Hullo

[Minimalist]

I don't think the level of intolerance in the UK is really anything like what I hear coming out of the US

I quite agree. We've got some real psychos over here. Most of them are running for president cause fuckin' 'god' told them to.

[ElDinero]

I spent four months doing a road trip in America last year, mostly through the Bible belt (Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Lousiana, Kansas, Texas) - I met more atheists and agnostics than I expected to, but plenty of very devout young Christians. I have a few of them on Facebook and they quite routinely invoke the name of God, post Bible verses and so on. I might start responding with some verses from Leviticus and Deuteronomy, see how that goes down.

A homeless guy in New Orleans came up to me and my friends as we were sat outside a coffee shop and his opening gambit was 'I'm a Christian. Could you spare some change for a Christian?'...every part of me wanted to respond 'I'm an atheist, fuck off'. But of course that would be rude, so I just said no.

[Minimalist]

You should have asked him if he'd accept some change from an atheist?

My guess is he would have.

[Kayenneh]

Why not do something useful with your life instead?

I was about to ask the same, but if that's what you want to do, then you should do it (There's always plenty of time later to get re-educated if it doesn't work out ) Good luck and welcome!

[fr0d0]

If I was going to write/teach on the subjects, it would be good to have a qualification that directly relates to it, no?

To teach on a subject you'd think an understanding of it might be useful. Mind you a large number of teachrs I know are asked to teach subjects they know nothing about. We had an English person at our local High School with no interest in languages let alone Welsh taking 4 lessons a week.