I think your question actually demonstrates a principle behind this essay. Paradigm shifts come from discarding assumptions. Often, this is embodied as correcting the question instead of the answer.
To me, the most convincing atheist argument has always been some variation of Russell's teapot.
Accepting Russell's argument (which I think is very hard not to without challenging knowledge generally) you cease to ask that question. Just because religion happens to usually come before atheism doesn't mean that atheism needs to prove itself. The burden of proof is on the theist because of the nature of the claim.
There is no need to prove that gods do not exist to be an atheist.
To take your argument one step further, I think a believer/atheist is a relic from the middle ages. Why is it so important to declare a lack of a belief in a particular variety of diety? Only because the one version was historically popular and so just not believing that one notion was enough to be a belief system.
Now that we're not burning or crushing people for disavowing the state church we don't need to define the belief system solely on that criteria anymore.
Suppose you firmly believed the answer to the simulation argument was that we are indeed living in a simulation. Who runs the code? By any reasonable definition of god you have some; they may be petty, or foreign, or unknowable but you've got gods all the same. Yes they are not Christian gods, so in that sense the person is still a-Christian-theist but does that still have meaning.
Or suppose the earth was seeded with amino acids by a traveling and functionally immortal alien race who monitor earth by ansible and adjust things for the better every now and again when people ask them too. Athiest? Well sort of.
The claim that there are no simulation masters, no alien races, no omniscient AI spy satellites, no ... is certainly possible, but it seems like we're back to thinking that we humans are special and the center of the universe.
This is partly just a matter of verbal semantics but I think just deciding to be not Christian/Muslim/Jewish/etc. often leads to theological laziness about other possibilities, and as atheism becomes more commonplace (it's hard to imagine that it won't) maybe it won't be enough to just join the camp and call it good.
The claim that there are no simulation masters, no alien races, no omniscient AI spy satellites, no ... is certainly possible, but it seems like we're back to thinking that we humans are special and the center of the universe.
Perhaps the point is easier to see if you consider "no alien races" in isolation -- the lack of intelligent extraterrestrial life seems to lead directly to the notion that we humans are special (i.e., the most intelligent form of life in the entire Universe). On the other hand, the question of whether there are any intelligent civilizations within a distance such that contact could be established without both such civilizations inventing travel at relativistic speeds (if only one is near-light speed, maybe the other one ages and dies before being reached) may provide an "out". I'm not sure whether we can actually beat aging by driving toward each other at, say, 0.9c each relative to our home planets; it's been a while since I did time dilation in physics.
But here, there are two different ways to apply the article.
1) Don't be human centric, so there is likely to be another alien race that "created" us in some sense.
2) Consider randomness, so accept the possibility that there no intelligence behind our existence and instead a random collision of particles (or something) created us (or created the beginnings of life on earth).
I think he is merely referring to the assertive nature of this part of essay:
No, it turns out, humans are not created by God in his own image; they're just one species among many, descended not merely from apes, but from microorganisms.
> No, it turns out, humans are not created by God in his own image
Counterpoint: God could be described as the "master programmer". A supreme being would be capable of designing an evolutionary system which would evolve beings who are capable of contemplating the existence of God himself.
Well, of course a supreme being "would be capable of" making a world very much like this one. Or, for that matter, any other sort of world. (So any argument that begins "a supreme being could make a world like this" isn't actually bringing in any facts about the world.)
A better question -- because it gives some opportunity for applying actual information about the world -- is "If a supreme being were making a world, would we expect it to look like this one, or very different?". The answer to that depends on what sort of supreme being you have in mind, of course.
I'm not really trying to convince anyone, just showing how for many people the process of changing their mind about God involved the principle outlined in the essay and demonstrated in these comments.
According to Russell (with whom I agree) The fallacy lies in the question, a common place for blind spots to hide.
To me, the most convincing atheist argument has always been some variation of Russell's teapot.
Accepting Russell's argument (which I think is very hard not to without challenging knowledge generally) you cease to ask that question. Just because religion happens to usually come before atheism doesn't mean that atheism needs to prove itself. The burden of proof is on the theist because of the nature of the claim.
There is no need to prove that gods do not exist to be an atheist.