I'm sort of a more or less atheist with Pagan tendencies.
I don't believe in a God, but I have no problem with accepting small, limited, short term gods that people put together whenever there's something they mutually want to accomplish. I figure that when they start wanting to be worshiped, one or more of the people putting them together has a problem with wanting Authority to be a part of the universe. But that's me, and I could be very wrong. And I don't have a problem with that.
I also don't have a problem with organized religion. It does some very good things, and some real shit. So does every other institution that human beings have ever come up with. I consider that if someone wants a "reason" for hating, or sniping at, or generally putting down another human being, they can always find one. Religion may add one more set of possibilities to the mix, but if you want to hate, there's always going to be something you can use.
I don't have a problem with organized religion. Nor with the people who believe in it, or those who disbelieve, or those who think the whole thing is balderdash. I may have a problem with individuals who are sure that if they only repeat their arguments often enough and loudly enough, I will see their "truth" and come to embrace it. I don't need to talk about sky fairies, or hellfire, or even the concepts of good and evil to make a point about how human beings behave. And I don't need to poke at every hint that other people might see the world differently than I do.
I certainly don't need to walk into a diary about prayer and grieving and ask, ever so carefully and neutrally, what the purpose of prayer for the dead is. Because I don't need to snipe at someone else's beliefs to explain my way of thinking, and I'm not afraid that because they have them it will somehow undermine the choices that I am making. I don't fear their beliefs, and I don't fear them for having them. And I'm not coming from a standpoint where, not having divorced myself from them, I'm still afraid they might be correct. That is a standpoint that generally needs constant reinforcement, usually by inveighing against the people who seem to be getting the most help and support from their beliefs.
I have no problem at all with atheists. I sort of are one. What I have a problem with is people who can't handle it that other people, with different beliefs, or even very few of them, exist. With, essentially, the True Believer Atheists. One of the tests to tell whether a particular stance is a belief is whether the person who holds it feels a need to proselytize either for it, or against those people who do not hold it. Daily Kos has all sorts, and a good thing, too, mostly. What I'm going after in this case is those people who think that their standpoint isn't a belief, because it isn't religiously connected or sanctioned. Beliefs come in all shapes and sizes, and refusing to see that they don't need religion to grow and prosper and twist your thinking is a special kind of blindness.