The Friendly Atheist asks the question of the ages

What would religious people do if a baseball pitcher - gasp! - drew atheist symbols on the pitcher's mound? Atheist symbols?  What atheist symbols?  Atheists have symbols?  Of what?

Anyway, probably not much of anything since when religious believers today say we just don't want the government to oppress religion or advocate secularism, we mean the government.  Was it always that way?  No.  Societies are like that.  As many modern atheists and secularists demonstrate.  The atheists in the comments seem genuinely puzzled, which is a good thing.  A couple even place head in hands and ask why the question was posed in the first place.  A couple, though, see the light: if there was even a hint of tax break here or subsidy there, doesn't it mean that it can be a place where religion is banned?

Some atheists are very educated, reflective, and good people.  Some are educated, but advocate some naughty things.  From my own experience with the non-believers I hung about with in my agnostic days, most are average people no better or worse than others who probably couldn't string together a coherent thought about their unbelief, any more than a stereotypical uneducated religious person could his or her belief (and sometimes less, since there's not a clear doctrine or Holy Book to lean on).

But a few are the problem, and in a society that long ago decided religion = bad/biased/bigotry, and non-religion = fair/open/intellectual, those few who pine for a more Soviet model of religious tolerance are beginning to make headway.