I think you can weave atheism into a dogmatic philosophy such as Stalinism but atheism itself isn't a belief unless contextualised as part of a philosophy. You could decide to enforce atheism as a central tenet of a philosophy at which point it ceases to simply be a stance of skepticism and you could turn it into a measure of commitment to a worldview. In certain Communist states I would be happy to say atheism is part of a belief system because you are expected to adopt a rejection of all gods as part of your faith in a political system. Here in the West not so much, there is no overarching political philosophy claiming it so it isn't subject to the same understanding, IMO, as a faith based belief. Atheism is pretty simple in this context.
Religion is part of the faith based paradigm that is so poisonous to mankind. When you decide you have a source of absolute truth you stop asking questions, you stop re-examining assumptions and you start making close minded decisions. You start defending a religion / party / philosophy and turning a blind eye to immorality. You end up with sane moral people sanctioning gas chambers, drinking kook aid laced with poison, flying aircraft into buildings and preaching door to door about an arbitrary set of statements that cannot be questioned. Faith is an all consuming beast, a true slave master and all the faithful are slaves whether they glory in it or not.
What is 'crazy' is our continuance in narrow paths of thought when a wealth of empiricle evidence is at our fingertips and self education is free. This is the first age when we truly choose to be ignorant or not.