Hmmm, well when it comes to the concept of atheism in Marvel it's not surprising that a lot of people would be atheists because while gods exist they aren't very "godly". I mean when you see a legitimate Greco-Roman or Norse deity get their butt stomped into the pavement a few times it's hard for the literal divine awe not to go trickling away. Especially when you see mortals with a genetic twist or scientific edge standing shoulder to shoulder with them. Above the man on the street stuff there is an entire cosmology out there, the beings closest to literal gods are not something that the general population has any real knowledge of. To my knowledge "The One Above All" has yet to directly manifest and identify itself, though his intervention in a god-like guise is possible in the resolution of storylines like "Avengers A.I." the most powerful being your average hero in The Marvel Universe is probably aware of is "The Living Tribunal". It doesn't help the situation that there are multiple beings all claiming to be the devil, and his alleged son and daughter are running around, but in reality you find via events like "Fear Itself" that the throne of "Satan" is pretty much empty with various demonic entities claiming the title but none being brave enough to take the throne, and literally timeless beings pointing out that it's all a game if I remember, and nobody has ever sat there.
As far as the new avengers line up goes, people seem to already be calling it the SJA or "Social Justice Avengers" and comparing it to the previous X-men stunt that introduced Storm, Sunfire, and other characters, or vintage Superfriends with characters like "El Dorado" and "Apache Chief" being introduced for the obvious reasons.
The speculation right now is that Marvel has kind of put itself into a rough spot by catering to social justice types and writers with those sentiments and became heavily invested in a lot of things that aren't working out well, but also sort of beholden to SJWs and liberal media for the praise they have gotten for the social statement inherent in some of these characters. The truth be told almost every character on that list is loved for PC reasons, but generally reviled by comic readers, even if speculators have kept a lot of the sales high. Over the years things like "The Avengers" and to an even greater extent "The Defenders" have worked as a dumping grounds for characters that aren't popular enough for their own title, but have enough support for one reason or another to not be given an axe, OR experimental ideas being worked on by various writers. Typically the idea is to have one or two big heroes that carry their own book being the lynchpin holding together a team of second and third rate IPs who cumulatively can move the title. In a lot of cases the big names who are part of the team also carry their own books simultaneously, and in many cases just get together en-masse for the big events. If you look at the history of The Avengers you'll notice there have been more than a few times when they have had no active A-listers at all. The Defenders have been even more infamous for this.
Right now the operative theory for many seems to be that they are going to sort of peel off a lot of the SJW-fuel characters, namely minorities using brand names, and put them into an Avengers team, usually with one or two genuinely big heroes showing up to hold it down and justify crossovers. Apparently Marvel is looking at the success DC has had with running three "Justice League" teals, the Justice League, Justice League Dark, and Justice League Of America all
at the same time, and it apparently wants to have multiple Avengers teams again, especially seeing as with the movies and newfound popularity characters like the actual "Iron Man", "Thor", and "Captain America" have full dance cards as IPs and creative teams and as such will likely be too busy to be helping pin down team books reliably.
This morning I was discussing it with some people and allegedly Marvel has already said they plan to keep both Peter Parker as the main Spider Man and that Scarlet Spider will also still be around (he was in the most jeopardy). Spider-Gwen and others are new IPs and as such their future depends on enduring interest. Apparently Steve Rogers will not be out of his guise as Captain America long, and supposedly it was leaked that with the universe reboot William Burnside will also be making a few key appearances and probably be launched as another Captain America. Allegedly there is also going to be an "Iron Guard" in the works. Allegedly, and this is the least reliable bit of speculation, in the new universe a lot of the Iron Man suits are going to be equipped with spot teleporters, which allows the people inside the suits to change places, making it so that in theory any member of "The Iron Guard" can be in any Iron Man suit at any time. The idea being that if a job needs Tony Stark he can say switch places with Rhodey, or vice versa if Rhodey's military experience would be more useful. Supposedly "The Iron Guard" will be using a lot of armor suits as drones, and also have armor stashes all over the world (secret or otherwise) and Rhodey, Tony, Pepper, and a rebooted Happy Hogan will respond to emergencies based on the observation of drones, and reports, and teleport in to local armor suits to deal with emergencies... sort of the opposite of the anime schtick of people teleporting their battle armor onto themselves. It sounds like it could be interesting but it could all be fan speculation, I mention it because the answer to who is in that Iron Man suit could possibly be "yes" because it could be any one of those characters at any given time, which also means they can have Iron Man be in 4 places simultaneously and in theory have Tony pop in and hour of storylines as required to make commentary or whatever before switching over to someone else, since Tony is the big brain everyone confers with.
At any rate, while my feelings on some of these characters are a matter of record, I will say that for those who ARE serious fans I do hope the cross-label refugees are treated better than the Wildstorm characters that came into "New 52". I was a big fan of "The Authority" and of course "Stormwatch" before it changed titles. When they brought that basic team into New 52 it seems like they wind up doing something to remove it before every major event, and they don't get to act like themselves very much. For example wiping out Stormwatch was one of the very first things that happened with "Future's End" and I wasn't especially happy with that since that level of event is exactly when those characters really tend to shine as they are all supposed to be crazy powerhouses.
