I've had a few recent encounters where I mentioned either atheism or being without religion and got some interesting responses.
One was in an a casual business meeting with a couple of women. We got to talking a little about my book and I said it had to do with parenting without religion and her immediate response was "why would you want to?". I could have taken offense at it or gotten belligerent, but after a moments thought, I smiled and said, "well, there are many people out there who are not religious and some of them are parents or want to be parents." She at least agreed with that and so we could talk about the topic from a theoretical standpoint. We continued with the conversation for a few minutes, though we could all tell she was distinctly colder after that.
Another was with my Uncle. I'm recently separated and in the middle of a divorce. While I'm not too interested in dating right now, I will be at some point and my uncle asked me if it would be hard to find a woman who would go out with me if I'm atheist. Interesting idea and unfortunately it has some validity. The percent of non-believers across the population in the U.S. is small. But, fortunately for me, the percent among the intelligentsia is much higher. Numbers vary, but roughly 93% of scientists don't believe in a God. Since I'm in a high-intelligence industry (computer software), I find the percent of people who are non-theists to be quite high.
The other one was on the airplane coming back from Portland, OR last night (to Colorado). I got to talking to the woman in the seat next to me about Humanism. As always, I presented it as separate from religion and that there are many people that are Humanist and of a specific religion. At the end though, I said I was of the Humanist Atheist sort and you could see her face go blank. The conversation dried up fairly quickly, she put on her ipod-headphones and didn't talk to me the rest of the flight.
I've commented before on this Blog about how the world is changing to be more accepting of the non-theists, but I still encounter this kind of bias frequently. As a Humanist and an Atheist, what is different for me today from the past is that I'm ignoring that ignorance and am speaking out anyway. Maybe in speaking out, I'll sow some seeds of doubt or at least make the person think.
