OK,
The first examples are not what atheist would say, they are what an atheist dick would say, and you aren't usually a dick. And perhaps you are talking to a fellow atheist. More and more likely these days.
But it is hard. You have to say something that is tailored to that person and what you know of them. Just because we don't believe, doesn't mean we have to bring our beliefs into that conversation. And if they are friends, they should already know of our beliefs, or lack of.
When a friend and neighbor of only a few years passed, his widow asked me over to tell me John wanted me to be a pall bearer. I don't normally do funerals and he had grown up here, spent most of his life here. He didn't have others to fill that billet? She said that " John told me you were an atheist, but I don't believe it. John loved you".
I told her that John and I sat on the porch swing and had conversations about spirituality and the meaning of life and I found him to be willing to have conversations that perhaps he had never had.
I went and saw John a day or so before he passed. I told her what I would tell the wife of any close friend. " John was a good man, and I will miss him". I did the pall bearer thing, and I cried like a baby at his funeral. His grandkids stared at me.
