This is only a practical problem if you openly disagree. Nothing says you have to. In general, in real life, I keep my head down and my mouth shut and people just assume I'm a god-botherer (if perhaps not a particularly observant one, given that I sleep in on Sundays) because I'm not eating babies and crusading against tax exemptions for churches. When occasionally someone figures out I'm an unbeliever, I enjoy watching them struggle with the cognitive dissonance that they've had me filed for years under "Good Person". But now they are stuck with their initial first impression / snap judgment and will just ignore this new negative evidence.

That's a lot easier than them judging me in advance as an asshat and then ignoring tons of evidence that I'm not. Life is too short. I'd rather be happy than right here.

It's only online for the most part that I deconstruct theism. And that's because people voluntarily come to online forums to supposedly have an actual discussion on that particular topic.

For a very long time Galileo was in a minority, however, he had the good sense to recant when faced with the prospect of being racked and burned alive at the stake. I daresay that many forms of terrorism owe their origin to and emanate from those who hold sway over believers. No rational person would want to harm another simply because of a disagreement.

My stepdad always said about me that "I think too much." From what I know about him it appears that he never did think too much at all. Once I came out atheist to him he told me that if I was right he had no future at all. Sorry, Pop. This one shot is all you got.

I am actually described by some of my friends as “an intellectual “! This amuses me, as by differentiating my thinking from theirs in such a way, they are really describing themselves as lacking in intellect. I doubt if any of them have actually thought about that too carefully!