Some Schmo wrote:I never tell people they're wrong about they're religion. I will sometimes remark, regarding religion, that "I don't get it" or point out what I perceive as the major fallacies, but I never explicitly tell people they're wrong.
And I only do this is the subject is raised and I'm with someone with whom I'm comfortable.
Me too, and it's very rare. The topic never really comes up much anyway, so I don't have to avoid it. In fact, I'm hard pressed now to remember any specific examples from the last 20 years or so!
I had a colleague I shared an office with at my first full-time academic job. She was a medievalist and a Catholic. We became quite good "job friends." She had some interesting ideas about "second sight" for lack of a better term, so I once asked her about how that jibed with her Catholicism and what her experiences with foreshadowings were. I was mostly curious, asked questions, probably told her I didn't believe. I had a necklace with a cross pendant that my grandmother had given me (just as jewelry with no religious significance to her) that I didn't like to wear. I gave it to her when I left that job.
I never bring up religion in class and refer to religious ideas in general in hopefully neutral terms (the way it gets into discussion usually is in terms of a Biblical literary allusion). I had an older student a few years ago that I became friends with after class ended. She was thinking about religion (I think due to a boyfriend's prodding) and wanted to know what I thought and why I didn't believe. I ended up talking to her about it what seemed like a lot, but this was because she kept bringing it up.
And that's pretty much it.
From the Ernest L. Wilkinson Diaries: "ELW dreams he's spattered w/ grease. Hundreds steal his greasy pants."