You don't actually state the colour of your skin so, forgive me but I am not making any assumptions. I think the attitude you describe regarding us "pretending" to be atheist for whatever reason is not unusual. It is the arrogance of people who believe they have the only valid answer to life's problems: their faith. I remember my youth, when older members of my family used the crazy statement, "It doesn't do to delve" as a response to questions they could not answer. What they meant was, "I/we cannot bear to look into the abyss for fear of what we may find". At least, I think that's what they meant

"We've always told you what to think, what to perceive, how dare you exhibit consciousness!!!"

There are various ways of tackling religion depending upon how much tolerance you can draw together with a few friends. The secular way of doing the tackling is in my opinion an apartheid way of doing things and In my opinion is unlikely to work full time and forever. Religion is NOT going to be given up lightly. So I will not be following pure secular advice even though I see a lot of their work is useful in exposing the mistakes of religion.
I would favor a more humanist tolerant approach based upon logical rational discussions (NOT debate as the problems are not always just two sided). I base all my future thinking about religion and the future on SCIENCE and scientific method - the latter being drawn into everyday and everyone's thinking as quickly as human society can assimilate it - more particularly into politics. Science has done so much to question and show up the glaring mistakes of religion already. In this respect one would not start a scientific investigation or announce results to quickly because you do not know that your answers will be right. Hence I call myself an Agnostic Humanists.

So, you are in the right place here and as long as you call yourself a scientist ( without necessarily announcing it - you just use scientific method to reach your conclusions) you cannot go wrong - conscious or not. Then no one will tell you what to think - you just announce your conclusions and look for friends of the same thinking. The future is bright .

PS Suggestion (not commandment) , GOOGLE "The Brights" .