Interesting and insightful article, Peter, thanks. Except for:

>>The first movement of modern atheism was championed by the likes of Hume and Kant.<<

I do not think Kant could be counted as an atheist. From Wikipedia: “Despite his religious upbringing and maintaining a belief in God, Kant was skeptical of religion in later life; various commentators have labelled him agnostic. … Kant asserted, people are justified in believing in God, even though they could never know God's presence empirically.”

>>female believers required a woman with whom to sympathise.<<

I do not think the sense of what the Orientals call the yin-yang complementarity is a result of female requirement of a woman with whom to sympathise. Is not the (Catholic and Orthodox) veneration of Mary, beside worship of God the Father, related to this sense of complementarity when directed at the objects of Christian faith?

>>Even Descartes was willing to concede that consciousness is an irreplaceable means of knowing the world.<<

Apparently a reference to Cogito ergo sum. However, as it stands, would not everybody, not only Descartes, agree that you need to be conscious to know anything?

And, of course, Feuerbach’s “man created God in his own image” (i.e. a human can try to understand God only when modelling Him as a [super]humen being) is just the reverse side of the same coin that on its obverse side states that God created man to His own image.

Oh George you are quite wrong.
I think that if we brought back 'Mother Earth' as a god, many women might change their minds about whether there is a god or not!

I think you've got very close to the nub, Peter.

You may be interested in a couple of pieces I came across this morning, coincidentally.

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/22/atheists_self_defeating_superiority_why_joining_forces_with_progressive_religion_is_best_for_non_believers/

http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/can-my-prayer-be-as-angry-and-funny-as-me/

Why make this simple topic so complicated? To some minds (like mine) the supernatural beings who inhabit religions are literally incredible. And if they weren’t then an independent thinker would need to decide which ones to believe in, a tricky exercise at the best of times. Does anyone really succeed? Most hasten to the safety of their inherited religion, as if it’s genetic.

As for the so-called history of ‘modern movements in atheism’, the version here looks dubious and unhelpful. Let me offer a personal view of approximately 65 years of atheist history, which is a fair slab, even if I say so myself. When I first decided around age 12 that religion was a load of nonsense, I really did not have to give the matter any thought at all. But in those days this was a view that was, in today’s terms, politically incorrect. One had to be very brave to reveal it, a bit like homosexuality. After all, the severe punishment of heretics was almost within living memory. My peer group then liked using the word 'agnostic', which had a less severe or decisive ring about it and was therefore less open to disparagement. They even defended the notion that, as one could not prove the non-existence of gods, it was only proper to be ambivalent or undecided. That was probably political correctness too. Deep down they probably thought it was all a load of old cobblers.

The real timeline for atheism is that one’s absence of belief in a deity can now be stated and discussed openly. Of course there has also been a broad increase in freedom of thought in western countries, which in the main has statutory protection. More people can and will now call themselves atheists. There is no need to delve into deep philosophy to understand that development

Oh Suseonline, “many” women (or men) "might change their mind" on whatever for whatever reason. If bringing back Mother Earth would threaten belief in God, why did not any significant number of Catholic women who lost their faith (and there are really many of them) pass from venerating Mary to a comparable veneration of Mother Earth?

Tombee, I think you're missing the point. I'm an atheist, which is to say quite specifically that I don't believe in the existence of an independent entity which may be described as a god. Does that also have to mean that I must reject as unimportant or non-existent the phenomena that have lead some people over the millennia to posit the notion of a god to explain them? Does it mean I must ridicule those who hold to such a notion today?

I say it does not and that moreover, to do so is to diminish some of the aspects of humanity which are most important and perhaps least quantifiable.

I'd go further (as I have done previously on this site) and suggest that those who do so are in fact no less blinkered than the most bigoted spruikers of religious charlatanry and just as motivated by self-interest informed by ignorance.

I won't go into it any deeper at present, this was well covered on Peter's scientism thread.