There's no bigger atheist than me. Well, I take that back. I'm a cancer screening away from going agnostic and a biopsy away from full-fledged Christian.
I am, indeed, an absolute materialist so far as actual belief goes; with not a shred of credence in any form of supernaturalism—religion, spiritualism, transcendentalism, metempsychosis, or immortality.
Well, I don't call you an atheist then. I think if you believe in the awe and the wonder and the mystery, then that is what God is. That is what God is, not the bearded guy in the sky.
Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication, and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us --- and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.
Millennials, in particular, consider themselves to be spiritual, but they're not necessarily going to anybody's church. It's not like the world is becoming hardcore, Richard Dawkins-atheist, but people are looking to sort of synthesize science - people love science, especially the millennials.
What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest!
Genuine blasphemy, genuine in spirit and not purely verbal, is the product of partial belief, and is as impossible to the complete atheist as to the perfect Christian.
He who lives as children live - who does not struggle for his bread and does not believe that his actions possess any ultimate significance - remains childlike.