Thanks, but I'm way less hopeful now. When I utter the "atheist" word it seems I am actually handing people an exclusive ticket to explain to me why I'm wrong.

Thanks, but I'm way less hopeful now. When I utter the "atheist" word it seems I am actually handing people an exclusive ticket to explain to me why I'm wrong. Explaining non-belief is harder than explaining belief. I'm less hopeful because it seems that the general population is much stupider than I had anticipated.