It only takes courage for those who live in areas that are indoctrinated with dense religious ideology's who will suffer consequences for their actions. For most in the western world, it is not such a hard thing to identify oneself with.

edit: original response claimed it took courage to doubt the existence of a creator. It has since edited out to claim it simply takes intellectual curiosity. I would argue that the same intellectual curiosity could have the end result of someone having a belief in a singular creator of reality.

> I would argue that the same intellectual curiosity could have the end result of someone having a belief in a singular creator of reality.

Possible, but not likely, given how many intellectually curious people have independently reinvented atheism but no religion has been independently reinvented.

Religion and belief in a singular creator are not the same thing. Furthermore, I don't really believe you have any credible way of producing a valid number of 'intellectually curious' individuals who have made the choice to believe in a singular creator versus not.

edit: misunderstanding of mutually exclusive and added some more words.

It's far more likely to be the other way round. Atheism was only really formed about 300 years ago, and by that time the world had been explored and the printing press had been invented. In contrast, all of the ancient religions, formed in completely disconnected continents, had the notion of a creator at their centre.

> Atheism was only really formed about 300 years ago

This denies the existence of Ancient Greek atheists, and people who were skeptical of religion in general before the modern era.

I think you mean agnostic not atheism then.

Agnosticism is a belief that we can't possibly know whether there's a supernatural. I don't hold that view. My view is a skepticism of the supernatural, which is atheism.