Dear fellows,

As I experience again and again, there are many religious people who are simply not able to understand that there are people in the world who truely do not believe in any deity at all. I recently wrote the following provocative message in a social network: 'Haven't you heard the good news yet? Lo: there is no god -- we are free!' One of my cousins asked me whether I were so afraid of God (capital g!) that I had to deny His existence to be free.
This is the first of two alternatives. The second is being angry at God (capital g again). Thus, in the eyes of the religious, if you claim that you do not believe in God, they suppose you to be either afraid of or angry at Him. They simply ignore the possibility that you really do not believe in such an entity whatsoever, because--at least so it seems to me--in their minds, it is impossible not to believe in a metaphysical being. My aforementioned cousin only believes in a deistic god, by the way, yet even he fails to realize what atheism is about.

Have you experienced similar reactions? What is it, do you think, that prevents those people from grasping that a human being need not necessarily believe in a deity?