But I think he needs social support from people who accept him, and in order to feel accepted, he needs to have people who think, if not that he's right in not believing, at least that he's doing something respectable and intellectually honest.
Yup. This is very well said. Even if I'm disagreed with, it would at least be nice for the disagree-ers to look at something like my comments on reading through What's So Great About Christianity (even though I hate to listen to D'Souza, I gave into a friend's pleading to read his book, and guess what? I also found out that I hate reading D'Souza) or Dubay's Faith and Certitude (another acquiesced request) and at least respect the effort I put into those books/write-ups.
Or the fact that I probably spend 30-120min a day (at least) reading/thinking about theological arguments in some way shape or form. I don't know anyone in my circles who could say that, except maybe the leaders of the community who are always preparing talks and such to give... but those are them thinking about theological thoughts to offer from within -- my thoughts are of the evaluation type -- "Is it true?"
Again, it's difficult to have been respected for my intellect and general analytical (cough, anal) nature and then to have everyone complain that this subject is different and that what I'm doing is wrong. Heck, I even have someone (and my wife) say that I should have thought more about the implications of non-belief before even starting down this path. It's challenging dealing with those views when I can't see much virtue in literally avoiding research just because you'd rather remain ignorant. It would seem that if you seriously considered research in the first place, you already have questions about the validity of what you think to be true.
But it sounds to me like he's not satisfied with that, and if he wants to be accepted while remaining open and honest, he needs to be able to influence how others think.
I would agree with this. I find it extremely difficult to imagine just "shutting up" about all of this, especially since shutting up may have implications for my children. While I have no problems with religious education, I do have objections to indoctrination. My wife really, really, really wants to "share the faith" with them, but I have an unbelievably hard time not saying something about the fact that "share the faith" is equivalent to teaching-as-true all of the "fun, fluffy" things about religion while explicitly not covering any of the touchy areas.
I really do "get" these areas and why they would be attractive to be able to share with a child. You get to tell them about just how much Jesus-as-teddy-bear loves them ooooh so much. And that he knows every hair on their head. And that he died just for them and to keep that baaaad satan away. And rejoice in any positive outcome because Jesus has just blessed us soooo much in our lives, and how Jesus lives in your heart and gives you the power of the Holy Spirit to be like him.
To heavily saturate a child in this is, in my opinion, unfair. They can't even begin to contemplate most of the concepts, for one thing. My daughter, if I recall correctly, once said that Jesus was in mommy's heart in front of me. How can she possibly know what that means? She's not old enough to question it, though.
On the other hand, my wife isn't going to try to explain how two people spawned the world population through incest. Or how god was upset about all these wicked people and went on a one-time global killing spree with more water than is contained on earth... and then vowed that that was the last time he would do it even though surely technology and the number of people in the world mean there is more evil today than there was 6k years ago. This stuff isn't covered.
Hence it's tough to keep quiet. The tender morsels that a child would just eat up are what is provided; any tough stuff isn't. Given that the truth of the "morsels" rest on the accuracy of all those "tough subjects," I don't think it's fair to skip covering the dubious stuff for the sake of making them feel warm with the rest.
It's also interesting to me to contemplate just how much an effect what a child "learns as truth" during early years has on their ability to re-evaluate down the road. As is sometimes attributed to St. Francis Xavier and is a Jesuit motto, "Give me the child for seven years, and I will give you back the man."
So... in situations like these, it's not just about keeping docile between my wife and I; we're approaching an age (daughter 1 = 2.5yrs, daughter 2 = 7 mos) when we need to make calls on this stuff.
I left a comment on your critique of D'Souza. It's far enough back that I thought I'd go out of my way to call some attention to it.
Edit: It was there a few minutes ago, but it's no longer showing up; do only approved comments appear on your blog?
Edit/Update: Wow, not even a day later this has had quite the number of comments. Hopefully more will come in, but I'd like to thank those who have contributed so far. The suggestions that I think I'm really going to run with are:
I'd like to "honorable mention" a suggestion begun by James Miller that I could just pretend to believe for the sake of preserving relationships and social satisfaction. I see some merit to this but think it might have been based on thinking that my closer/est friends/wife didn't already know (they do). The comment made for some interesting comments, but I think I'd just feel like a phony and even more miserable if I were to really implement this suggestion for any extended period of time.
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This issue has been negatively affecting me for quite some time and for lack of clear solutions on my own and knowing that some here have traversed the same stream, I thought I'd ask for help and suggestions. If you're interested, some background information about my story exists here, here, and here.
