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ygert comments on Rationality Quotes January 2013 - Less Wrong
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I dunno, that's an interesting case study if nothing else.
Regarding monotheism ... it has emerged independently a few times, if nothing else:
In Greece and India, philosophers noticed that the gods didn't really seem worthy of worship / multiple omnipotent agents didn't make sense.
In both Egypt and Israel, individual cults grew into henotheistic religions which eventually blurred into monotheism - probably for at least partly political reasons, and Happy Death Spirals were probably also involved.
Interestingly, Christianity appears to have partly reverted to polytheism during the dark ages - and there are many syncretic minor religions/cults that are polytheistic while retaining a largely Christian framework.
It seems to me that polytheism is easier to grasp, and so tends to be popular by default, while monotheism is easier to defend, and so tends to emerge when it needs to be defended (whether from political opponents or your own knowledge about reality) - and the two most popular religions both started out monotheist (give or take a trinity.)
More ontopic, it's arguable whether using such a common term to mean such a specific concept is privileging the hypothesis, but it's pretty common these days, and most "converts" to atheism came from Christian backgrounds. [citation needed]
Remember that ~33% of the world is Christian (which is more than any other religion), and so it is not all that surprising that many atheists come from Christian backgrounds, simply because the probability that an arbitrary person came from a Christian background is quite high to start with.
Well, yes. That would be why most converts to atheism came from Christian backgrounds. Along with greater concentrations of both in the western world and so on. Since most atheists (and most LWers) come from such a BG, it seems worth having terminology relating to it, was my point.