You are saying that atheists are refuting or reacting towards a caricature of religion while what you are presenting about atheists is a caricature of atheism and is taking it to meanings that are much broader than what it actually is.
Why aren't you taking the same etymological approach that you took towards the word religion and apply it to theism and atheism respectively, so you know what you are talking about, at least as far as definitions go?
The first thing you have to realize is that the-ism suffix doesn't imply a full-fledged philosophy, but mere agreement or connection with something, in this case a principle or a claim about reality.
When we look at theism it means the belief in a god or gods. This term doesn't imply any philosophical predispositions besides the attitude towards a very simple claim - the existence of a god or gods. A theist believes that a deity exists, but the philosophy they might follow would be highly dependent on their religion and other values and ideas. Christianity, Islam, spiritualism, Buddhism and deism are all different forms of theism and the people from each group would disagree on a lot of other topics besides the existence of a god, including the definition of what god is.
When looking at the term atheist, the first thing to examine is the prefix a- which means without. So therefore an atheist is a person who does not believe in a god or gods and the term comes with no additional information about that person. People can be atheists for all kinds of reasons but asserting that you somehow know anything else about their values or beliefs in regard to other claims is baseless and a stereotype at best. Atheism is not a religion, nor a philosophy, it's simply the lack of belief in a deity. Different atheists have different values and different reasons to not believe the claim that a god exists. The only thing that unites them is the rejection of this particular claim and nothing more.
Sure, many atheists are fond of science and the scientific process, but this doesn't mean that an appreciation of science is required and/or necessary for one to be an atheist and it's certainly not part of the meaning of the word. There are people who don't care much about science, but still find the claim that a god exists ridiculous and thus reject it based on no real inquiry and scientific investigation, they just feel like it.
I personally consider myself an atheist and you can read why I feel this label applies to me here (you're more than welcome to comment on there why you find my position inconsistent or unacceptable too) and I don't understand what do you know about me, my values and my behaviors just based on this term to basically posit that I'm part of the most evil group of people out there. Why do you think that's at all justified and do you think it's a good thing you are handling people you don't know that way?