You also seem to be rationalizing an assumption that there were no atheists thousands of years ago, and yet there were.
There's no reason to believe that our critical thinking powers are any stronger today than they were in the past few thousand years, certainly when it comes to metaphysics. To me, at least, the relative prevalence of various beliefs through recored history suggests something very different about how people of any period, including our own, find and adopt knowledge.
You also seem to be rationalizing an assumption that there were no atheists thousands of years ago, and yet there were.
There's no reason to believe that our critical thinking powers are any stronger today than they were in the past few thousand years, certainly when it comes to metaphysics. To me, at least, the relative prevalence of various beliefs through recored history suggests something very different about how people of any period, including our own, find and adopt knowledge.