Ow. How do you treat coffee burns to the sinuses, QtM?
Regarding the OP, I’ll join your club. I have suffered very little reaction to my atheism. I think it helps that I don’t have a combative personality, and I don’t have any interest in changing the minds of believers unless they choose to engage me in direct debate. I don’t object to religious rituals (like church weddings and baptisms) and I remain respectfully silent during prayers. Courtesy goes a long way toward inspiring tolerance.
I’ve come to atheism/agnosticism fairly recently (over the last few years, when I finally admitted to myself that despite the fact that I was raised Christian, the whole thing never really ‘took’ with me). Nowadays I just joke about being a ‘heathen’ and I don’t apologize for it.
The spouse’s family are all very religious, and the spouse himself has become more religious over the past few years (he goes to church every week, is involved in church activities, etc.) However, none of them give me a hard time about it. They don’t treat me any differently, they don’t try to convert me…I’ve often complained to the spouse that most of his family doesn’t really “get” me, but that doesn’t extend to religion. About the only thing that happens sometimes is that the spouse and I get into “discussions” about some religion-based topics, but mostly we just avoid them. Better for both of us. 
When we go to visit his family, I just don’t participate in the religious stuff. Once a year we go to a church service/barbecue thing, and I sit politely through the service without praying or taking communion. They do their thing, I do mine, and we coexist.
I’ve never had anyone hassle me about my lack of interest in religion.
I thought it was all a bit made up (being likewise English and atheist), until I went to stay with my extended family, who live in Australia, of all places.
I’d only seen them on occasional visits, and I didn’t realise how religious they were, but some of them definitely had the attitude that I was not really a proper person- my Aunt was slightly uncomfortable about me being near her children, and they (late teens, early 20s) just didn’t seem to get the concept of not being a Christian. I don’t think they knew anyone else who wasn’t. I didn’t even push it- just went with the ‘not religious’, but it seemed to really confuse and upset them all. Very odd.
I’m not sure how they managed to find such a religious enclave in a country so generally apathetic about the whole thing, but they had.
Neti pot using distilled water, kosher salt, and bicarbonate.
I’ve lived all my life in the upper midwest, and while I don’t feel oppressed over my lack of belief, it certainly is expected that I am a Christian and attend church somewhere. It’s not an uncommon question to have a new neighbor, a new co-worker, or a friend of a friend ask “Where do you go to church?”. Answering “I don’t” won’t get you ostricised, but it is an unexpected answer.
There was a story a couple years ago about a teenager who was banned from a public library because he would accost patrons and witness to them, and had been told repeatedly to stop doing this. A pastor who posts on another board said that she had always been taught that this is exactly NOT the way to do it. I agree.
Someone on that same board lived in Europe and wanted to visit the U.S., but was afraid this would happen to her. We told her that it was unlikely outside the quadrangles of some college campuses, and if anyone does do this, just walk away.
I’m Christian, BTW. My experience with atheists who get harassed about it is that they bring it on themselves by insulting the beliefs of people who disagree with them. :rolleyes:
Everyone assumes their own experiences are universal.
They’re not. In my experience, anyway. 
I know that. It’s only MY two cents.
Same as the OP. Born and raised in the Bay, moved away now. But I’m in academia. I can’t remember the last time I’ve met a preachy Christian person*, preachy Atheists are more common, although most people would say “not religious” and leave it at that if pressed.
*I am not counting random street preacher types. Friends, acquaintances, and coworkers.
You could always go to Portland, “where young people go to retire.”
:eek: We’re talking about the same Bay Area right? The one with crappy schools and crappy commutes in most cases?
Were they also gasp not white?
They were pretty much all white, actually. Were you guessing Hispanic? Not that the local culture wasn’t plenty racist, but it wasn’t a factor in the behavior I described.
I live in Canada’s Bible Belt; which is mostly Mormon and fundamentalist Christians. I am occasionally asked which church I attend.
I defer the question. While I am nominally Christian, I haven’t regularly attended church in years. On the occasions that I have attended, it’s been mostly because a friend who conducts a local church choir has wanted my voice for specific pieces. (I sang in church choir for years back in Ontario, and am familiar with popular choir pieces.) I can read vocal music, his sect is inoffensive (United Church of Canada), and it’s fun to sing in a choir again.
Outside of that, Sundays are for watching football and drinking beer. Unless I go to the racetrack.
Good OP. I live in KANSAS*, fed Chrissakes, and I’ve never had anyone rudely challenge or question my atheism. Certainly not a stranger or mild acquintance. And I’ve lived in Mexico – same.
*Okay, fine, the People’s Republic of Lawrence. Point taken. But still.
The only flak/curiosity/bewilderment I’ve ever received for my beliefs is from 1. atheists who can’t believe I’m a Christian, 2. leftists who can’t believe I’m Catholic, and 3.) New-Agers who can’t believe I am a member of a western church.
Of course that could be due to where I live. However, once I became a Christian in my mid-thirties, I realized that there were Christians all over the place, that I had lots of friends whom I never noticed went to church every Sunday and always had. Nobody had ever offered anything of a proselytizing nature unless you count my high school friends inviting me to their church youth group (Episcopalian, I believe). We sang silly songs is all I can remember, and everyone seemed happy in an uncomplicated way, which is exactly why I never went back.
Me too, but when I answer that I am a lapsed Catholic, they come at me with pamphlets and prayers and invitations to their church. It probably doesn’t help that I live in an area loaded with Evangelical and Baptist churches and my house is back to back with one of them. It wasn’t such a problem when I lived in St. Paul. I am polite but firm and that usually gets them to leave off. If not, I tell them that my problem with the Catholic religion is the same problem I have against other religions so I won’t be changing and, no, I don’t want to discuss it. That does the trick.
I’ve never had any problems as an adult. But again, I’ve been in the SF Bay Area steadily since 8th grade. Despite a solid minority of conservative evangelicals in the far eastern reaches of the region, the default is probably to assume most folks are a bit godless around here ;).
As a kid in NYC, I had a very Catholic babysitter kinda scare me into praying at night, without meaning to. I was in 1rst grade and she was genuinely worried about my parent’s atheism out of fondness for us all. It sorta stuck halfheartedly as a fallback for a few years when I was stressed, but I had abandoned it long before I hit puberty.
I was quiet about my atheism as an adolescent in places like Michigan and it almost never came up with my peers - I don’t recall it ever being an issue.
In my experience in Canada a person’s religious beliefs just never come up in ordinary conversation. I have no idea what religious beliefs most of my friends and co-workers have, and would not expect to know. We have LDS and JW proselytizers show up at the door every year or two, but they go away when we say we aren’t interested. Nobody has ever hassled me about my beliefs because why would they know them?
My experience is mostly centered at the University of Minnesota campus, but in Minneapolis I’ve rarely gotten flak for my religious beliefs, and harassing atheists for their lack thereof is rare enough that the atheist student group has to pick fights with the religious students to provoke the dose of intolerance they seem to occasionally require.