Keep in mind the idea that Rationalists Win. Rationalism is a collection of methods for knowing more and using that knowledge to get more of what you want. If you learn that greeting the local police with "Allahu Akhbar" will lower your chance of being arrested, then all other things being equal, it is quite rational to greet them that way.
Extending that, unless you have a particular plan in mind, you should not put yourself in danger merely to avoid "lying" about your connection to or sympathy with or hatred of certain ideas.
Personally, I am a big fan of getting out of there. Every country whos intelligent youth leaves in noticable numbers is being sent a message that is received at some level by both the populace and the government of that country. Either that society fixes itself and its intelligent people stay, or it whithers and has smaller and smaller impact on the world as a whole, but at least the steady flux of intelligent people out of it provides an "infrastructure" that future intelligent youth can use to get out more efficiently.
Over the last 40 years, the west has made tremendous inroads against the communist oppression. Soviet Union is GONE. Communist China is a capitalist success story. Defectors and then later students leaving to study were a tremendously valuable part of that process.
If you need to stay in an evnironment where wearing a vertically striped shirt might get you killed, by all means wear a horizontally striped shirt. That is the rational choice.
Many of those governments ardently desire their intelligent, rational people leaving, and will even facilitate that movement. They get in the way of a stable tyranny.
More importantly, the more they appropriate a foreign culture, the more the locals will see them as "foreign". A "Return of the Elites" might not be welcome: see Iran after the Shah was deposed,
Capitalism as the source of a nation's prosperity might also be a red herring: notice how America and Africa are full of perfectly capitalist, utterly miserable nations.
So I have been checking laws around the world regarding Apostasy. And I have found extremely troubling data on the approach Muslims take to dealing with apostates. In most cases, publicly stating that you do not, in fact, love Big Brother (specifically, that you do not believe in God, the Prophet, or Islam), after having professed the Profession of Faith being adult and sane (otherwise, you were never a Muslim in the first place), will get you killed.
Yes, killed. It's one of the only three things traditional Islamic tribunals hand out death penalties for, the others being murder and adultery.
However, interestingly enough, you are often given three days of detainment to "think it over" and "accept the faith".
Some other countries, though, are more forgiving: you are allowed to be a public apostate. But you are still not allowed to proselytize: that remains a crime (in Morocco it's 15 years of prison, and a flogging). Though proselytism is also a crime if you are not a Muslim. I leave to your imagination how precarious the situation of religious minorities is, in this context.
How little sense all of this makes, from a theological perspective. Forcing someone to "accept the faith" at knife point? Forbidding you from arguing against the Lord's (reputedly) absolutely self-evident and miraculously beautiful Word?
No. These are the patterns of sedition and treason laws. The crime of the Apostate is not one against the Lord (He can take care of Himself, and He certainly can take care of the Apostate) but against the State (existence of a human lord contingent on political regime).
And the lesswronger asks himself: "How is that my concern? Please, get to the point." The point is that the promotion of rationalism faces a terrible obstacle there. We're not talking "God Hates You" placards, or getting fired from your job. We're talking fire range and electric chair.
"Sure," you say, "but rationalism is not about atheism." And you'd be right. It isn't. It's just a very likely conclusion for the rationalist mind to reach, and, also, our cult leader (:P) is a raging, bitter, passionate atheist. That is enough. If word spreads and authorities find out, just peddling HPMOR might get people jailed. And that's not accounting for the hypothetical (cough) case of a young adult reading the Sequences and getting all hotheaded about it and doing something stupid. Like trying to promote our brand of rationality in such hostile terrain.
So, let's take this hypothetical (harrumph) youth. They see irrationality around them, obvious and immense, they see the waste and the pain it causes. They'd like to do something about it. How would you advise them to go about it? Would you advise them to, in fact, do nothing at all?
More importantly, concerning Less Wrong itself, should we try to distance ourselves from atheism and anti-religiousness as such? Is this baggage too inconvenient, or is it too much a part of what we stand for?