[Serious] Atheist Dogma

[The Grand Nudger]

The earliest superstitions would have been little more than ritualized habits - most superstitions still are.

These terms are derived from a point in history where we truly believed that human thought and human behavior were fundamentally different from that of "animals". In that context, it's not surprising that we don't regard our pets as superstitious even if they engage in recognizably superstitious behaviors. Another example of a lizard not being a machinist. It isn't on account of the animals in question not doing the thing, or being in some specified state - it's simply that they're not people.

As we've learned more about ourselves and other animals, this separation has become impossible to cogently maintain. I would even contend that there are plenty of animals with the kind of god concepts that might arise organically in children (or in the first humans to believe in gods, for that matter). They aren't a product of complex rational analysis, nor are they the product of indoctrination into elaborate claims like theism - more simple projection. Any creature that needs to be able to predict and understand it's fellows behaviors is capable of projection.

The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black,
While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.
Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw,
And could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods
Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape
Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own.

Xenophanes