What came first, the atheist or the theist?

[Tiberius]

Yes, the idea of there being a God was there before the idea of there not being a God. This fact is irrelevant to what we are discussing, which is whether theists or atheists came first. Theism and atheism deal with *belief* in ideas, not the ideas themselves. You certainly need to understand the idea in order to believe in it, and so before theists could exist, the idea of God had to exist. The same is not true for atheism, since it is the opposite of theism; you do not need to understand (or even know about) the idea of God to not believe in it, in the same way you don't need to understand (or even know about) a car in order to not own one.