My neighbor is an atheist and I didn't know it.
I had to laugh. I'm friends with this neighbor on Facebook and noticed some posts that seemed in agreement with my viewpoints. They invited us over to supper and during the conversation we discovered we are all non-believers. I've known these people for 10 years and I'm just now finding this out. Now we are talking about doing more things together when we are not buried by 6 inches of snow with another 8 coming this weekend. Crazy world!
Reading this makes me realize how lucky I am to be living in Buddhist Thailand.
Since their beliefs include allowing to people live and let live, nobody bothers me, or even asks about my religion, and my students mostly assume I'm "Christian" because I'm American.
On the rare occasions they ask me about my religion, I shrug and say that I don't know. I admit I'm sort of a Christian/Buddhist in some ways, but mostly I don't know, and see quantum physics as my default religion.
I once got a letter published in the FFRF newsletter. Afterward a local guy called and said he was surprised there was another member on the island. It turned out there were 4 couples that were members living on the island.
In 2012 we went to the Portland FFRF convention. My late partner knew a lot of people and I joked that wouldn't it be funny if she met someone here she knew (there were over 900 in attendance). I got the usual, you are funny look but, sure enough, the first night, I heard some screams and saw her embracing a friend she worked with at our farmers market. Neither knew the other was an atheist and a member of FFRF.
Kind of amazing what we don’t know about people. Do you live in Northeast America? I’m in Western New York State and that is also our forecast
I bet there are way more people who consider themselves non believers than we realize, but stay silent out of fear of negative reactions/ridicule. I never used to be vocal about my beliefs, mainly because I work for a Catholic hospital with many vocally Christian co-workers, but they all know I’m an Atheist. I’ve gotten over that as I’ve aged, to the point where when a supervisor told us in a meeting to pray that an open position would be filled, I straight up said, “no, I won’t be praying about that, sorry!”
That's great, I wish something like that would happen around here.