I think too, that your views are tempered by being in such a strange society, a while back in the USA I got asked in a matter of fact way what church I attended. That's not a question I've ever been asked before in my life. In Northern European countries the assumption is that you're a nice liberal agnostic/atheist.
Nobody ever asked me that either when I was an atheist. Were you perhaps in a Southern state, somewhere in the "Bible belt."?