The existence of God is a metaphysical kind of thing, so any stance on this (whether belief in existence OR non-existence) is a religious belief.

See, that’s where I disagree. I’m an atheist and I don’t believe or claim to know that there is no god. I don’t believe that there isn’t a god at all. All I believe is that there’s no sufficient proof at this time that there positively is a god. Much less a god that demands certain behaviours/rituals, diets and dress codes and whatnot. You can’t prove a negative after all.

acting like I’ve committed blasphemy by saying atheism is a religion.

I never did this, though. We’re just talking as far as I’m aware, I’m not offended by your stance in the slightest, I just took your first comment as an invitation to discuss this matter.

I very much agree with you that many atheists take their belief too far. Any atheist that claims to know there is 100% certainly no god is taking their belief to dogmatic and religious belief levels. Since you can’t prove a negative we’ll never have proof that there’s no god in the same way we’ll never have proof that there’s no flying spaghetti monster. I don’t think the existence of a god or a flying spaghetti monster has been demonstrated sufficiently for me to adopt that belief. To me it seems an unnecessary (indeed metaphysical) invention to explain physical phenomena that have already been explained with physical evidence. And that leads me to being an atheist. For all intents and purposes there is no god until there is proof that there is. Excuse me for yet another metaphor, but I hope to explain my way of thinking better through an example: I also believe there’s no dogshit under my shoe until I can smell, see or otherwise detect it. Unless that’s the case I’m going to act as if my shoes are clean but that’s different than me saying there’s no shit under my shoe and there never will be. The former is a working hypothesis that can change depending on circumstances and the latter is holding on to a belief no matter what (religiously, one might say).