All you're missing there, Stim, is that there is no equivalence. Atheism is a logical response to everything we know; religion is wishful thinking: the primitive mind's solution for what we can;t yet grasp.

You beat me to it, Peter. Equivalence between religious belief and the shunning of same is a completely bogus invention of religion. If it weren't for the fact that we are undeniably flesh and blood, we would be no more than a figment of the imaginations of the faithful. And if there were no faithful, we, without doing a single stroke, wouldn't exist at all, and not one scrap of philosophy would have been lost.

And, actually, switching sides is not a radical conversion, because you're still playing the same game.

And what game would that be? Atheists, Stim, are not tacticians. We don't even make up teams. To play a game we need a pitch, but we have none. The only pitch is on your turf, which, of course, is exactly where you want us. But our evanescence will continue to elude you. We are only here because you need us here, a foil to your insecurity of belief. There is no game! There are no sides, no pitch, no teams, no tactics! We don't compete! Not much of a game, eh!