FR> No, atheism is the lack of deity beliefs.  Everyone is born an 
 FR> atheist. 
Nice point worth considering; but when I do- Athism is however a 
term a lot of us apply to those who not only have a lack of some 
religious belief, but go to the trouble of making others aware of 
that fact rather actively.  They *care* about it. Infants don't. 
 
Monotheism don't look more evil to me than Paganism; the letters 
of Pliny to Trajan about civil strife arising from processions of 
idols being stoned by adherents of a different ideology appear to 
me just like the problems in Northern Ireland. 
 
Gibbon talks about the cult of Odin, which swept over the nordic 
north just like an Islamic Jihad in the 5th-6th century.  He sees 
the whole thing as an expedient excuse for organized plunder.  It 
looks a lot like the Nazis used it as part of their heritage. 
 
As to the Alpha male excuse for the belief in God; useful, but it 
is not necessary.  Before Odin, the Aryan prime deity was, since 
Chalcolithic digs of the 6th millennia BCE at least, -was female. 
More specifically, the great earth mother.  There was a typical 
evolution from this barbarian trait to the typically civilized, 
tyrannic God who was male- e.g. Javeh... but Zeus had to operate 
as a mayor: powerful as he was, couldn't obliterate other gods. 
 
In this echo, I think there is support for a distinction between 
theism and religion.  IMHO: Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Seneca, 
Epicurus, show pretty clearly that they were not pagan; in their 
own personal belief, having all been familiar with the trial of 
Socrates, they tried to be discrete. 
 
In fact, by the time of Cicero and Cato, when one wanted to show 
a degree of skepticism about some pagan superstition, it came to 
be a convention to mention the name of Socrates instead. 
 
Finally, I submit to any atheist the fact that all of the above, 
and many more ancient philospohers famous for the clarity of the 
thinking and arguements in their works, were *all* theists.  You 
may argue that they were *all* wrong about some of their notions 
of science, and I would have to agree. But if they are all wrong 
about the existance of God, then that is the *only* thing that I 
know of, that they were *all* wrong about.  Not likely. 
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