Edited 3/4/2012: I shortened up the summary a bit and add the following update:
Thanks for the lively comments. As a preliminary summary of things I've found quite useful/helpful:
- Shorten/transform the document (David_Gerard)
- Remove/postpone any reasons (TimS)
- Don't be so prosy/fake sounding (orthonormal)
- Show to religious people, not just LW (AlexMennen) -- doing that, btw
- Give reasons (Will_Newsome)
- Create two documents. One very simple, plain-language, frank relating of the fact that I no longer believe in god. I'd like to write it just as though I were saying it personally to someone, easing them into hearing this (like Bugmaster suggested, except that actually doing this in person is impractical for me)
- The second will be my actual list of reasons. I think it will be valuable to actually spell them out, and many will want to know reasons anyway (and probably ask)
It's almost one year later, and I've finally made tangible progress on some of the input suggested in my post about being non-religious in a primarily religious environment. That is, I have a near-final draft of a "coming out" statement I plan to share with a majority of those who know me.
I was involved in two religious communities for about six years of my life (SPO and CCR). Two years post-deconversion from Catholicism, many of them still do not know I no longer believe in god. This can make for awkward interactions for myself, as well as for my wife, who's still a believer. She thought it would be helpful if everyone was on the same page, as did I.
As a prospective modal Catholic I was unsatisfied by your apostasy; I guess I expected you to explain what specifically convinced you, and so when you say that Catholic apologetics in general didn't seem as convincing as atheistic/naturalistic arguments there's nothing keeping me from drawing my default conclusion, i.e. that you're not particularly skilled at philosophy. I suppose you're not really trying to get into that much detail, but if we had been close friends at some point then I would still be dissatisfied: what specifically do you think you know that you don't think I know? How confident are you that I don't know what you think I don't know, how confident are you that you know what I think you don't know? I'd like some serious Bayesian decision theoretic analysis, including Schellingian game theoretic models that demonstrate a thorough understanding of social psychology; this is clearly an important part of your life, you should be taking it at least that seriously. Right now there's nothing to suggest anything besides the default explanation for conversion, i.e. largely-unconscious far-sighted social pragmatics were ultimately in favor of conversion. I think you'd have to be at a Michael Vassar or Nick Tarleton level of apparent rationality before I could feel justified in interpreting your conversion in a more charitable light, because I trust them to have seriously thought through much of the important hermeneutics; if you don't outwardly demonstrate such skills then I must presume their absence, and thus don't see your conversion as providing any evidence about what decisions are actually justified. I wouldn't be surprised if smart Catholic readers of your explanation for your apostasy felt the same way even if they had trouble articulating the true underlying reasons for their intuitive judgment.
On an unrelated note, I don't think it's as long as you make it out to be; it was an easy read and kept me engaged enough that I didn't compulsively switch tabs or take a bath or whatever, which is a good sign.
Thanks for the honest reply. You are probably much smarter/informed than I am (not stated in a negative/sarcastic manner at all; I really mean that).
I stated why I didn't do that in my document. I consider the aspect of relating to friends/acquaintances, mutual understanding/sharing, and simply coming out more important than risking 1) no one reading it to understand/empathize, 2) people getting upset, and 3) unintentionally kicking off about 100 email debates.
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