"... much of this antipathy could be diffused if more nonreligious folks would take a page from the LGBT movement and come out of the closet ..." I've done my part-- have you?

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COMMENTS: 
*  You have to wonder why people like Marice like to run about threatening people with a "divine punishment" for something that cannot be proven to exist like we are all children and we are being warned that Santa will leave a lump of coal in our stockings. Don't they realize just how primitive and childish it makes their religion sound?
*  "... And what about the atheist that keep running off saying there is no God."  A. That is usually in response to some person or another making the extraordinary claim that a God or Gods does exist, and we're all going to whatever version of Hell they subscribe to. I personaly never initiate a religious discussion.  B. Atheists, as a general rule, don't run off saying anything. We tend to be a more logical lot and will back up our statements as logically as possible, given the subject matter.  "Why can't everyone just let people believer or not believe what they want without creating drama about it."  If more people of religion in the world would take your advice, there wouldn't be too much problem.
*  You always fall back on threats. Your religion is all about threats. "Fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom." Your god is not god of love when he says, "Worship me or burn eternally." You believe in a thug.
*  Yeah, why can't they? Oh, I know... because evangelicals in this country are not content with letting people believe what they want. They need to impose their bible onto the rest of us and our laws. We can go back and forth with words all day, but it's not nonbelievers trying to force believers to live by their personal moral code.
*  My general experience is... "My God is going to send you to Hell for {Fill in the transgression du jour}  "I'm atheist, I don't believe that."  "Why are you pushing your atheism in my face!!!"
*   You also have to understand that on a certain level, people of religion realizes that for each person that is Atheist, there is a level of power that is lost.. Religious power, political power, etc...
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The Atheists Are Coming
By Barbara Falconer Newhall, August 11, 2015

That's right. If the folks behind a movement called Openly Secular have their way, more and more American atheists will be coming out of their religion-free closets to declare their unbelief to friends, family and coworkers.

And your neighborhood agnostics, humanists, freethinkers and seculars will be joining them.

Nontheists are tired of the discrimination they experience in the U.S., according to the folks at Openly Secular, a campaign organized by a coalition of dozens of secular organization across the country.

In the South, they say, newcomers are commonly greeted with "What church do you go to?" and shunned if the honest answer is "none."

A 2014 Pew Research Center poll indicates that the Openly Secular folks might be right about how the American public feels about them. On a scale of one to 100, the pollees gave atheists an average score of 41, just one point above the 40 given to Muslims - the group that received the lowest score of any group. (Jews received the highest score, by the way, with a rating of 63. And America's Catholics and Protestants were a close second with scores of 62 and 61.)

The Openly Secular movement hopes to rectify all this discrimination and marginalization by encouraging atheists, humanists and secular people in general to come out of the closet and make their worldview known to those around them. Being openly instead of secretly secular, it is hoped, will de-stigmatize unbelief and demonstrate that secular people are decent, ethical people.

The secular movement seems to be growing. At the very least, its efforts to get some positive ink from the media are expanding. At last fall's meeting of the Religion Newswriters Association in Atlanta, for example, a half-dozen a-religious organizations along with their press kits and giveaways occupied a large section of the exhibit space. Among them were the American Humanist Association, the Secular Student Alliance, the Center for Inquiry, the Secular Coalition for America, the Stiefel Freethought Foundation, the Richard Dawkins Foundation and, of course, the granddaddy of them all, American Atheists.

One of the fattest press kits handed out came from the Openly Secular campaign. "Non-religious people are treated like second-class citizens," the handout states. They are "often shunned by family and friends. Kids are bullied and even assaulted on the playground; activists receive death threats."

The thinking at Openly Secular is that much of this antipathy could be diffused if more nonreligious folks would take a page from the LGBT movement and come out of the closet -- go public with their thoughts and beliefs. Let their neighbors know that they are just folks -- friendly, concerned citizens.

As for Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and other religion-dissing atheists who like to slice and dice their opponents, Robyn Blumner of the Richard Dawkins Foundation asserts that Dawkins, for one, is incredibly popular with young non-believers. Students wait in lines for an hour and a half to see Dawkins, she said. "They are as flush with excitement as they would be if he were Lady Gaga."
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