It never seems to end that whenever I think I’ve convinced someone that atheists aren’t evil, tools of Satan, I find out that there was actually no one listening at all. I don;t approach others, they always seem to come out of the woodwork at times and places I mostly find inconvenient, but if I think someone is really interested I will actually take the time to explain, in the simplest terms, what atheism is all about.
So it’s annoying to discover that I’ve wasted my time which is why I generally never even attempt to explain atheism to anyone because they either refuse to accept that anyone may actually not believe in a god of some kind, or they are looking to just have an argument about something they no nothing about. I mean both atheism and their religious belief, by the way.
Most atheists I know are more educated in the Christian bible than believers. We atheists know that Christians are taught what is needed to believe and that inconvenient facts are often skipped over because they would raise doubt in the believers mind. When having a discussion though, the same people refuse to recognize anything from their own holy text that doesn’t fit with what they’ve been told.
Deflection is what I’m used to seeing from these people that do not want to accept that what they believe just may be wrong. It’s God’s Word, is what we’re told aren’t we? There can be no inconsistencies is what is argued even though the atheist can easily point out dozens, hundreds.
The believer then wants to argue what the atheist actually believes or thinks based upon, again, what they’ve been told. We’ve given up belief in god because we’re either angry with god, or someone hurt us in the past and of course we blame god for whatever it was.
I’m only an atheist as a reaction to something, not because I carefully considered, over years for some of us, whether or not any gods actually exist. We still want to believe, just refuse to because we’re obstinate. This is why I usually don’t even try. It leads to nothing other than someone trying to evangelize me and when I refuse to be condescended to, provokes anger from the believer because I won’t be told what to believe.
Conservative Skeptic 
My guess is that most of the people who tell you what you believe don’t care what you really believe. They are trying to confirm a fragile worldview. This might be a good thing because it might indicate that some cracks are starting to form. Perhaps some of them will eventually discover that they do not need religion at all.
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My favourite people are the ones who think that using the words “logic” and “reason” as many times as possible is all that is required to justify an argument. I find that most people who do this dont know what a syllogism is, or an antecedent, or subjunctive conditionals… they are likely to have an extremely limited understanding of formal logic. Dont even get me started on people who equivocate deduction with induction.
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