Where did the universe come from? Atheistic origin science has no answer.

[Angrboda]

Quite right.

The opposition to religion being... not a religion.

Well it's not an organised religion certainly but it depends how you want to define a religion. Not all religions are based around God you know. Does this seem like a religious text to you?

http://classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.1.i.html

The guy who wrote that would be defined as an atheist by today's standards but he saw it as a religion.

Well, at least you're consistent. Consistently wrong that is. Your understanding of Epicureanism is as wrong-headed as your understanding of atheism. First off, that is a book about Epicureanism, and it's unclear whether the author, Lucretius, was himself an Epicurean. Second, it's not clear that Epicureans considered themselves to be followers of a religion; if you have evidence that they did, I'd like to see it. I don't believe they considered themselves any more followers of a 'religion' than the Stoics, Cynics, Sophists, Pythagoreans, Platonists, or any other of the other common philosophical schools of ancient Greece thought of their beliefs as a religion. Even if they did, what they did follow, the philosophy of Epicureanism, was not atheism, and is not necessarily implied by atheism. Moreover, that some atheists are religious does not imply that atheism or all atheists are religious; you've been told far too many times already that atheism isn't a specific set of 'beliefs'. There are plenty of atheists in the world who are religious — Buddhists, Taoists, Jains, Raelians. The fact that some atheists are religious does not in any sense support your claim that atheism is a religion. This is simply invalid logic. But even if you could demonstrate that atheism and religious behavior are correlated, you still wouldn't have demonstrated that atheism is the source of that religious behavior, as correlation does not imply causation. Perhaps one of the most developed frameworks for identifying a religion is Ninian Smart's dimensions of religion. Statler Waldorf debated whether atheism qualified under Smart's framework, and granted, I'm biased in the matter, but I don't think he was successful; you may weigh in on the matter if you like (thread: ).

Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus — about whom very little is known — Epicurus believed that what he called "pleasure" is the greatest good, but the way to attain such pleasure is to live modestly and to gain knowledge of the workings of the world and the limits of one's desires. This led one to attain a state of tranquility (ataraxia) and freedom from fear, as well as absence of bodily pain (aponia). The combination of these two states is supposed to constitute happiness in its highest form. Although Epicureanism is a form of hedonism, insofar as it declares pleasure to be the sole intrinsic good, its conception of absence of pain as the greatest pleasure and its advocacy of a simple life make it different from "hedonism" as it is commonly understood.
. . . . .
Some writings by Epicurus have survived. Some scholars consider the epic poem On the Nature of Things by Lucretius to present in one unified work the core arguments and theories of Epicureanism.