Atheism

I'm in the US and I try to avoid the subject as much as possible with people who aren't my close friends.

Our neighbors are deeply religious, they've invited me to go to church with them and read the bible together. I just decline politely without adding an opinion.

The wife seems to be a crackpot, I avoid her like the plague. She's a Hispanic immigrant but has made some racist comments to me about black people. She also believes some batshit crazy right wing garbage... well, I think the whole family does.

The most annoying thing they do is every week they go to multiple food banks; which is fine, I don't judge. But the wife is a hoarder and they don't have room for the new food. Their solution? They give their old food to us. We get cans of food that's rusty and expired, one bag of rice even had bugs in it.

We've tried politely telling them we don't want or need their food, but they show up every week at our door with it. We just throw it away. But what's the point? She doesn't want to feel like she's wasting food, wants to do a "good deed," and passes her literal garbage onto us?

Other than that, I don't really have many religious people in my life. Maybe some relatives but they aren't deeply devout; I prefer to talk about other things with them.

Once in awhile we get Jehovah Witnesses knocking on our door, but we just tell them we're not interested. I'd love to be a fly on the wall and see what kind of conversation they have with the crazy neighbors, they're 7th Day Adventists. And the JW's are usually a group of black ladies. Do they duke it out on who loves Jesus more? Have a prayer huddle?

I also live in Germany. In personal interactions religion is usually not present. I'm always surprised to learn that somebody is religious. Since I'm not religious myself, I tend to forget that other people might be. I guess for most people it's something more personal. Even the occasional Jehova's Witness asks before they start pushing their God onto you. At the same time there is still Religion class (as in Christian) at school. You don't have to go, but it's the default and in most elementary schools there is no alternative as it is in secondary school. And the kids are taken to Christian services to celebrate the start of the school year and such. I don't mind too much, I guess it's an educational experience, but I'd still like my secular state to handle religion in a different way in it's schools.

My few run ins with religous folks have all been rather nice so far.

This is a terrible method to understand the moral character of a person. You can exchange as many minor pleasantries as you want with people in the Bible Belt or Saudi Arabia, as long as they don't know you're gay, trans or want an abortion.

Why am I strongly against religion? Because it's a social institution that encourages trust based in faith, which is pretty dumb by itself, but I have also been shown again and again that sooner or later there will appear a bad actor with the clear intention to exploit it, and when the victims of their abuse try to denounce it, they will more likely than not find themselves kicked out from their own community.

To answer your question, the role of religion as an institution in my life is none, first because of the damage they have provoked on me, and second because I now actively try distancing myself from it.