How do you become an Atheist?

[theVOID]

I think philosophy certainly once aspired to address all fundamental questions that could be thought at a time when levitated assertions played a large part in attempting to answer any fundamental questions, hence the existence of moral and natural sides of philosophy. Gradually in natural philosophy where verification and objective elucidation is more easily obtained, scientific method supplanted idle assertion as the preferred method for reliable advancements. It would be a self-inflicted loss to philosophy if it were now excludes a part of itself merely because that part has raced ahead in techniques for achieving the goal common to all area of philosophy.

Idle assertion is a bit harsh, armchair philosophy was (and still is) fairly impractical, but some of the conceptual models of ethics and the mind are really invaluable to science (especially psychology). It's had it's day though, I think really empirically grounded philosophy is where it's at, the experimental philosophers put empiricism first and then create their theories in recognition of tentative truths.

For the rest of philosophy, I do not believe their endeavors are in principle beyond natural science. I think if perception and cognitive conception can be elucidated in detail, then artifacts of perception and cognitive conception such as non-contingent and necessary will lose their appeal as objects of levitated assertions.

The whole concept of a non-contingent and necessary thing is that it isn't dependent on perception and cognition, so improving our understanding of those things won't help in the slightest. They aren't in any way 'artifacts' of somewhat flawed cognition either, we could be cognitively perfect (whatever that would mean) and what is necessary is still necessary and what is not dependent on physical things is still not dependent on physical things. We can possibly improve the methods by which we arrive at these necessary truths, but to say that they will 'lose their appeal' is like saying the law of non-contradiction will lose it's appeal. Really, it's not going to happen.

Also, science (probably) can't establish values, so philosophical theories of value (moral and common) are likely to be irreplaceable by any empirical methods, you can determine the relationships between sets of values in competition a priori.