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I say that tongue-in-cheek, because I am an Atheist. My mom and her family are all pretty devout Christians, and I've had regular fights with my mother about the subject in the past (FOO issue); we fought about where to go to college and that she always thought I would be a minister or preacher.

I think this is all tangled up in my ability to be secure in my disbelief and makes me want to hide behind "Buddhism," since I know it well enough to cherry-pick it as both philosophy and religion in order to avoid having to have THE CONVERSATION with people.

However, as Heart just pointed out (after a lengthy and, pardon the pun, "spirited" conversation), this is a clear form of both using something to get undue attention ("Hey, lookit me! I'm BUDDHIST!") as well as a method of lying, both to myself and others.

I terribly fear ostracization for my disbelief, and I've lived up a lie to my co-workers and my FOO in order to hide the fact that I'm a non-believer. When Heart dropped the "the fact that you can easily and comfortably lie to yourself scares me" line, it shot a hole in my heart.

I really don't know what to do. The knot looks just too damn tangled to me. Anyone else know where I can cut?

Atheist here, too. I too hide my Atheism in public. I don't know if it's to lie to yourself, but rather as self protection. We still live in a society that at best would try and "debate" with us where it's not welcomed and at worst, try and do anything to shun us socially until we accept a God (usually theirs).

As far as work goes, I wouldn't even discuss religious aspects. There was once a time where I had to listen to my coworkers berate Atheists and complain about how heartless they are, etc. I wanted to turn around and yell "So I guess I'm an asshole, huh!?" But again, at best I'd be dismissed and at worst, fired.

Are you an Atheist truly for the attention? Or is it the "there is no proof of God so therefore I don't believe"? I'd do some soul searching to find out if this is what you truly want. Flying Spaghetti Monster knows that I've run into a fair share of believers that believe what they believe because it was indoctrinated into them as children and they don't question a word of it.