Jews didn't discover their faith in the Nazi camps. They rationalized it, just as the early Christians rationalized their Judaism in the face of Rome's having killed Jesus. The question I'm raising is whether that search for artificial reasons for forming childlike relationships with invisible friends is honourable, given our existential condition. I think not.

I agree that some civil religions are stale, but I deny that atheists have no sound basis for ritual. The basis is nature's inhuman power and creativity, so the religion would be pantheistic. That's been the foundation of all theistic religions, by the way, which is to say that the polytheistic and monotheistic religions of the civilized period are just politicizations of the long prehistoric worship of nature (as in shamanic animism). The irony is that science re-enchants nature, giving us animism 2.0.