Iamon lyme:

> By the way, what do you mean by religious? What is a 'religious' atheist, and how is he different from other atheists?

Some atheists come from a religious background, the most common being Buddhism. A good example is Stephen Batchelor who was ordained as a Buddhist monk and who later arrived at the conclusion that there is no god. He is still a Buddhist, and he can be both a Buddhist and an Atheist because Buddhism is a non-theistic religion (that is, a religion without a god.)

With respect to atheists and aliens, I imagine that it depends on the person. Those who believe in aliens might assume that aliens could be more intelligent than humans. I am an atheists who will believe in aliens only on the day when I actually see them. In the meantime, they make nothing more than nice materials for movies and books. We can't even prove that there is life outside this planet. It is a big leap from there to superintelligent aliens. Of course, there could be aliens and they all turn out to be really stupid, or at least as stupid as we humans can be.