This may not apply to some. And some religious people may have actually done some of the things I will mention in this post. Also, I am not saying atheists have it hard, or atheists endure suffering. Simply talking about instances in my and other atheists lives that have hurt us, made us sad and angry and shocked us.

In my life, after coming out as someone who did not believe in religion almost 4 years ago when I was 14 and finally coming out as an atheist when I was 17 last year I have, surprisingly, had to deal with being insulted, criticized, and damned by family and friends. In my freshman year of high school when I was 14 my grandfather had asked when my confirmation was to happen. This was one of the topics I had always wanted to avoid. My grandfather... he is an old style Sicilian Italian Catholic. In other words, strict on religion and faith. Also, the best reference I can pull is, He assumes the role of the Godfather as seen in the Godfather movies. I answered him "I honestly don't believe in religion and I have yet to find a reason as to why I should. I'm not atheist, yet, but I certainly do not believe in religion. I find that because religion is man made and man's 'account' for god it is false and corrupted the very moment it is made". Immediately I was overrun by questions and insinuations. He stated that I would go to hell, burn and suffer, for not believing in his God. He asked me to give a better answer than the pathetic one I had given. I honestly felt it was fairly good considering I had just started reading up on religions and researching. Needless to say I have not been on the best of terms with him. Every family event he always comes at me with such things as me burning in hell and whatnot. Some love my family shows me. Not to mention the endless people in my school who are always coming up to me trying to "cure" me and get me to believe what I think are lies. It honestly gets annoying. "Without God you will never see salvation, only damnation" "I'm only trying to save you from hell" "The reason you are feeling so depressed is because you have yet to accept Jesus Christ into your life". The constant mentions are enough to drive anyone made. How would they feel if I went up to them with "I am trying to save you from hypocrisy and false hope" "Your religion is based on child genocide and incest" "Your all forgiving father brutally kills anyone he wants" "If Jesus Christ, The Holy Spirit and God are all one person does that mean when God planned for Jesus to die on the cross and then had the plan carried out with Jesus knowing how to make it happen make it suicide or assisted suicide"?

There were even issues in my middle school when I began to question religion. How does one explain to his parents that he received detention for repeatedly asking the religion teacher questions she couldn't answer about her own faith? Or asked things that simply made people wonder if something as horrid as a king commanding his troops to thrust his sword through every child's chest in the name of God was actually in the Bible? Talk about a hard afternoon...

So to the other atheists, what experiences have you had with coming out as an atheist?
And to the religious, think back. Have you ever done one of the things mentioned? If so, why?