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prase comments on The ethics of breaking belief - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think you (and most commenters) are treating this hypothetical believer in a rather disrespectful and patronizing fashion. I would think the ethical thing to do is to engage in a meta-discussion with such a person and see whether there are certain subjects that are off limits, how they feel about your differing views on God, how they would feel about losing their faith, etc. They might ask you similar questions about what might make you become a believer. You might find yourself incorrect about what might make them lose their belief.
It's certainly possible to remain in a religious community without one's faith intact -- I think it happens to a large percentage of people in any religious group. Consider all the European Catholics who are essentially atheists.
What does "essentially" mean here? Out of all European Catholics I know none I would call an essential atheist. On the other hand, I know at least one essentially atheistic European Protestant.
58% of French people consider themselves Catholic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_France
34% of French people assent to: "I believe there is a God". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Europe
Of course, there are methodological issues and this doesn't prove the matter definitively, but it certain suggests that a lot of French people are "cultural Catholics" the way we have "cultural Jews" in the US.
Well, originally you have written "all European Catholics". I don't dispute the existence of cultural Catholics.
I think that "Consider all the European Catholics who are essentially atheists" should be read as "Consider all the {European Catholics who are essentially atheists}", not "Consider {all the European Catholics}, (who are essentially atheists)".
Like CuSithBell, I'll plead the restrictive relative clause interpretation, bolstered by the absence of a comma. I'll also plead common sense as an ambiguity resolution tool. And not only do we have the existence of cultural Catholics, we've got as our first estimate a minimum (if every God-believing French person were a Catholic) of 41% of Catholics who don't subscribe to a vital church teaching.
I apologise for misinterpretation, then. The intended reading didn't occur to me.