Why American Atheists have it wrong

From AJS.COM

The American Atheists Web site has a sort of primer on atheism. What I found interesting was that their little blurb is pretty much wrong:

"Atheism is a doctrine that states that nothing exists but natural phenomena (matter), that thought is a property or function of matter, and that death irreversibly and totally terminates individual organic units. This definition means that there are no forces, phenomena, or entities which exist outside of or apart from physical nature, or which transcend nature, or are “super” natural, nor can there be. Humankind is on its own."

Problems with this:

• Matter is not all there is (matter can be converted to energy, and space/time is affected by matter/energy, but is not the same thing).
• Death does not totally terminate individual organic units. It terminates the higher-order behaviors which we identify as "life", but death is very much a part of an organism's life-cycle and in many ways is not the end of it. Reproduction means that part of the organism quite literally lives on in its young (in the case of species which have male/female sexual polarity especially, since the female passes on its mitochondria wholly intact).
• It is cheating to use the phrase "physical nature," when delimiting the scope of forces and phenomena. Physical nature could encompass everything in a religion. This is why Robert Heinlein observed that, "supernatural is a null word."
• "Humankind is on its own," is a statement of faith. We might well not be on our own. We might be observed, managed, simulated, directed, or interacted with in any number of other ways. The agents of any such interaction could be beings with whom we share so little that "supernatural" might well seem an appropriate word, even given its obvious limitations of specificity and scope.

Here's an alternate definition of atheism for you, that I think is internally consistent:

"Atheism is a doctrine which holds that the physical laws of our universe are the only unquestionable record of our origin and model for our understanding of the larger world around us. It also holds that understanding which is gained from the unquestioning absorption of dogma is almost certain to be incorrect."

This implicitly contradicts the notions of all existing religions, but does not make statements about what the scope of "nature" is, nor the boundaries between life and death.