[RJT]

I would guess for the reason they gave: “There’s gotta be something else out there bigger than us.” It is that simple and that complex. We have no scientific evidence one way or the other.

The rationale why they don’t want to talk about it with you is probably similar to rationale that black people can use the “n” word, while white people should not.

I would suggest, though, that discussions about specifics of a religion between religious people and atheists before discussing the “God exists or not” question gets ahead of itself (or is even backwards).

Your hypothesis that most want a version that requires as little effort… seems (is) probably true.

Might I pose your first sentence somewhat the reverse? (It isn’t exactly the reverse since the majority of population believes in a God.) It seems that most non believers refuse to discuss the possibility that god does exist. To paraphrase you, if I question the absence of a god, they will usually get very defensive and say something along the lines of ‘There can’t be something else, we have no evidence.” Or better still ( and probably more often the case) they point to specifics religious beliefs that appear to be nonsense (and/or taken out of context) and use that as an argument that therefore God must not exists.