It is as simple as that.

If you feel guilty about lying, don't lie and come out. It will take a weight off of your mind and if your loved ones cannot accept you for it, they don't really even particularly like you.

Until you make people accept you on your terms, they aren't really accepting you, they are just demanding that you conform to their idea of you. Don't conform.

As to the college: If they kick you out for not believing the same BS they do, then take them to court. They can't prove when you became an atheist and I suspect that their policies may well be discriminatory to the point of being illegal.

So long as you remain quiet about being an atheist you contribute to the general fear a lot of other quiet atheists have of coming out. That you feel that fear of coming out says a lot about what is wrong with America, and what needs fixing in America.

You knew all of this already of course, because it is an "ought to do" and generally, those are the most difficult things to "actually do."

Don't be afraid of being a hero in this case, be afraid of what not being a hero will lead to.

My question to you is this:

What if a Christian went to a strongly atheist school which demanded that the Christian sign a statement of disbelief, wanted to come out as a Christian because they felt guilty about lying?

Would you give the same advice? Somehow I doubt it.

Alchohol is a truth serum. If there is something you are worried about people finding out about, chances are one day you will get drunk enough to let people in on it.

Then things get awkward. When you have a splitting headache.

And religion is something one can end up arguing about when drunk and in college. Its one of those taboo topics where all the really interesting arguments live (You know, religion, politics, sex, and, lately, the weather.)

Its better to deal with it when you are not hungover.

Come out, let people know that you are an atheist, and then get on with your life.

Atheism doesn't explain anything. It starts with a presumption of ignorance, and goes on from there.

The main central statement to atheism kind of goes like this "I don't know what the answer is but I am pretty sure you are wrong."

America's rightwing is basically the lowest common denominator.

Take your very worst instincts, your selfishness, your hate, your racism, your impulse towards violence, put them all together, and you have the rightwinger, a sniveling savage whose chief contribution to history has generally resulted in genocide.

And I hate to point this out, but advertisers aren't exactly into making money by appealing to your better nature, and your media isn't exactly working for free.

They feed your apathy, your despair, your fear and your bloodlust because it helps them sell you Bud (AKA: Tastes Like Watered Down Piss) in a market where those dirty South Africans are selling real beer.

... are the guys who think it is somehow a good idea to vote someone who is anti-government in to run your government.

Would you have an atheist running your church?

Ag, you get my point. This whole idea that you need someone who is patently opposed to government running your goverment is just point blank silly.

And thus starts the repeat of what happened with Hitler - the Christian campaign to lie about the faith of their monsters.

You don't get that from atheists oddly enough. Atheists are perfectly willing to accept Stalin as an atheist, but Christianity seems to breed this distinct strain of historic dishonesty when it comes to bad people, hence the current myth of the atheism of Hitler (Which goes largely unchallenged in the popular media.)

Sorry, Bush is an evangelical Christian, and could well be a rapturist (That peculiar breed that seems intent on bringing about the end of the world.) His statements up to now back him, as well as his policies.

That he curses doesn't make him any less Christian, it just makes him something other then a saint, with a real probability being that he has a limited vocabulary.

The internets has allowed nasty little Americans to talk to each other, and a lot of them have come to the realisation that my president is about as appealing as herpes, therefore the internets is to blame.

It ain't the internet's fault.

Torture, illegal detentions, the price of oil, an economy which is failing, the rest of the world's views on America taking a nosedive, the utter failure that is the War on Terror, the frequent and highly effective pantsing the hard-copy media has recieved by the blogs, the subprime crisis (Brewed to a large extent by the conservative love affair with de-regulation), the use of and the rapid de-secularisation of American politics are all to blame.

Your president's policies are to blame for the polarisation of America, he is not a pretty good president he IS one of the worst in America's history.

has nothing to do with price.

It has to do with games. You see, I play PC games, and the Mac doesn't seem to have the availability and the distribution mechanisms to cater to me when it comes to the games I play.

Until that gets fixed, well I am going to stick with my PC.

So would any of the other Republicans.

While the two leading Democrats look like they would make poor presidents they at least stand a chance of doing something positive with the office. A Republican would come it with such massive international ill will towards him that it just wouldn't be fair to elect one - nothing he could do on the international scene would work, and that translates into poor trade figures locally.