Sure, there are hard atheists who make an ideology of it...many, if not most atheists don't do that.
I have always admitted that there are questions that science cannot answer. At least not yet. "I don't know" is an answer I am perfectly comfortable with when it's the truth. Scientists may speculate or offer an hypothesis as a potential explanation for something but they are careful to separate speculation from fact. And anyone is welcome to question the current thinking on a particular subject. In fact it's expected and encouraged. Just be prepared to show your research.
Religion on the other hand makes up a story to bridge our gaps in knowledge and then defies it's members to question the story. Truth shouldn't fear a close skeptical examination and I have no interest in "Pretending" I know something.
I always love when people say to me, "There must be something to Christianity or it wouldn't have lasted this long". Well not really. If you spend hundreds of years tying non Christians to a pole and setting them on fire then you are going to motivate a lot of people to be a Christian, at least in the lands under your control. Besides you could say the same thing about Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. Hell where I live in Alabama there are still negative repercussions for being openly agnostic in 2022. You could never run for any office here and have a chance to win. There are people who would not be your friend. People who would not let their kids play with your kids. Wouldn't do business with any store or company you owned. Meanwhile I have many Christian friends. I vote for people who at least claim to be Christians in every election. Most of the small stores I patronize here are owned by Christians. Yet we agnostics and atheists are always painted as the nasty ones.
I have also never understood why the gods of all these religions have to be so hands off. If it's so important to god that I follow a certain set of rules then why do I have to get that word from the Jimmy Swaggarts of the world. Why can't god tell me himself? Isn't he omnipotent? Seems to me that he could settle all this tomorrow if he really wanted to.
