I think you're onto something there. I've written about this too, the "religious" side of atheism. "Religion" is a loaded word here, though, so we can say instead that all tribes have a mythos or ideology to defend their ethos, their cultural character. The problem raised by Nietzsche is that late-modern atheists have to be all the more heroic in generating their mythos because they must do so self-consciously, knowing the natural truth that all myths are preposterous. This is the problem of postmodernity.

What I argue for here is that new atheism failed not so much because new atheists' liberal and conservative visions clashed, although they certainly did so, which led to the movement's collapse. No, the larger failure was that their visions were too political, so they avoided the deeper question of what an atheistic life should be about. They avoided the "satanic," promethean, existentially rebellious aspect of a godless life.