How do you share new disbelief with friends and family?

Why not do what atheists have always done, and just not bring it up? There's no reason to have a huge announcement of it, and churches have always been full of people with absolutely no meaningful belief in God, just there because they thought that's what they needed to do to be good people, or to be thought of as good.If you're OK with your kids going to church, and you feel like your family wants them in church, then send them to church! Find some nice Methodist church that's full of old people, or go to Unitarian church. Tell people it's "non-denominational." Don't send them to VBS; send them somewhere more worthwhile or just say that it's hopeless to try to get a kid interested in church while they're on summer vacation. Or just say your church doesn't do it. Then don't express your beliefs! You're not a Christian, now; that bullshit about not hiding your light under a bushel doesn't apply anymore. Your first duty is to your children and your family. Maybe that duty means living a lie.There's no magic words that are going to resolve the division in faith between you and your family. The way these things get resolved is that everyone agrees not to bring it up ever again, and pretends like there's no problem. There really is a genuine conflict between your family harmony and your desire to articulate your reasons for leaving the faith. So you need to pick which of those is more important, and then do whatever is required to that end. Problem solved.

Well, I've told you the way out - piss off your entire family by rejecting their religious traditions.There really isn't a third way, here; at least not for you. Whether or not your family reacts to your religious rejection with tolerance and understanding is based on their characteristics as individuals, not in the manner in which you announce your atheism. The fact of the matter is that even a polite "you know, I really just don't believe that there's any such thing as God" is considered unbearably rude by the religious. I said roughly the same thing to my own family a few years ago and it was the only time I'd ever seen my dad cry. Not even when his parents died.It's not that your family (or mine) are bad people, it's that they're religious. And that does things to your mind. One of the things it does is infect you with all kinds of idiotic notions about the moral status of atheists. It's not their fault, but there's nothing you can do about it as long as they've agreed to open their minds to tenancy by ideas that have never had any firm grounding in empirical fact. Well, no. Wrong. The reason you brought it up is that you don't want it to be that black and white. But if you had some actual reason to believe that there was some kind of path of reconciliation you could walk in this regard, wouldn't you already know about it, and not have to ask us? Because there's no solution. That's what I'm trying to get across to you. Take it from someone whose done this. I thought I was prepared and the actual discussion about it was calm and respectful, happened on neutral territory, was basically refereed by my aunt, and there were no significant fireworks.And then the next day my parents came back and told me that I had done one of the most hurtful things possible to them. And now we pretend like the whole thing never ever happened. There's just not any way to square this circle, Jazzns. It's like telling your parents you're a male prostitute or a gay porn actor or something. It's just not going to be consistent with what your family believes is permissible. There's no resolution to that, and the only way your family will be able to sit at the Thanksgiving table together is if everybody pretends like the conversation never happened, which means they'll still say grace over the dinner table (whether you want to start eating or not) and bug you about your kids going to church.

It makes perfect sense. If you have absolutely no information about a potential course of action that could magically bridge this chasm between you and your family, why would you have any belief that it exists?If you knew about people who successfully squared this circle, you'd do what they did and not open this thread.It's like - if you think there's a path somewhere, but you don't know where the path is and you don't know anybody who knows where the path is, why do you think the path actually exists? That's all I'm getting at. If you had some evidence-based reason to believe that it was possible to reconcile this bad dilemma, then by definition you'd have evidence about how the dilemma could be reconciled. It's the fact that you know absolutely nothing about it - hence this thread - that should indicate to you that maybe you know nothing because there's nothing to know. I don't think your plan was to tell your family what stupid sheep they were, and how you're so much better and smarter than they are because you've left first-century superstitions in the dumpster where they belong - was it? If not then you already know everything there is to know about what you can do on your end to present your viewpoint in a polite, respectful, and authentic matter. Maybe you're not an expert in matters of human personality - who the hell is? - but I presume that by now you've internalized the deep wisdom of "don't be a dick."Sorry to come off as brusque; I'm trying to present these ideas in a startling plainness to surprise you into a different perspective. (I don't recommend you try it with your family.)