Didn't seem to have much of a negative affect on Newton.

Science is a technique, once you master the technique it isn't clear if what you believe is all that important.

For example a chemist may believe that sex is a social construct but unless they are working on a biological problem associated with sexuality does it really matter?

Many scientists I know believed the Trump-Russia hoax didn't seem to affect their work. Their liberal "religion" was completely irrelevant.

I'm not sure what problem atheists are trying to solve. The same kinds of problems religion causes are common to all ideologies. Now the fact that religion is almost by definition conservative is a problem because it gets in the way of progress but we can see that scientific determinism is also causing a lot of problems. It is providing a barrier to the type of individual responsibility civilization requires. It justifies the victim mentality and destroys lives.

I have a distinct distrust of truths, including the truth that God doesn't exist. I don't know if that is true or not it just seems highly probable. Science exists in the narrative world of probabilities not truths. It's a frugal heuristic to ignore the improbable. I know people that have no meaningful education that don't believe in God because of what they think is common sense. The battle between religion and science has it's roots in politics as much as reason. In the past it was simply politically inopportune to not be outwardly religious.

The new religion of wokeness has exactly the same political characteristics as traditional religions. When science challenges it's dogma it imposes political penalties. As it now dominates the culture because powerful people find it useful in almost exactly the same way they found adopting earlier religions useful the role in combating it that atheism once played is increasingly irrelevant.