<human>: Can you condense the text into three sentences or less?

I've been lurking around here for a while and the atheist memes around here tend to stick out after a while. It's not because they conflict with my own personal views, as I'm agnostic (at best) and my dad is pretty firmly atheist himself and loves to sermonize about the importance of rational free thinking (he has the god delusion on his bookshelf...since before it was cool on the internet)...if anything, my "religious upbringing" was non-belief

The reason I find them strange is because I never really took non-belief and atheism as that big of a deal or even something to identify as. Which leads me to my curiosity as to where "self proclaimed" athiests on reddit are from...It seems the US is the obvious answer, but specifically where about? The bible belt? Is not believing in god really that ground breaking where you're from? Are religious people really that obnoxious that you feel they deserve outright mockery? Is creationism really something you have to worry about being taught in school?

Where I'm from (Toronto) there definitely are religious people, but they come from so many different backgrounds and faiths that people are never "in your face" about it and secularism is the expected norm, and I'd never in a million years think about confronting them on the "impossibility of their invisible sky-man"...why would I? 

My experience with Christians is less "bible thumping" and more "Habitat for Humanity/Helping thy neighbour outreach" (and even then, they'll skip their morning pre-build prayer when they know there are non Christians present)...My experiences with Muslims is less fanatical zealotry and more "humble and disciplined", and their belief doesn't seem to interfere with their ability to subscribe to Canadian values of secularism and scientific materialism (just ask a Pakistani-Canadian mother how pumped she'd be if her kid ended up being a doctor or...god forbid...a world renowned evolutionary biologist)
<bot>: I'm curious about where you're from that being an atheist is a "big deal"? Are many of you younger/still living with religious parents?