That’s nonsense, of course you can get those things as an atheist. You can even participate in other peoples religions as an atheist.
No, it isn’t a religious choice. It is a label of a state of belief. As such it provides nothing, and takes nothing away.
If the implication there is that atheists do claim a knowledge of everything, you are completely wrong there as well.
Yeah - Bowling Alone and all that. Might even apply to membership in religious clubs.
I’m not a big joiner. I get all the socializing and group activity I want from my golf leagues and music groups! 
For what it’s worth, I believe in God, and I do not believe there is a ‘reason’ for suffering and I don’t think that God has a ‘plan’ for me or anyone else. My religion is sort of a Christian Buddhism, if you will. So to address the OP, I am not sure “hope” has a lot to do with my religion. Hope means, “even though this sucks now, God has something great for me that I don’t know about yet.” I don’t think that way. I believe – and have always believed, without any Bible or any other teaching – that a divine compassion lies upon the world, that consciousness pervades everything seen and unseen, and that if I pay attention, I can dwell there, to the limited extent my own minute abilities allow me. The Christian aspect for me is the personification of this compassionate consciousness.
Suffering is an inalterable condition of life in this material world. What is alterable is the kind of attention one gives to it, the way one holds it.
The last 30 days or so that my mother was alive, she suffered greatly. Cancer had taken it’s toll and her body was slowly shutting down. What little belief I had for a god was wishing he would let her die to end her suffering. Shortly after she passed, a male nurse came in the room and told us we needed to have her removed immediately, the bed was needed. My sister asked for a few minutes, we were still saying our goodbyes. He stated that God has a plan for everyone and that we should take comfort in that. I walked up to him and told him that his god can kiss my ass, and that no one deserves to suffer like our mother did. What little reverence I had at that time ended. Another nurse came in the room and told us to stay as long as we wanted. In the year after mother died, I read the Bible, I asked questions. I still hold onto my belief that religions are just groups of people that need something to believe in because they don’t believe in themselves. The ironic part is I have made some friends since then that are very religious, they accept me for who I am and we very much enjoy our time together.
Okay, but then @Jay_Z is still correct; you are not getting comfort and community from being an atheist, you’re getting it from other things unrelated to religion. It’s analagous to someone saying they get comfort and community from not being a basketball fan, because they get it from their D&D club. No, you’re getting comfort and community from your club.
Would you really never speak to someone again for daring to talk about their religion? Holy moly, pun intended; I’m an atheist and even to me that seems bananas.
I mean, people will routinely talk about their kids, spouses, pets, jobs you’re not involved in, hobbies, and a million other things, all personal matters you may have no interest or connection in. My mother likes to talk about pickleball, which I have no interest in at all, and which is clearly not some sort of political or social issue. I’m not going to cut her out of my life for it.
A person attempting to comfort someone with a religious statement is trying to help. Obviously if they go whole hog and charge in to your dying father’s hospital room trying to convert him or you or some similar idiocy that’s one thing, but a simple effort to assuage your pain is just a person trying to help in their own way, not a conversion attempt on your doorstep. Live and let live.
I probably should have said “proselytizing” instead of “talking”. In my experience, people who want to talk about their religion are either trying to sell you on their beliefs or sell you something else.
Yeah, proselytizing was what I was going to say. No one’s mentioned their religion to me who wasn’t proselytizing.
“Can’t come to those Sunday brunches, I go to church then.”
“I love singing with a group; I joined the choir at my church and it’s so fun.”
“After (the current devastating public tragedy) I went down to my church, a bunch of people were just standing there praying and crying. It was good not be alone that day.”
No one has ever said anything of the kind to you? And yet, about half of Americans belong to a church.
I guess I tend to socialize with people who are like me. None of my friends attend church, other than one family and they do not bring up “church topics”. Oh, and my daughter’s husband’s parents attend a church, but they’ve never said a word about it. Maybe my daughter clued them in.
This is probably 80-90% of my mentions of church (well not specifically brunch) when I’m not hanging around church-y folks. Can’t do anything Sunday morning… or hang out too late (like after midnight) on Saturday nights. This also applies to Holy Week.
I’ve heard all that, and have also been invited to church in what I consider a non-proselytizing manner: along the lines of ‘I’m a member of X church, we welcome everybody, would you like to come?’ but with no objections or insistence raised when I said no thanks. One invitation with no following pressure doesn’t come into negative proselytizing in my book. (And I’m pretty sensitive to it.)
I know both a lot of people who do go to religious services, and a lot of people who don’t.
No. People I know don’t belong to churches. I know I either feel unwelcome or overly welcome in a creepy way.
Before I became a Catholic, I knew a lot of people who went to church. I just didn’t know I did, because it didn’t come up in conversation, and I wasn’t interested anyway. After I became a Catholic, I did notice that other people also went to church, but it still rarely came up in conversation unless we were actually talking about going to church. That’s because even evangelical Christians do not typically mention their faith in ordinary repartee.
Ha. I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic elementary school (through grade 8). I saw through it pretty early, and it was than more than enough religion for me.
Cradle Catholics and convert Catholics definitely have entirely different experiences.
You betcha!
My dad was a convert, so he’s the one they got to run the CCD.