For me it was liberating because finally the Universe made complete sense. There was only matter and energy that followed constant laws...anything 'supernatural' was simply dreamed up by humans. When bad things happened, it was not punishment, just chance. It meant that we could make this world into what we pleased, for good or ill. My choices were on me alone.

I'm from the Bible Belt as well. My suspicion is that you actually do know some atheists, but you just don't know it. It's very difficult for atheists to be "out" in the Bible Belt. As to your question, I would first just point out that it's less that I "decided" there was no God, and more that I just "realized" there was no God. And for me at least, it wasn't "liberating" so much as terrifying. I wasn't frightened of God's judgment or anything like that. Having grown up in a fundamentalist Christian household, I was always taught that doubt, in itself, was sinful, so by the time I got to the point of not believing, I had already crossed the line of doubting God (and thus being subject to judgment) long before that. In that sense, when I finally realized there was no God, it actually erased any fear of judgment - there's no God to judge me, thus no fear. Instead, I was terrified of the reaction that I would get from people around me when they found out that I no longer believed in God. My number one concern was my grandparents, whom I am very close with. I knew that it would devastate them, and that was really tough for me. (To this day, I have never really "come out" to them, although my parents told them - something that I honestly think I will always be resentful towards my parents for.) Beyond that, literally everyone around me, friends, family, my whole community really, were Christians, and so there was a deep, deep sense of loneliness when I realized that I had basically become "evil" in all of their minds.

It is liberating not to follow any religion because I feel that most of them (the major ones i.e. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) are oppressive, intolerant and encourage ignorance in one way or another.

But what they want is authenticity and transparency. They want to know what kind of human being this is.

that religious values are the only metric of morality and moral character is really not something that is really productive in a country that claims to be a place of freedom of thought and freedom of religion.

Churches have every right to be bigots. The government does not.

It would be funnier, though, if their religious views didn’t cause so many people so much pain.

“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.” – Winston Churchill

And they called their conference “Sword of the Lord.” That’s really quite funny.

I raised my daughter to be strong and I’m glad I did.

She knows that some men can be pigs, but that knowledge doesn’t stop her from pushing forward

Christians are very much privileged in the United States.  Christianity is an ideology in the US that enjoys implicit, unreflecting, and uncritical acceptance and one would have to be a complete idiot to counter the fact that the mythical delusion of Christianity is dominant here.

While it can be a gut-wrenching decision for an unbeliever to “come out”, Christians don’t worry about revealing their religion to parents, friends, etc

Without worry of being labeled a bigot amongst their own, they christians can discriminate in ways not otherwise allowed.  

correlation does not equal cause

These broad-based assertions about atheists are so groundless and outlandish that it's difficult to know where to start in rebutting them.

atheists have indeed inhabited foxholes

we cannot really choose to just believe anything

Agnostic Theism: belief in a god without claiming to know for sure that the god exists.

Liberalism is a political philosophy, no different from conservatism

Liberalism is a political philosophy, no different from conservatism

a person can oppose abortion in principle but be unwilling to criminalize it