Comment by scLovely on April 13, 2011 at 12:15am

I think it depends on where you live. There are pretty much no other atheists in my area. At least not close enough for me to have a friendship with. The closest ones that I talk to online are about 45mins. away. Hopefully you live in a populated area and there are many non-believers because it sucks not being able to have real life conversations and vent about the stupid things that theists do :)  Maybe your friends just haven't caught up with you intellectually.

Comment by Craig Nomazlab on April 13, 2011 at 12:42am

Surprisingly, I have a lot of atheist friends, all teenagers. The amusing part is that most of the atheists I know went to a local Catholic school, but the religion teacher was so horrible and unsubtle about her hate for atheists and homosexuals that in their distaste for her, they ended up being repulsed by all things Catholic.

Comment by Gaetano on April 13, 2011 at 1:14am

I have absolutely NO Atheist friends :( My girlfriend doesn't believe in God and is technically an Atheist, but she didn't even grow up around God or religion so she doesn't have the same passion as me.

Comment by Chase King on April 13, 2011 at 3:16am

No, you're definitely not alone in this situation. I am currently in my second year of college and struggle greatly to find atheist friends. We are rare, we are a growing group though. Keep your head high and you'll find friends.

Comment by Big Fella on April 13, 2011 at 4:49am

Hmmm.... I honestly don't think that any of my friends would classify as a theist although some are wishy washy agnostics or deists.

Comment by Freek on April 13, 2011 at 6:24am

I don't have any atheist friends either. My best friend has a lot of doubts and doesn't really consider himself a christian anymore, but I don't think he sees himself as an atheist either.

Comment by Gaytor on April 13, 2011 at 9:54am

For the good, I'm 37, but grew up in a generation where non-believers were less than 9% of the population. I would bet that 1/4 of my friends are atheist. Maybe it was just time until they found the independence to call bullshit on religion?

Comment by Kenneth Montville D.D. on April 13, 2011 at 9:55am

I would say that a vast majority of my close friends are atheists or agnostics. It comes with age I think. I don't think it is rare, I believe that the current college age segment of society is currently something like ~30% irreligious with people my age being slightly less than that. As a whole ~16% of the US population is irreligious. But remember that these are people that self-identify as such, there are far more out there sitting in the pews afraid to come out.

 

Frankly, a lot of it has to do with age and where you live. When kids go off to college they are more likely to begin questioning everything they grew up being taught, couple this with the fact that a new environment allows for them to come out with who they really are and higher education and you have a booming anti-religious counter culture.

Comment by Brandon Cure on April 13, 2011 at 10:59am

I would say that age has something to do with it. I have a few friends that are atheist. These same ones where christan when we were growing up together. It wasn't until we got out on our own that we could feel like we were "allowed" to start to think for ourselves honestly. In high school however, I only had two people that I could rely on for support of these ideas. Even then though we all went through some crazy ideas and woo stuff before getting back to being honest and rational about everything. Just be glad you have forums like this one to be able to talk honestly about. I didn't have that.

Comment by scottjarvis123 on April 13, 2011 at 1:14pm

All of my friends are atheists but they are accomodationists and regularly chastise me for being an outspoken atheist.  I'm the only outspoken atheist I know.

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