I went to church without being convinced that god existed for years, so I can kind of see where you are coming from with this. What made me actually decide to become openly atheist was probably that I got involved in competitive gaming, and met a large enough group of friends who were interested in rationality that I no longer felt it was necessary to be in a church to have that kind of tight knit community. I like seeing groups of people and having interesting discussions regularly, but it makes me even happier when the ideas we share are non contradictory and you don't have a wide range of topics you need to steer clear in case they are instrumental to someone elses identity.

Hopefully, if rationality becomes mainstream, even small cities like mine will have large enough numbers of people interested in rationality for the pressure to belong in a church to subside. A lot of the cynicism that I feel and notice in fellow aspiring rationalists comes from the isolation that it can bring.

Also, I have never been to a lesswrong meetup but I find the idea appealing. if there are actually other LW readers in winnipeg, that would be great.