I never knocked on anyone's door and asked them to come away from Jesus. Similarly, I never gave a dinner table dissertation on the virtues of eating pork or shellfish. When I was asked to bow my head and pray, I didn't stand instead and proclaim my allegiance to science and logic.
At sporting events, I confess, I do not rise for the bloody "Oh say can you see," and no doubt this has caused some consternation among the multitude who feel I am displaying a lack of fealty to "the land of the free and the home of the brave." That is perhaps the sole impertinent flouting of deeply held convictions I allow myself--passive resistance to mindless self-congratulation.
But, you know, I don't even paste stickers on my bumper declaring my indifference to god. I've never picketed a church, a synagogue, or a mosque, even though quite frankly I believe the institutions represented by those edifices are responsible for possibly one-third of the misery and violent death endured by humankind. (Yes, I realize they do "good works" too.)
Evangelical atheists annoy me as much as Jehovah's Witnesses at my door in their bandbox Sunday-Go-To-Meeting outfits and Mormons in their funereal black, descending uninvited in their eagerness to drag me into the arms of THEIR Lord. I don't speak to them about their hubris, their self-righteousness, or the absence of humility that drives them to imagine they know something I haven't given enough thought to.
If only religious practice would take a cue from sexual liaisons, most of which are happily conducted in private. If only True Believers would entertain the possibility that one size does not fit all.
Those of us who choose to live in peace, without Faith, could be a lot happier.