Logical persuasion is not a key feature of religion, not the way that empirical material reductionists do it. You can't call atheists religious simply because they are trying to demonstrate the lack of proof for something. There's no real doctrine behind that, and no set of principles they are following. the 'a' in atheist means an absence. It would be like looking into a vacuum and claiming there is something there, when really there isn't.
Some religious people would like to paint atheists as religious because that's their paradigm of thought that they live in. For centuries, most of the world lived in a reality of competing categorical doctrines, so it was necessary to always view 'the other' as having an opposing set of beliefs that were blasphemous. Atheism challenges the religious because there is no doctrine to grasp onto for the sake of argument. Atheism is abstinence and non-participation. You can't argue with its existence because it's a non-existence.
One caveat I have is that militant atheists like Dawkins are making it their mission to dismantle religion. I think when it transfers from pacifism to active attack based on principle, then you could say that there are elements of dogma there. Nonetheless, that does not make atheism a faith-based system of any kind.
What religious people are trying to describe is actually dogma, not a tangible religion. Dogma can strike anyone, religious or not. It happens when people think their view of reality, their epistemology, is incontrovertibly true, and they're willing to fight over it. IMO dogma is the #1 problem on this planet. Many humans cannot live and let live so we continue to succumb to the base nature of conflict.