Background
For the sake of having at least some information here, the brief synopsis is like so:
Yes, that last conclusion had some more contributing to it, but for the sake of brevity, just accept that this was my stance. Following the outburst and relatively minor consequence, it was almost like my "second chance" holy life was just waiting there to be lived. I had a renewed sense of purpose and ran with it.
I built the next seven or so years of my life completely around god and my Catholic faith. Much of this is covered in the link above to my blog, where I've written down a rough draft to my story. In short, I married who I did because of god/religion, went to the college I did because there was an extremely active Catholic outreach group connected to it, and a couple years ago even professed a lifelong commitment to a lay association of Catholic families who pledge themselves to live their lives with a common vision, attend bi-weekly events, complete [theological] education courses [taught by members of the same community], attend a couple of retreats together each year, and more.
Then I, literally out of the blue, a question popped into my head; I wondered whether other historians had written about Jesus. I googled the question various ways and was surprised/disappointed to find out that none had in the manner I expected. The rest is history. It's about 15mos later and I'm a non-believer.
What now?
I'm posting as trying to navigate the social implications of my deconversion has been quite difficult. My close friends were some of the first I informed, probably within a month. This community, however, is probably ~300 members strong. I know a lot of acquaintances via our [former] common religious beliefs.
I find myself quite fearful when I see these individuals. I'm afraid something will come up that will be awkward or that I'll be in a large-group setting and somehow a lot of individuals will find out about my non-belief at once in an "untactful" manner. Some of this is due to a sense of friendship -- if someone learns something more serious about my life, I'd prefer that it be from me.
A bit more irrationally, I fear how their opinions about me will be affected. I already think some think I'm "broken" somehow. In fact, I had a member of my former men's group tell me I was "crazy" (verbatim) when I told him it may very well be possible that some or all of the gospels were made up. I felt talked to like a small child by my men's group leader as a result of my non-belief. Heck, some might think I'm possessed by a demon. My wife and I turned our mattress a couple weeks ago and there was some sort of religious trinket (maybe a scapular?) under my side of the mattress on the box spring. She said someone suggested that it might be helpful...
I also find myself balancing between insecurity and anger. I'm insecure because I just plain wish I was more secure in my non-belief... yet I find myself looking back over my shoulder wondering if I've made a wrong turn in my reasoning, if I've simply pendulum-swung over to the opposite extreme as a result of my initial doubts, or if there's some remaining book that would answer my questions. I read mostly atheistic material, though I have read a couple books per the requests of those close to me. I've also been adding books suggested to my list. I admit, though, it's been far more rewarding to do woodworking than analyze the latest solution of the problem of evil. I guess I'd just say that it's been hard to "fully let go" and just walk away from my past belief, hence the insecurity.
On the other hand, I am easily angered in certain situations, perhaps resulting out of feeling insulted and addressed by hypocrites. Those around me want to know if I've read x, y, and z books by a, b, and c apologists. They want to remind me of how hard this is on my wife (who's still a believer). They would like to make the case for my wife raising our children as believers due to the incredible gravity of the future of their souls. And this all from, as far as I can tell, the comfort of ignorance of the theological/apologetical landscape. Some are fairly educated, but the average individual who would like to critique my path could not provide anything in the way of even a summary of the various topics and arguments involved when trying to answer the question of god's likelihood. That's frustrating.
What I'm looking for
For my own part, I'd say that I need to do more work brainstorming through possible conversation paths, and especially identifying why this all bothers me so much. Or perhaps the latter is simply obvious -- I don't have any close friends anymore who think I'm rationally justified in not believing in their deity. In writing that out, I suppose that is a pretty heavy social hit to take. Even after having these friends for seven years, I'm more "at ease" talking with those at Minnesota Atheists meetups that I've only been attending about 1-2x/month for less than a year.
This ended up far longer than I expected. I knew that was a potential issue when I started it and tried revising some bits and pieces, but I think I'll leave it. For one, this is the discussion area and I'm not necessary trying to present a well-thought out proposal; this is a request for input, ideas, support, and especially suggestions from those who may have been through something similar.
Also, I have to say that writing this out is slightly like talking to the close friend I don't really have. Much of my "real feelings" about this whole issue are kept inside because I simply don't want to hurt those around me by expressing them or bringing it up. My relationships go far better when god just doesn't come up at all, or at least stays to "meta-discussion" like, "How's this all going for your wife and you?" vs. "Here's this new book you should read which will definitely prove you are wrong." As a result, my outlets for bouncing these questions and difficulties around are a bit limited.