We get our share of scowls and SHMs and looks of disbelief. Last night we also saw several people taking pictures of the booth, which is not at all uncommon. Our town gets a lot of tourists, and no doubt some of those picture-takers are tourists.
The usual types of people are
- drive-byes, those religious folk who, when walking down the middle of the street, booths on either side, come upon our booth and don't stop and engage with us but feel compelled nonetheless to say they'll pray for us, crack some attempt at a joke, or rattle off some other zinger that they are too cowardly to actually defend in conversation with us as they walk on by.
- religious folk who are truly curious merely want to ask us questions, and who we think are great. I remember one lady who told us she had never met an atheist before (!) but we told her, "Actually, you probably have, you just didn't know it."
- the religious who are clearly adversarial with us but merely ask questions, even though the conflict between them and us is visible even if it's below the waterline
- the religious who do not hide the conflict between them and us and who show it unabashedly
- the religious who have mental health issues (just like atheists can)
- atheists and other supporters. For every scowl or drive-bye, we also gets thumbs up from people walking by, and others who stop and tell us how happy they are to see atheists represented