life, to be sure, but life is also a great deal more than that for any living being which can think, and experience emotion. In addition to the known and verifiable facts which can be physically proven, everyone holds a vast number of implicit beliefs and assumptions about themselves, others, and life, assumptions which cannot be...or at least have not yet been...physically proven. This is also true of atheists. Atheists, like other people, assume a great deal, they do not simply catalog verifiable facts (as a machine would), they also then extrapolate further assumptions and beliefs on top of those facts. They all, in my opinion, are wedded to their own mythologies...those which support their general attitude...but they often take those mythologies to be entirely real. Freudian or Jungian psychology could shed some light on that, I'm sure. Atheists also can and do fantasize about a great variety of things, but their fantasies will not allow or accept the premise of a "god", that's all. ;-)

Consider, for example, the political/social fantasies that Pol Pot's administration engaged in, or Stalin's, or Mao Tse-Tung's...and they were all diehard atheists. Heh!

"I flippin' rest my case!" (to quote my old buddy Shane...) Mythology is NOT limited to god-based religions.

Furthermore, agnosticism is NOT "an attempt to not come to grips with the issue", it is an indication that a person has enough humility to admit that he doesn't know for sure...

I think such humility is very commendable, because most people definitely do not know enough to know for sure about the greater questions of existence itself or even the burning practical issues of their own time. There's a great deal they don't know for sure and they ought to just admit it for a change, instead of pretending they do know. I think it is their own insecurity that makes so many people dogmatically pretend to have absolute certainty about this or that great subject when in fact they usually know only a few fragments of what there is to know about it. They are the largely ignorant yet apparently confident, those with just enough superficial knowledge and experience to give them the confidence to be arrogant and lofty, pretending desperately to be "in the know" in order to convince themselves and others that their position is unassailable and they are fully in control of it...when it's actually anything but. ;-)

This is true of a great many atheists, it's also true of a great many religious people, and the more insecure they are the less tolerant they will be of anyone holding a differing view...