Thanks for clarifying.

The problem, I think, is that neither religious belief nor the lack of it is entirely a matter of sitting around thinking thoughts... it also has a social component.

In fact, the social component is often quite significant.

Come to think of it, the same thing is true of being closeted and queer. It's not so much the sex that creates the problem... for many people, sex is generally done in private anyway, and it's not too hard to find sexual partners who will stay silent. It's the social life around the sex: the ability to flirt, and to preen, and to talk about who I'm attracted to, and to brag about what I did last night, and to introduce my partner to my friends, and to invite my friends to my wedding, and etc.

In both cases, the real problem with living in the closet is that you're forced to live without a supportive social structure.

So it's not clear to me that being closeted is really all that much less of a burden for atheists in religious communities (or religious believers in atheist communities, come to that).