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jsalvatier comments on Recent de-convert saturated by religious community; advice? - Less Wrong Discussion
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I mean that it suggests it might be less of a burden to be closeted atheist than closeted gay.
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).
Bingo. To expand, while this might go away in the future, most of my mental energy has been toward thinking about religion, theological arguments, objections to those arguments, and what the best course of action is for raising our two children.
So... when someone in my current social circle who doesn't know me says something like, "So what's new?"... I am left feeling like I must sound like I don't do anything with my life because I can't actually talk passionately about what I'm passionate about.
In addition, I consider what I'm attempting to be basically valiant. I had a question about a big topic and I tried to dive in hard to see what I could make of it. It's extremely disappointing to have your friends think you're doing it wrong, concluding the wrong things, reading the wrong things, thinking wrongly, etc. when you think you're doing something noteworthy and giving it your best shot.
Again, per the original post, this is even more frustrating when these critiques and views are coming from those who have never felt compelled to find justification for their religious beliefs.
So, yes, I think it's the supportive social structure that's the issue. My parents have never been believers and neither has my 15-year-older half brother. Our connection has actually increased tremendously and they area great source of morale for me.
It's tough to have been well respected by a circle and have earned a reputation of being studious, critical, analytical, nerdy, extremely persistent and determined when it comes to problem solving, intelligent and the like about a wide range of topics, and then to have that respect vanish. There was never a problem with how I went about tackling other problems... but when how I tackled this one led to non-belief, my thinking and methods were suddenly all suspect.
I have described it as not having anyone around that was simply "pro me" anymore (as in, supportive of me applying my previously admirable skills toward religion just like I did other areas).
I of course agree that both are burdens. My intuition is that being closet atheist would be less of a burden, but I am not sure I can say why verbally. Perhaps it's simply because my atheism seems less central to my life than my sexuality, and I could see feeling differently in different circumstances.
Sure. And I don't mean to claim that there's anything wrong with that, just that it may not be so for everyone.
Anyone seen this Dennett talk on atheist clergy?. Here's the adjoining paper.
I have, though not the paper (thanks!). I stumbled on it as a related video to another AAI 2009 fantastic talk by Lawrence Krauss about cosmology.