Coming out as an atheist at this point would cause you great distress while you are trying to finish school. Finish up school, then the natural transition of making new friends in a new workplace will occur for you. Maybe you will even move to another city.

With your new friends, you won't need to "come out". You will just be who you are, and discussions about religion, if they occur, will be much more of the "Oh, I was raised a Christian but I don't believe in God any more" variety. You will be amazed at how easy it is. Your Christian friends might grow in tolerance and if they don't, well, you will associate with them less and less.

As for your parents, I've been there, and I suggest simply not discussing religion with them. Just don't. When you are home, you can accompany them to church as a respectful guest. It won't hurt you; you may even really enjoy the chance why you don't believe in all of that any more.

And, if you find yourself missing a supportive spiritual community, check out the Unitarian Universalists. Athiests are welcome.

Good luck.

How do you know what is up there or out there? Do YOU have a God's eye view yourself?

Be wise, sow some doubt, but do not mistake your limited shuttered view for an infinitely accurate impression of reality.

By the time you get to be 40 or so, this won't matter. I have very few occasions to discuss religion with my friends or family, and so relationships with my (now deceased) parents remained on an even keel. Our kids grew up and did their own thing--one atheist like her parents, another Catholic like his grandparents, the other two adopted the religion of their wives (Baptist and Presbyterian). And my niece, raised as a Baptist, is now a Buddhist. One thing I have learned is that parents don't have as much influence as we'd like to think they do!

You didn't go into too much detail about your school situation, but I'm siding with the comments urging you to consider your options. If it's really best to graduate from the school you're in, stay in. I've always been particular about my beliefs, and if I signed a "statement of faith" under false pretenses, I would have done so after a lot of consideration as to what would be worth betraying myself by signing it. Galileo recanted his (accurate) Copernican model of the solar system because he decided it was better than living with the wrath of the Vatican. That's an extreme example, but I hope you get the point.

Once you've sorted out the practical logistics of your next few years, then Cary has a good point.

Is this about what you are not? Are you someone who has rejected belief because it is neither convincing nor appealing? If you would just like to be honest about what you aren't, then you could take a "don't ask, don't tell," approach.

On the other hand, is this about what you are? Are you someone who has chosen to be an atheist because you see a secular world view as a defining aspect of your identity? In that case, you should let people know who you are; you owe it to yourself, if nothing else.

Whatever you do, do not read books like "The End of Faith" or "The God Delusion." These books will turn you into a bitter, angry, and insufferably preachy evangelical atheist. Like all evangelicals, your beliefs will be founded on narrow, twisted and ignorant interpretations of history and religion, and you will only be able to be true friends with other like-minded evangelicals.

My wife is a Catholic Chaplain and she approved this message.

I grew up in an atheist household, although we mostly called it "non-practicing Jewish," and there weren't many discussions about it. I had friends that went to church, temple, and I just...didn't. I didn't know how strongly this ran in my family until middle school, when a friend's mother offered me religious pamphlets, which upset my father greatly. And yet, while I didn't believe in god, I didn't think about it much until college, where I had a roommate that told me I was just "afraid of God." She dragged me to bible study once. It didn't take.

But I rarely told people out-and-out that I was an atheist, and the people who knew were close friends. I'm in my 30s, and until recently I would use "non-practicing Jew" or "not religious" as euphemisms. I assumed/hoped people would get it. Invariably, they didn't. Not practicing doesn't mean disbelieving. Not religious can mean you just don't hold with organized religion. It's just not the same.

And then one day I said it to a co-worker when we were talking about beliefs. She didn't blink. It felt wonderful!

But you're in a tenuous place right now. Hold on! Hold on, and then get out of school and do what we all do post-college -- create a new life and surround yourself with people who accept you. Your parents may never be fine with this, and your current friends may balk (and how many will you keep in touch with, anyway?). So get online, find like-minded people, then after graduation go somewhere metropolitan and start living as proud atheist.

It's a pretty good life.

"How do you know what is up there or out there? Do YOU have a God's eye view yourself?"

But isn't that what religion precisely does? Claims to know what's out there?

Worse, claims to know what's out there in the absence of evidence?

Worse still, proclaims unshakable belief in the absence of evidence to be virtue and not delusion?

When I say I'm an atheist, people often say "that's silly, how can you KNOW...?" This is usually followed by the rather asinine assertion that everyone must be, by definition, an agnostic.

Well and good, but then there are degrees of agnosticism, no?

So now I call myself a unicorn agnostic, which is to say that I accept that there is precisely as much evidence to support the existence of God as there is to support the existence of unicorns.

It's one thing to concede that the existence of unicorns can never be fully refuted.

It's another to have to risk one's education and every meaningful relationship one has in life for lack of unshakable faith not only in the existence of unicorns, but in their moral authority over our lives.

This is bigotry, plain and simple.

What advice can one give to, say, an interracial couple in the South in the 70s? Sure, the laws have all established your rights, but everything you know about life will get harder if you come out as a couple.

For me I say this: above all things, to thine own self be true.

But then again, I live in San Francisco where we actually respect the American traditions of liberty and freedom of conscience.